This is a list of different language classification proposals developed for the Indigenous languages of the Americas or Amerindian languages. The article is divided into North, Central, and South America sections; however, the classifications do not correspond to these divisions.
Glottolog 4.1 (2019) recognizes 42 independent families and 31 isolates in North America (73 total). [1] The vast majority are (or were) spoken in the United States, with 26 families and 26 isolates (52 total).
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An early attempt at North American language classification was attempted by A. A. Albert Gallatin published in 1826, 1836, and 1848. Gallatin's classifications are missing several languages which are later recorded in the classifications by Daniel G. Brinton and John Wesley Powell. (Gallatin supported the assimilation of indigenous peoples to Euro-American culture.)
Families
Languages
| 11. Straits of Fuca (=Makah) |
Families
Languages
1. Adai | 18. Kutchin |
John Wesley Powell, an explorer who served as director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, published a classification of 58 "stocks" that is the "cornerstone" of genetic classifications in North America. Powell's classification was influenced by Gallatin to a large extent.
John Wesley Powell was in a race with Daniel G. Brinton to publish the first comprehensive classification of North America languages (although Brinton's classification also covered South and Central America). As a result of this competition, Brinton was not allowed access to the linguistic data collected by Powell's fieldworkers.
1. Adaizan | 21. Keresan | 40. Shoshonean (=Uto-Aztecan) |
Paul Rivet (1924) lists a total of 46 independent language families in North and Central America. Olive and Janambre are extinct languages of Tamaulipas, Mexico. [2]
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Below is Edward Sapir's (1929) famous Encyclopædia Britannica classification. Note that Sapir's classification was controversial at the time and it additionally was an original proposal (unusual for general encyclopedias). Sapir was part of a "lumper" movement in Native American language classification. Sapir himself writes of his classification: "A more far-reaching scheme than Powell's [1891 classification], suggestive but not demonstrable in all its features at the present time" (Sapir 1929: 139). Sapir's classifies all the languages in North America into only 6 families: Eskimo–Aleut, Algonkin–Wakashan, Na-Dene, Penutian, Hokan–Siouan, and Aztec–Tanoan. Sapir's classification (or something derivative) is still commonly used in general languages-of-the-world type surveys. (Note that the question marks that appear in Sapir's list below are present in the original article.)
I. Eskimo–Aleut
III. Nadene
IV. Penutian
| V. Hokan–Siouan
| VI. Aztec–Tanoan
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The Voegelin & Voegelin (1965) [3] classification was the result of a conference of Americanist linguists held at Indiana University in 1964. This classification identifies 16 main genetic units.
| 6. Penutian phylum
7. Aztec–Tanoan phylum 8. Keres |
Chumashan, Comecrudan, and Coahuiltecan are included in Hokan with "reservations". Esselen is included in Hokan with "strong reservations". Tsimshian and Zuni are included in Penutian with reservations.
Campbell & Mithun's 1979 classification is more conservative, since it insists on more rigorous demonstration of genetic relationship before grouping. Thus, many of the speculative phyla of previous authors are "split".
(preliminary)
Subtiaba–Tlapanec is likely part of Otomanguean (Rensch 1977, Oltrogge 1977).
Aztec–Tanoan is "undemonstrated"; Mosan is a Sprachbund.
(Consensus conservative classification)
Families
Isolates
Proposed stocks
Notable early classifications of classifications of indigenous South American language families include those by Filippo Salvatore Gilii (1780–84), [4] Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1784–87), [5] [6] Daniel Garrison Brinton (1891), [7] Paul Rivet (1924), [2] John Alden Mason (1950), [8] and Čestmír Loukotka (1968). [9] Other classifications include those of Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (1940–45), [10] Antonio Tovar (1961; 1984), [11] [12] and Jorge A. Suárez (1974). [13] [14]
Glottolog 4.1 (2019) recognizes 44 independent families and 64 isolates in South America. [1]
Paul Rivet (1924) lists 77 independent language families of South America. [2]
Classification of South American languages by J. Alden Mason (1950): [8]
Čestmír Loukotka (1968) proposed a total of 117 indigenous language families (called stocks by Loukotka) and isolates of South America. [9]
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Terrence Kaufman's classification is meant to be a rather conservative genetic grouping of the languages of South America (and a few in Central America). He has 118 genetic units. Kaufman believes for these 118 units "that there is little likelihood that any of the groups recognized here will be broken apart". Kaufman uses more specific terminology than only language family, such as language area, emergent area, and language complex, where he recognizes issues such as partial mutual intelligibility and dialect continuums. The list below collapses these into simply families. Kaufman's list is numbered and grouped by "geolinguistic region". The list below is presented in alphabetic order. Kaufman uses an anglicized orthography for his genetic units, which is mostly used only by himself. His spellings have been retained below. [15]
In addition to his conservative list, Kaufman list several larger "stocks" which he evaluates. The names of the stocks are often obvious hyphenations of two members; for instance, the Páes-Barbakóa stock consists of the Páesan and Barbakóan families. If the composition is not obvious, it is indicated parenthetically. Kaufman puts question marks by Kechumara and Mosetén-Chon stocks.
"Good" stocks:
"Probable" stocks:
"Promising" stocks:
"Maybe" stocks:
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
Kaufman's largest groupings are what he terms clusters and networks. Clusters are equivalent to macro-families (or phyla or superfamilies). Networks are composed of clusters. Kaufman views all of these larger groupings to be hypothetical and his list is to be used as a means to identify which hypotheses most need testing.
Lyle Campbell (2012) proposed the following list of 53 uncontroversial indigenous language families and 55 isolates of South America – a total of 108 independent families and isolates. [14] Language families with 9 or more languages are highlighted in bold. The remaining language families all have 6 languages or fewer.
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Campbell (2012) leaves out the classifications of these languages as uncertain.
Jolkesky (2016) lists 43 language families and 66 language isolates (and/or unclassified languages) in South America – a total of 109 independent families and isolates. [16] : 783–806
Morris Swadesh further consolidated Sapir's North American classification and expanded it to group all indigenous languages of the Americas in just 6 families, 5 of which were entirely based in the Americas. [17]
Joseph Greenberg's classification [18] in his 1987 book Language in the Americas is best known for the highly controversial assertion that all North, Central and South American language families other than Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dene including Haida, are part of an Amerind macrofamily. This assertion of only three major American language macrofamilies is supported by DNA evidence, [19] although the DNA evidence does not provide support for the details of his classification.
Amerind macrofamily proposed by Greenberg |
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In American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America, Lyle Campbell describes various pidgins and trade languages spoken by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. [20] Some of these mixed languages have not been documented and are known only by name.
Lingua francas
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, Tiwi in Australia and Burushaski in Pakistan are all examples of such languages. The exact number of language isolates is yet unknown due to insufficient data on several languages.
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 extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other; instead, they are classified into a hundred or so language families and isolates, as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.
The Chibchan languages 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 Rica, and Panama. The name is derived from the name of an extinct language called Chibcha or Muisca, once spoken by the people who lived on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of which the city of Bogotá was the southern capital at the time of the Spanish Conquista. However, genetic and linguistic data now indicate that the original heart of Chibchan languages and Chibchan-speaking peoples might not have been in Colombia, but in the area of the Costa Rica-Panama border, where the greatest variety of Chibchan languages has been identified.
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.
Amerind is a hypothetical higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 and elaborated by his student Merritt Ruhlen. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut 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 Misumalpan languages are a small family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples on the east coast of Nicaragua and nearby areas. The name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is composed of syllables from the names of the family's three members Miskito, Sumo languages and Matagalpan. It was first recognized by Walter Lehmann in 1920. While all the languages of the Matagalpan branch are now extinct, the Miskito and Sumu languages are alive and well: Miskito has almost 200,000 speakers and serves as a second language for speakers of other indigenous languages in the Mosquito Coast. According to Hale, most speakers of Sumu also speak Miskito.
The Choco languages are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia and Panama.
Barbacoan is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador.
Paezan may be any of several hypothetical or obsolete language-family proposals of Colombia and Ecuador named after the Paez language.
Macro-Jê is a medium-sized language family in South America, mostly in Brazil but also in the Chiquitanía region in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, as well as (formerly) in small parts of Argentina and Paraguay. It is centered on the Jê language family, with most other branches currently being single languages due to recent extinctions.
The Maxakalían languages are a group of related indigenous languages of Brazil, named after Maxakalí, the one surviving language in the group. Many of the other, extinct, languages are poorly attested and linguists differ in the languages they identify as part of the group. The Maxakalían group is today usually considered part of the Macro-Jê language family.
Yanomaman, also as Yanomam, Yanomáman, Yamomámi, and Yanomamana, is a family of languages spoken by about 20,000 Yanomami people in southern Venezuela and northwestern Brazil.
Yuracaré is an endangered language isolate of central Bolivia in Cochabamba and Beni departments spoken by the Yuracaré people.
Chimuan or Yuncan is a hypothetical small extinct language family of northern Peru and Ecuador.
Candoshi-Shapra is an indigenous American language isolate, spoken by several thousand people in western South America along the Chapuli, Huitoyacu, Pastaza, and Morona river valleys. There are two dialects, Chapara and Kandoashi (Kandozi). It is an official language of Peru, like other native languages in the areas in which they are spoken and are the predominant language in use. Around 88.5 percent of the speakers are bilingual with Spanish. The literacy rate in Candoshi-Shapra is 10 to 30 percent and 15 to 25 percent in the second language Spanish. There is a Candoshi-Shapra dictionary, and grammar rules have been codified.
Sechura–Catacao is a proposed connection between the small Catacaoan language family of Peru and the language isolate Sechura (Sek). The languages are extremely poorly known, but Kaufman (1990) finds the connection convincing, Campbell (2012) persuasive.
Guató is a possible language isolate spoken by 1% of the Guató people of Brazil.
Warao is the native language of the Warao people. A language isolate, it is spoken by about 33,000 people primarily in northern Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. It is notable for its unusual object–subject–verb word order. The 2015 Venezuelan film Gone with the River was spoken in Warao.
Taruma (Taruamá) is a divergent language of northeastern South America. It has been reported to be extinct several times since as far back as 1770, but Eithne Carlin discovered the last three speakers living in Maruranau among the Wapishana, and is documenting the language. The people and language are known as Saluma in Suriname.
The indigenous languages of South America are those whose origin dates back to the pre-Columbian era. The subcontinent has great linguistic diversity, but, as the number of speakers of indigenous languages is diminishing, it is estimated that it could become one of the least linguistically diverse regions of the planet.