The Takic languages are a putative group of

Uto-Aztecan languages 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 ...

historically spoken by a number of

Indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

. Takic is grouped with the Tubatulabal,

Hopi The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...

, and Numic languages in the northern branch of the Uto-Aztecan family.

Distribution

Prior to European contact, the Takic languages were spoken along coastal California between modern Malibu and Carlsbad and on the Southern Channel Islands. The Takic languages also were spoken in the Southern California interior, in portions of the

Coachella Valley The Coachella Valley ( ) is an arid rift valley in the Colorado Desert of Southern California in Riverside County. The valley has been referred to as Greater Palm Springs and occasionally the Palm Springs Area due to the historic promine ...

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

and Tehachapi Mountains.

List of Takic languages

Cahuilla language Cahuilla , or Ivilyuat ( or ), is an endangered Uto-Aztecan language, spoken by the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the Coachella Valley, San Gorgonio Pass and San Jacinto Mountains region of southern California.

* Cupeño language * Luiseño language *

Serrano language Serrano (Serrano: ) is a language in the Serran branch of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken by the Serrano people of Southern California. The language is closely related to Tongva, Tataviam, Kitanemuk and Vanyume, which may be a dialect of Serran ...

Tongva language The Tongva language (also known as Gabrielino, Gabrieleño, or Kizh) is an extinct and revitalizing Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who have lived in and around modern-day Los Angeles for centuries. It has n ...

Kitanemuk language Kitanemuk is an extinct Northern Uto-Aztecan language of the Serran branch. It is very closely related to Serrano, and may have been a dialect. Before its extinction, it was spoken in the San Gabriel Mountains and foothill environs of Southern ...

Tataviam language The Tataviam language is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tataviam people of the upper Santa Clara River basin, Santa Susana Mountains, and Sierra Pelona Mountains in southern California. It had become extinct by 1916 a ...

? *

Nicoleño language The Nicoleño language is an extinct language formerly spoken on San Nicolas Island by the Nicoleño. It went extinct with Juana Maria's death in 1853. Its extant remnants consist only of four words and two songs attributed to her. This eviden ...

Classification

As classified by Victor Golla. *Takic **Serrano-Kitanemuk group *** Serrano-Vanyume ****''Serrano dialect'' ****''

Vanyume The Vanyume or Desert Serrano are an Indigenous people of Southern California. Traditional Vanyume territory extended along the Mojave River from the Eastern Mojave Desert to present day Victorville and may have included portions of southern ...

(Desert Serrano) dialect'' *** Kitanemuk ** Tataviam (?) **

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Channel Islands of California, Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . In the precolonial era, the peop ...

***''Gabrielino dialect cluster'' ***''Fernandeño dialect'' **Cupan group *** Luiseño-Juaneño ****''Luiseño dialect cluster'' ****''Juaneño (Ajachemem) dialect'' *** Cahuilla ****''Mountain Cahuilla dialect'' ****''Pass (Wanikik) Cahuilla dialect'' ****''Desert Cahuilla dialect'' *** Cupeño

Morphology

Takic languages are

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 ...

languages, where words use 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.

History

Historians have long recognized that Takic-speaking peoples arrived in their current placement following a southward migration from a desert homeland. This migration is termed the Takic expansion. According to the model developed by anthropologist Mark Q. Sutton, proto-Gabrielino-Cupan speakers of the western Mojave Desert and Southern San Joaquin Valley were pushed southwards around 3,500 BP by expanding and migrating Chumash 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 ( ...

peoples. Displaced, this population moved into coastal Southern California, replacing existing Millingstone peoples. By 3,200 BP, the group had further expanded to the Southern Channel Islands. Around 1,500 BP, the proto-Gabrielino language diffused southwards and was adopted by a Yuman population, forming proto-Cupan. By 1000, this language had diverged into Luiseño and proto-Cahuilla-Cupeño. The latter diffused eastwards. Contemporaneously, Kitanemuk, which had remained in the pre-expansion Takic homeland, diverged and diffused eastwards to two Millingstone, Yuman populations. These populations would later become the Vanyume and Serrano.

References

External links

The Limu Project
(Active Language Revitalization) Agglutinative languages {{California-stub