The Pueblo linguistic area (or Pueblo Sprachbund, Pueblo convergence area) is a

Sprachbund A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. Th ...

(group of languages with similarities due to

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

) consisting of the languages spoken in and near North American

Pueblo Pueblo refers to the settlements of the Pueblo peoples, Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlement ...

locations. There are also many shared cultural practices in this area. For example, these cultures share many ceremonial vocabulary terms meant for prayer or song.

Language membership

The languages of the linguistic area are the following: *

Zuni language Zuni (also formerly Zuñi, endonym ) is a language of the Zuni people, indigenous to western New Mexico and eastern Arizona in the United States. It is spoken by around 9,500 people, especially in the vicinity of Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, and ...

* Tanoan family *

Keresan language Keres (), also Keresan (), is a Indigenous languages of the Americas, Native American language, spoken by the Keres people, Keres Puebloans, Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a ...

Hopi language Hopi (Hopi: ) is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people (a Puebloan group) of northeastern Arizona, United States. The use of Hopi has gradually declined over the course of the 20th century. In 1990, it was estimated that more than ...

Navajo language Navajo or Navaho ( ; Navajo: or ) is a Southern Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dené family, through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. Navajo i ...

The languages belong to five different families: Zuni, Tanoan, Keresan,

Uto-Aztecan The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ...

(Hopi), and

Athabaskan Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, ...

(Navajo, from the Apachean subfamily). Zuni is a

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

. Navajo is only a marginal member of the Sprachbund and does not share all its linguistic features. This is because the ancestors of the Navajo originate from the Athabaskan region (located in modern-day Canada and Alaska), and as a result they were relatively late in arriving to the Southwest compared to their Puebloan neighbors. Languages in the Tanoan and Apachean families, and additionally Hopi, can be compared to relatives not affected by this particular region's

areal feature In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a common ancestor or proto-language. An areal feature is contrasted with genetic relatio ...

s as a reference for changes due to contact. Tanoan consists of

Taos Taos or TAOS may refer to: Places * Taos County, New Mexico, United States ** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico *** Taos art colony, an art colony founded in Taos, New Mexico ** Taos Pueblo, a Native American ...

, Picurís,

Tewa The Tewa are a linguistic group of Pueblo people, Pueblo Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans who speak the Tewa language and share the Pueblo culture. Their homelands are on or near the Rio Grande in New Mexico north of San ...

, and Jemez. Keresan consists of Eastern Keres and Western Keres.

Shared linguistic traits and areal features

The following are the shared linguistic traits of the Pueblo Sprachbund: * tones, absent only in Zuni * SOV word order (though inherited from proto-languages in the case of Navajo (

Proto-Athabaskan Proto-Athabaskan is the reconstructed ancestor of the Athabaskan languages. Phonology The reconstruction of Proto-Athabaskan phonology is still under active debate. This section attempts to summarize the less controversial parts of the Proto-At ...

) and Hopi (Proto(-Northern)-Uto-Aztecan)) *

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s * aspirated consonants *

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

systems * final

devoicing In phonology, voicing (or sonorization) is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or surdization. Most commonl ...

of vowels &

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

s *

dual number In algebra, the dual numbers are a hypercomplex number system first introduced in the 19th century. They are expressions of the form , where and are real numbers, and is a symbol taken to satisfy \varepsilon^2 = 0 with \varepsilon\neq 0. D ...

* ceremonial vocabulary *

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

velar Velar may refer to: * Velar consonant Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region ...

stops Most languages have ejectives. Zuni may have developed ejectives due to contact with Tanoan and Keresan which both have complete series of ejectives: Zuni has but lacks the ejectives found in the other languages. Taos and Picurís (both Tanoan) have ; Tewa (Tanoan) has ; Jemez (Tanoan) has ; Keresan has (as well as

glottalized Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent conso ...

s ). Hopi lacks ejectives completely. Navajo has .The lack of in Navajo is an inheritance from Proto-Athabascan. Navajo may have acquired the stop /kʷ/ from Puebloan contact. Sherzer suggests that contact led to Acoma Keres sharing glottalized sonorants and glides with Navajo. Zuni may have obtained its partial glottalized set and aspirants via contact with Tanoan and Keresan, which both have fully integrated series of glottals. Other shared traits include Santa Clara acquiring retroflex sounds from Keresan and the Navajo acquiring /hʷ/ from Tanoan contact. Keresan may be the common source of glottalized nasals and semivowels in Navajo, and the development of /r/ in dialects of Tewa and Tiwa and possibly Hopi. Linguist Paul Kroskrity argues for diffused Apachean traits in Tewa, such as the

passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of ...

marked by

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

es that are structured differently from those of other Tanoan languages. In these languages the verb is made

intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...

by allowing an

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

argument in the verb structure. This also includes patient subjects and cases where the subject must be

animate Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...

, including raising animate objects to the place of inanimate subjects. Further, Navajo and Tewa are the only languages in this group to have a "recognizable anaphor as a

relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a type of Conjunction (grammar), conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a s ...

" when forming relative clauses. Kroskrity also finds similarity in the Tewa

possessive suffix In linguistics, a possessive affix (from ) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive affixes are found in many languages of the world. The '' Wor ...

-bí, which parallels the third person possessive prefix bi- found in Apachean languages. This can be seen in the following example provided by Kroskrity: This paralleling morpheme is also used in these languages' postpositional constructions. The reason for this diffusion has been attributed to trade networks and Apachean settlements near Pueblos in winter months.

Vowels

Sherzer suggests that the 2-2-1 vowel system found in Tanoan languages (i u - e o - a) may be a result of contact with Zuni and Keresan language families. Sherzer states, "A 2-2-1 vowel system is a Pueblo-centered regional areal trait. Its development in some Tanoan languages may be due to contact with Zuni and Keresan."

Notes

Bibliography

* Campbell, Lyle (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. * Hale, Kenneth L. (1967). Toward a reconstruction of Kiowa–Tanoan phonology. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''33'' (2), 112-120. * Hoijer, Harry (1945). ''Navaho phonology''. University of New Mexico publications in anthropology, (No. 1). * Kroskrity, Paul V. (1985). ''Areal-historical influences on Tewa possession'', ''IJAL 51'', 486-489. * Kroskrity, Paul V. (1982). ''Language contact and linguistic diffusion: the Arizona Tewa speech community'', in ''Bilingualism and language contact: Spanish, English, and Native American languages'', 51-72. * Kroskrity, Paul V. (1993). ''Language, history, and identity; ethnolinguistic studies of the Arizona Tewa''. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. * Mithun, Marianne (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Newman, Stanley (1965). ''Zuni grammar''. University of New Mexico publications in anthropology (No. 14). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico. * Newman, Stanley (1967). Zuni grammar: Alternative solutions versus weaknesses. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''33'', 187-192. * Sherzer, Joel (1976). ''An Areal-Typological Study of American Indian Languages North of Mexico''. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. * Trager, Felicia (1971). The phonology of Picuris. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''37'', 29-33. * Trager, George L. (1942). The historical phonology of the Tiwa languages. ''Studies in Linguistics'', ''1'' (5), 1-10. * Trager, George L. (1946). An outline of Taos grammar. In C. Osgood (Ed.), ''Linguistic structures in North America'' (pp. 184–221). New York: Wenner-Green Foundation for Anthropological Research. {{North American languages Sprachbund

Language membership

Shared linguistic traits and areal features

Vowels

See also

Notes

Bibliography