Proto-Nahuan (also called Proto-Aztecan) is a hypothetical daughter language of the
Proto-Uto-Aztecan language. It is the common ancestor from which the modern
Nahuan languages
The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan languages, 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 developed.
Homeland
There is some controversy about where and when Proto-Nahuan was spoken. Following Nahuan ethnohistorical sources describing a southward migration of Nahuatl speakers, as well as the fact that all other Uto-Aztecan languages are north of the Nahuan languages, the homeland has traditionally been considered to be located to the north of the current area of extension.
An alternative hypothesis by
Jane Hill
Jane Amanda Hill (born 10 June 1969 in Eastbourne, Sussex) is an English newsreader working for the BBC. She is one of the main presenters for BBC News, and is the main presenter on the '' BBC News at One'', as well as regularly presenting the ...
is that Proto-Nahuatl arose within
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...
, and the Nahuas are the only remainders after a large-scale northward migration.
Phonology
The following phonological changes are shared by all Nahuan languages:
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan *t becomes Proto-Nahuan lateral affricate before Proto-Uto-Aztecan *a (Proto-Uto-Aztecan *taːka 'man' becomes Proto-Nahuan *tlaːka-tla 'man').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan initial *p is lost in Proto-Nahuan (Proto-Uto-Aztecan *pahi 'water' becomes Proto-Nahuan *aː-tla 'water').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan *u merges with *i in Proto-Nahuan *i (Proto-Uto-Aztecan *muki 'to die' becomes Proto-Nahuan *miki 'to die').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan sibilants *ts and *s split into *ts, *ch and *s , respectively.
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan's fifth vowel, reconstructed as or , merged with *e in Proto-Nahuan *e (Proto-Uto-Aztecan 'to walk' becomes Proto-Nahuan *nemi 'to live, to walk').
*Many
metatheses in which Proto-Uto-Aztecan roots of the shape *CVCV become *VCCV (Proto-Uto-Aztecan *puːli 'to tie' becomes Proto-Nahuan *ilpi 'to tie').
Morphology
Proto-Nahuan was an
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
language, and its words used suffix complexes for a variety of purposes, with several
morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s strung together.
Lexicon
Some Proto-Aztecan (i.e., Proto-Nahuan) reconstructions by Davletshin (2012):
:
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahuan, Proto-Nahuan, Language
Agglutinative languages
Nahuan languages
Proto-languages