Uto-Aztecan language
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Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of
indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large num ...
, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the
Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...
and
Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. The name of the language family was created to show that it includes both the Ute language of
Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
and the
Nahuan languages The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this to ...
(also known as Aztecan) of Mexico. The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language is Shoshoni, which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho, while the southernmost is the
Pipil language Nawat (academically Pipil, also known as Nicarao) is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was spoken in several parts of present-day Central America before the Spanish c ...
of El Salvador and
Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...
. '' Ethnologue'' gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. Speakers of Nahuatl languages account for over 85% of these. The internal classification of the family often divides it into two branches: a northern branch including all the languages of the US and a southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one. Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted:
Numic Numic is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word Numic com ...
(including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni) and the Californian languages (formerly known as the Takic group, including Cahuilla and
Luiseño The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of ...
) account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the
Tepiman languages Piman (or Tepiman) refers to a group of languages within the Uto-Aztecan family that are spoken by ethnic groups (including the Pima) spanning from Arizona in the north to Durango, Mexico in the south. The Piman languages are as follows (Campb ...
(including O'odham and
Tepehuán The Tepehuán are an indigenous people of Mexico. They live in Northwestern, Western, and some parts of North-Central Mexico. The indigenous Tepehuán language has three branches: Northern Tepehuan, Southeastern Tepehuan, Southwestern Tepehu ...
), the
Tarahumaran languages The Tarahumaran languages is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family that comprises the Tarahumara and Huarijio languages of Northern Mexico. The branch has been considered to be part of the Taracahitic languages, but this group is no long ...
(including Raramuri and Guarijio), the
Cahitan languages The Cahitan languages is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family that comprises the Yaqui and the Mayo language Mayo is an Uto-Aztecan language. It is spoken by about 40,000 people, the Mexican Mayo or ''Yoreme'' Indians, who live in the ...
(including
Yaqui The Yaqui, Hiaki, or Yoeme, are a Native American people of the southwest, who speak a Uto-Aztecan language. Their homelands include the Río Yaqui valley in Sonora, Mexico, and the area below the Gila River in Arizona, Southwestern United Sta ...
and
Mayo Mayo often refers to: * Mayonnaise, often shortened to "mayo" * Mayo Clinic, a medical center in Rochester, Minnesota, United States Mayo may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Mayo Peak, Marie Byrd Land Australia * Division of Mayo, an Aust ...
), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol), and the
Nahuan languages The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this to ...
. The homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have been in the Southwestern United States or possibly Northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory has proposed the possibility that the language family originated in southern Mexico, within the
Mesoamerican language area The Mesoamerican language area is a ''sprachbund'' containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethn ...
, but this has not been generally considered convincing.


Geographic distribution

Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in the North American mountain ranges and adjacent lowlands of the western United States (in the states of
Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...
, Idaho,
Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...
,
Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
,
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
,
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
,
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, AlÄ­ á¹£onak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
) and of Mexico (states of Sonora, Chihuahua,
Nayarit Nayarit (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Nayarit ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit), is one of the 31 states that, along with Mexico City, comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 20 municipalities and its ...
, Durango,
Zacatecas , image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg , map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type ...
, Jalisco, Michoacán,
Guerrero Guerrero is one of the 32 states that comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 81 municipalities and its capital city is Chilpancingo and its largest city is Acapulcocopied from article, GuerreroAs of 2020, Guerrero the pop ...
, San Luis Potosí,
Hidalgo Hidalgo may refer to: People * Hidalgo (nobility), members of the Spanish nobility * Hidalgo (surname) Places Mexico * Hidalgo (state), in central Mexico * Hidalgo, Coahuila, a town in the north Mexican state of Coahuila * Hidalgo, Nuevo Leà ...
, Puebla,
Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
, Morelos,
Estado de México The State of Mexico ( es, Estado de México; ), officially just Mexico ( es, México), is one of the 32 federal entities of the United Mexican States. Commonly known as Edomex (from ) to distinguish it from the name of the whole country, it is ...
, and Ciudad de México). Classical Nahuatl, the language of the
Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...
s, and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. The
Pipil language Nawat (academically Pipil, also known as Nicarao) is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was spoken in several parts of present-day Central America before the Spanish c ...
, an offshoot of Nahuatl, spread to Central America by a wave of migration from Mexico, and formerly had many speakers there. Now it has gone extinct in Guatemala, Honduras, and
Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...
, and it is nearly extinct in western El Salvador, all areas dominated by use of Spanish. ;Uto-Aztecan-speaking communities in and around Mexico


Classification


History of classification

Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as a language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid:
Numic Numic is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word Numic com ...
, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan. That leaves two ungrouped languages: Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed "
isolates {{About, , the linguistics term dealing with languages unrelated to any other language in the world, Language isolate, other uses, Isolate (disambiguation){{!Isolate Isolates is a term used in developmental psychology and family studies, to describ ...
within the family"). Some recent studies have begun to question the unity of Taracahitic and Takic and computer-assisted statistical studies have begun to question some of the long-held assumptions and consensuses. As to higher-level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently scholars also disagree as to where to draw language boundaries within the dialect continua. The similarities among the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J. C. E. Buschmann, but he failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and the rest. He ascribed the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Daniel Garrison Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell, however, rejected the claim in his own classification of North American indigenous languages (also published in 1891). Powell recognized two language families: "Shoshonean" (encompassing Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (encompassing Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol). In the early 1900s
Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...
filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while
Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...
proved the unity among Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean". Sapir's applications of the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
to unwritten Native American languages are regarded as groundbreaking. argued for a three-way division of Shoshonean, Sonoran and Aztecan, following Powell. As of about 2011, there is still debate about whether to accept the proposed basic split between "Northern Uto-Aztecan" and "Southern Uto-Aztecan" languages. Northern Uto-Aztecan corresponds to Powell's "Shoshonean", and the latter is all the rest: Powell's "Sonoran" plus Aztecan. Northern Uto-Aztecan was proposed as a genetic grouping by Jeffrey Heath in based on morphological evidence, and
Alexis Manaster Ramer Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956) is a Polish-born American linguist (PhD 1981, University of Chicago). Work Ramer has published extensively on syntactic typology (esp. in relation to Australian, Eskimo, and Austronesian languages); on phonol ...
in adduced phonological evidence in the form of a sound law.
Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguisti ...
in accepted the basic division into Northern and Southern branches as valid. Other scholars have rejected the genealogical unity of either both nodes or the Northern node alone. Wick R. Miller's argument was statistical, arguing that Northern Uto-Aztecan languages displayed too few cognates to be considered a unit. On the other hands he found the number of cognates among Southern Uto-Aztecan languages to suggest a genetic relation. This position was supported by subsequent lexicostatistic analyses by and . Reviewing the debate, considers the evidence in favor of the genetic unity of Northern Uto-Aztecan to be convincing, but remains agnostic on the validity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a genetic grouping. also considered the North/South split to be valid based on phonological evidence, confirming both groupings. adduced further evidence for the unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a valid grouping. also rejected the validity of the Takic grouping decomposing it into a Californian areal grouping together with Tubatulabal. Some classifications have posited a genetic relation between Corachol and Nahuan (e.g. ). Kaufman recognizes similarities between Corachol and Aztecan, but explains them by diffusion instead of genetic evolution. Most scholars view the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum.


Present scheme

Below is a representation of the internal classification of the language family based on . The classification reflects the decision to split up the previous Taracahitic and Takic groups, that are no longer considered to be valid genetic units. Whether the division between Northern and Southern languages is best understood as geographical or phylogenetic is under discussion. The table contains demographic information about number of speakers and their locations based on data from The Ethnologue. The table also contains links to a selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries on many of the individual languages.(† = extinct)
In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, it is suspected that among dozens of now extinct, undocumented or poorly known languages of northern Mexico, many were Uto-Aztecan.


Extinct languages

A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages that became extinct before being documented.


Proposed external relations

An "Aztec–Tanoan" macrofamily that unites the Uto-Aztecan languages with the
Tanoan languages Tanoan , also Kiowa–Tanoan or Tanoan–Kiowa, is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in present-day New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most of the languages – Tiwa (Taos, Picuris, Southern Tiwa), Tewa, and Towa – ...
of the southwestern United States was first proposed by
Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...
in the early 20th century, and later supported with potential lexical evidence by other scholars. This proposal has received much criticism about the validity of the proposed cognate sets and has been largely abandoned by the end of the last century as unproven. Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 269–273.


Proto-Uto-Aztecan


References


Sources

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Individual languages

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Uto-Aztecan.org, a website devoted to the comparative study of the Uto-Aztecan language familySwadesh vocabulary lists for Uto-Aztecan languages
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uto-Aztecan Languages Language families Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of Mexico Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest Indigenous languages of the North American Great Basin Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States Agglutinative languages Mesoamerican languages Indigenous languages of North America