Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
in 1960 and elaborated by his student
Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...
. Greenberg proposed that all of the
indigenous languages of the Americas
The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now e ...
belong to one of three
language families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...
, the previously established
Eskimo–Aleut
The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...
and Na–Dene, and with everything else—otherwise classified by specialists as belonging to dozens of independent families—as Amerind. Because of a large number of methodological disagreements with the 1987 book ''Language in the Americas'', the relationships he proposed between these languages have been rejected by the majority of historical linguists as spurious.
The term ''Amerind'' is also occasionally used to refer broadly to the various
indigenous languages of the Americas
The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now e ...
without necessarily implying that they are a
genealogical
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
group. To avoid ambiguity, the term Amerindian is often used for the latter meaning.
Background
The idea that all the languages of the Americas are related goes back to the 19th century when early linguists such as Peter Stephen DuPonceau and
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1949, the university was named aft ...
noticed that the languages of the Americas seemed to be very different from the better-known European languages, yet seemingly also quite similar to each other. When studies of American Indian languages began in earnest in the early 20th century linguists quickly realized that the indigenous languages were in fact not all that similar, but had a diversity much greater than among the languages of Europe. After a period of uncertainty about whether indigenous languages could be described and investigated by the methods applied to European languages, the first linguists began the daunting task of trying to classify the languages of the Americas by using 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 ...
.
Among the most prolific and gifted linguists of his times was
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, 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 ...
, who was among the first to apply the comparative method to Native American languages. However, contrary to current practice in historical linguistics, Sapir also often relied on "hunches" and "gut feeling" when proposing new language families. Some of these suggestions have been proven correct while others have not. Sapir entertained the idea that ultimately all languages of the Americas might turn out to be provably related and such a phenomenon as the apparent Pan-American tendency to have first person forms with a prefixed n- was suggestive for this line of thought.
Since Sapir's death in 1939, linguists have spent their time researching his proposals; typically, there have been two opposing camps in this endeavor: the so-called " lumpers" who usually look towards notions of genetic relationships, and the "splitters" who are widely critical of such proposals and expect successful family relations to be proven by the most rigorous standards of scholarship. Joseph Greenberg worked in the tradition of "lumpers" and following Sapir, was mindful of evidence not generally acceptable to those who hold that only actual
linguistic reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
* Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language t ...
—through the comparative method—can yield reliable proof of genetic relationships between languages. In elaborating his classification of the Amerind languages, Greenberg relied heavily on Sapir's early work on the North American languages and the highly impressionist classification of South American languages by
The main argument for the validity of Amerind is a pronominal pattern in many Native American languages that have first person forms with ''n'' and second person forms with ''m''.
This pattern was first noted by
Alfredo Trombetti
Alfredo Trombetti (16 January 1866 in Bologna – 5 July 1929 in Venice) was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.
Career overview
Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna. He was a member of the Italian Academy.
...
in 1905. Sapir suggested that it indicated that ultimately all Native American languages would turn out to be related. However, it is not universal, being confined primarily to western North America and to a lesser extent Mesoamerica; the incidence elsewhere is not statistically significant, and in western North American it is more an argument for the Hokan and
Penutian
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language family, language families that includes many Native Americans in the United States, Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington ( ...
phyla than for Amerind.Raoul Zamponi (2017) 'First-person n and second-person m in Native America: a fresh look'. ''Italian Journal of Linguistics'', 29.2
Gender
Ruhlen reconstructed a morphological (
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its relate ...
) gender system for proto-Amerind, with masculine kinship terms containing the vowel *i and feminine the vowel *u, that he claims proves Greenberg's reconstruction. This is based on Greenberg's *t'a'na "child", to which Ruhlen adds a masculine derivation *t'i'na "son, boy" and a feminine *t'u'na "daughter, girl".
Unlike the n-/m- pattern in the pronouns, an intact i/u gender system is not attested across language families, and the consensus is that the pattern is a spurious one.
Reception
The consensus among historical linguists specializing in Native American languages is that the Amerind hypothesis is unsupported by valid evidence,Campbell 1997Mithun 1999 particularly because the basis for the proposal is
mass comparison
Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. Mass comparison has been referred to as a "methodological deception" an ...
, but also because of many other methodological flaws made by Greenberg in the elaboration of the hypothesis.Matisoff 1990Rankin 1992Campbell 1988 Critics regard this technique as fundamentally flawed, unable to distinguish chance resemblances from those due to a historical relationship among the languages and providing no means of distinguishing resemblances due to common descent from those 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 ...
. In addition, critics have pointed out errors in the citation of data, including erroneous forms, erroneous glosses, unjustified morphological segmentation, attribution to the wrong language, and citation of entirely spurious forms.
A further criticism is that, contrary to normal scholarly practice, no source references are given for the data, which in most cases come from languages for which there is no standard, authoritative source. In addition, Greenberg does not normalize the spelling of the data, so it is impossible without knowing the source of each form to know what the notation represents.Poser 1992
While sympathetic to the idea of an Amerind language family,
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh ( ; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics, and developed his mature career at UNAM in Mexico. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewi ...
was critical of many of Greenberg's subdivisions and believed it was due to an insufficient number of comparisons by Greenberg.
Classification
The 1960 proposal, in its outlines, was as follows:
* Amerind
** Almosan- Keresiouan
** Hokan
**
Penutian
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language family, language families that includes many Native Americans in the United States, Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington ( ...
(incl.
Macro-Mayan
Macro-Mayan is a proposal linking the clearly established Mayan family with neighboring families that show similarities to Mayan. The term was apparently coined by McQuown (1942), but suggestions for historical relationships relevant to this hyp ...
Oto-Manguean
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean () languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean languages, Ma ...
Chibchan
The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...
Huarpe
The Huarpes or Warpes are an Indigenous people of Argentina, living in the Cuyo region. Some scholars assume that in the Huarpe language, this word means "sandy ground," but according to ''Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua general del Reino de C ...
''
*** '' Taruma''
Below is the current state of Amerindian classification, as given in ''An Amerind Etymological Dictionary'', by Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, Stanford University, 2007.
* Amerind
** North–Central Amerind
*** Northern Amerind
**** Almosan–Keresiouan
***** Almosan
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Algic
The Algic languages (also Algonquian–Wiyot–Yurok or Algonquian–Ritwan) are an indigenous language family of North America. Most Algic languages belong to the Algonquian subfamily, dispersed over a broad area from the Rocky Mountains to ...
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Kutenai
The Kutenai ( ), also known as the Ktunaxa ( ; ), Ksanka ( ), Kootenay (in Canada) and Kootenai (in the United States), are an indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people of Canada and the United States. Kutenai bands live in so ...
Salishan
The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Ida ...
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Wakashan
Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
As is typical of the Nor ...
Caddoan
The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of sp ...
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Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages () are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, almost all surviving I ...
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Keresan
Keres (), also Keresan (), is a Native American language, spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects. If it is considered a ...
****** Siouan–Yuchi
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Siouan
Siouan ( ), also known as Siouan–Catawban ( ), is a language family of North America located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who ...
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Yuchi
The Yuchi people are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma, though their original homeland was in the southeastern United States.
In the 16th century, the Yuchi lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley. By the late 17th century, they had ...
**** Penutian–Hokan
*****
Penutian
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language family, language families that includes many Native Americans in the United States, Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington ( ...
******
Tsimshian
The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...
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Chinook
Chinook may refer to:
Chinook peoples
The name derives from a settlement of Indigenous people in Oregon and Washington State.
* Chinookan peoples, several groups of Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest
** Chinook Indian Nation, an organiza ...
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Oregon
Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...
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Plateau
In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; : plateaus or plateaux), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. ...
****** California
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Maiduan
Maiduan (also Maidun, Pujunan) is a small endangered language family of northeastern California.
Family division
The Maiduan consists of 4 languages:
* Maiduan
** Maidu (also known as Maidu proper, Northeastern Maidu, Mountain Maidu)
** C ...
Wintun
The Wintun are members of several related Native American peoples of Northern California, including the Wintu (northern), Nomlaki (central), and Patwin (southern).Pritzker, 152Yokutsan
Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, mission ...
Gulf
A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean or their seas into a landmass, larger and typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay (geography), bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of s ...
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Atakapa
The Atakapa Sturtevant, 659 or Atacapa were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now Texas and Louisiana.
They included several distinct b ...
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Chitimacha
The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands in Louisiana. They are a federally recognized tribe, the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.
The Chitimacha have an Indian reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charento ...
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Muskogean
Muskogean ( ; also Muskhogean) is a language family spoken in the Southeastern United States. Members of the family are Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Typologically, Muskogean languages are highly synthetic and agglutinative. One docume ...
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Natchez Natchez may refer to:
Places
* Natchez, Alabama, United States
* Natchez, Indiana, United States
* Natchez, Louisiana, United States
* Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States
** Natchez slave market, Mississippi
* ...
Wappo
The Wappo (endonym: ''Micewal'') are an Indigenous people of northern California. Their traditional homelands are in Napa Valley, the south shore of Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and Russian River valley. They are distantly related to the Yu ...
Mayan
Mayan most commonly refers to:
* Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Mayan languages, language family spoken ...
Totonac
The Totonac are an Indigenous people of Mexico who reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the pre-Columbian city of El TajÃn, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán (a cit ...
Karok
The Karuk people ()Andrew Garrett, Susan Gehr, Erik Hans Maier, Line Mikkelsen, Crystal Richardson, and Clare Sandy. (November 2, 2021) ''Karuk; To appear in The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America: A Comprehensive Guide (De G ...
Achomawi
Achomawi (also Achumawi, Ajumawi and Ahjumawi) are the northerly nine (out of eleven) bands of the Pit River tribe of Palaihnihan Native Americans who live in what is now northeastern California in the United States. These 5 autonomous bands ( ...
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Yana
Yana may refer to:
Locations
*Yana, Burma, a village in Hkamti Township in Hkamti District in the Sagaing Region of northwestern Burma
* Yana, India, a village in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, India
* Yana, Nigeria, an administrative c ...
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Pomoan
The Pomoan, or Pomo , languages are a small family of seven languages indigenous to northern California spoken by the Pomo people, whose ancestors lived in the valley of the Russian River and the Clear Lake basin. Four languages are extinct, an ...
Salinan
The Salinan are a Native American tribe whose ancestral territory is in the southern Salinas Valley and the Santa Lucia Range in the Central Coast of California. Today, the Salinan governments are now working toward federal tribal recognition ...
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Chumash
Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, Indigenous languages of California
See also
* Pentateuch (dis ...
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Esselen
The Esselen are a Native American people belonging to a linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who are Indigenous to the Santa Lucia Mountains of a region south of the Big Sur River in California. Prior to Spanish col ...
Yuman
The Quechan ( Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended'), or Yuma, are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite ...
Coahuiltecan
The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans who inhabited the Rio Grande valley in what is now northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter ga ...
Subtiaba
Subtiaba is an extinct Oto-Manguean language which was spoken on the Pacific slope of Nicaragua, especially in the Subtiaba district of León. Edward Sapir established a connection between Subtiaba and Tlapanec. When Lehmann wrote about it in 1 ...
Tanoan
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 â ...
Oto-Manguean
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean () languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean languages, Ma ...
Macro-Chibchan
Macro-Chibchan is a proposed grouping of the languages of the Lencan, Misumalpan, and Chibchan families into a single large phylum (macrofamily).
History
The Lencan and Misumalpan languages were once included in the Chibchan family proper, bu ...
Lenca
The Lenca,are an Indigenous people from present day southwest Honduras and eastern El Salvador in Central America. They historically spoke various dialects of the Lencan languages such as Chilanga, Putun (Potón), and Kotik, but today are nat ...
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Chibchan
The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...
(including
Misumalpan
The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by different ethnic groups on the east coast of Nicaragua and the Eastern Half of HonduraThe name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is com ...
)
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Paya
Paya may refer to:
Places
* Paya, Boyacá, a municipality in the department of Boyacá, Colombia
* Paya, Dominican Republic, a municipal district of the Banà municipality
* Paya, India, a town in Arunachal Pradesh state of India
* Paya Jaras, ...
Allentiac
Allentiac (Alyentiyak), also known as Huarpe (Warpe), was one of the Warpean languages. It was native to Cuyo in Argentina, but was displaced to Chile in the late 16th century. Luis de Valdivia, a Jesuit missionary, wrote a grammar, vocabulary ...
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Atacama
The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barren lower slopes ...
Chimu
Chimor (also Kingdom of Chimor or Chimú Empire) was the political grouping of the Chimú culture (). The culture arose about 900 CE, succeeding the Moche culture, and was later conquered by the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui around 1470, f ...
Timucua
The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The va ...
Aymara
Aymara may refer to:
Languages and people
* Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language
** Aymara language, the main language within that family
** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...
Sabela
Sabela is a covert communication dialect of several major South African languages formed by the Numbers gang. Sabela was originally developed in the mines during the early 1900's as a means of communication between the members of The Numbers Ga ...
Sechura
Sechura is a town in northwestern Peru, south of Piura. It is the capital of Sechura Province in the Piura Region. The city gives its name to the Sechura Desert, which extends south along most of coastal Peru. Crescent dunes lie south of the ci ...
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Quechua
Quechua may refer to:
*Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru
*Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...
Chon
CHNOPS and CHON are mnemonic acronyms for the most common elements in living organisms. "CHON" stands for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which together make up more than 95 percent of the mass of biological systems. "CHNOPS" adds ...
Arawakan
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...
Guamo
Guamo is a town and municipality in the Tolima department of Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The C ...
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Uro
Uro or URO may refer to:
* Aurochs, the predecessor of modern cattle
* Uro Bonsai technique; see deadwood bonsai techniques
* Uro, Delta, Nigeria
* ''Uro'' (film), directed by Stefan Faldbakken
* Uro (trucks), a Spanish truck manufacturer
* '' ...
(including
Puquina
Puquina (or Pukina) is an extinct language once spoken by a native ethnic group in the region surrounding Lake Titicaca (Peru and Bolivia) and in the north of Chile. It is often associated with the culture that built Tiwanaku.
Remnants of Puquin ...
Cofán Cofan or Cofán may refer to:
* Cofán people, an ethnic group of Ecuador and Colombia
* Cofán language, their language
See also
* Kofan (disambiguation)
* Cofana
''Cofana'' is a genus of leafhoppers belonging to the family Cicadellidae. ...
Piaroa
The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the ''Huottüja'' or ''De'aruhua'', are a South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgium, roughly circ ...
Huari Huari may refer to:
*Huari culture, a historical civilization in Peru
*Huari (archaeological site), an archaeological site in Peru
*Huari, Peru, a town in Peru
* Huari District, a district in the Huari Province, Peru
* Huari Province, a province in ...
Shukuru
''Shukuru'' is an album led by saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, recorded in 1981 and released on the Theresa label in 1985.Ticuna–Yuri
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Tucanoan
Tucanoan (also Tukanoan, Tukánoan) is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Arutani, Paez, Sape, Taruma, Witoto-Okaina, Saliba-Hodi, ...
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Uman
Uman (, , ) is a city in Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. It is located to the east of Vinnytsia. Located in the east of the historical region of Podolia, the city rests on the banks of the Umanka River. Uman serves as the administrative c ...
Kukura
Kukura may be,
* Juraj Kukura (born 1947), Slovak actor
* Philipp Kukura (born 1978), Slovak physical chemist
* Kukurá language, a linguistic hoax
*Kukura, a Yadava
The Yadava (), not to be confused with Yadav, were an ancient Indian pe ...
Yagua
Yagua are an indigenous people in Colombia and northeastern Peru, numbering approximately 6,000. Currently, they live near the Amazon, Napo, Putumayo and Yavari rivers and their tributaries. As of 2005, some Yagua have migrated northward to C ...
****
Macro-Panoan
Macro-Panoan is a hypothetical proposal linking four language families of Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area ...
Pano–Tacanan
Pano-Tacanan (also Pano-Takana, Pano-Takánan, Pano-Tacana, Páno-Takána) is a proposed and generally accepted family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, Bolivia and northern Paraguay. There are two close-knit branches, Panoan and Tac ...
Bororo
The Bororo are indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo (Orarimogodoge) l ...
Puri
Puri, also known as Jagannath Puri, () is a coastal city and a Nagar Palika, municipality in the state of Odisha in eastern India. It is the district headquarters of Puri district and is situated on the Bay of Bengal, south of the state ca ...
*Principal advocates of the Amerind hypothesis or its predecessors
**
Alfredo Trombetti
Alfredo Trombetti (16 January 1866 in Bologna – 5 July 1929 in Venice) was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.
Career overview
Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna. He was a member of the Italian Academy.
...
Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...
Eskimo–Aleut
The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...