Jicaquean | |
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Tolan | |
Ethnicity | Tolupan |
Geographic distribution | Honduras |
Linguistic classification | Hokan ?
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Subdivisions |
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Glottolog | jica1245 |
The Jicaque languages are in Honduras in the center of the map |
Jicaquean, also known as Tolan, is a small language family of Honduras. There are two attested Jicaquean languages, Tol (Eastern Jicaque) and Western Jicaque (Holt 1999), which Campbell (1997) reports were about as distant as English and Swedish. Only Tol survives.
Prior to an influential paper by Greenberg and Swadesh in 1953 [1] Tol (a.k.a. Eastern Jicaque) was thought to be a language isolate, i.e., there existed no knowledge as to its possible genetic affinities. They argued that Tol should be added to the Hokan stock, a large language stock, phylum or family, which was proposed by R. B. Dixon and Alfred D. Kroeber in 1913. [2] In 1977, David Oltrogge [3] proposed to link Tol to the extinct Subtiaba language of Nicaragua, and also to Chontal of Oaxaca, also known as Tequistlateco. This indirectly amounted to a mere sub-classification, since all of the three languages in question were part of the proposed Hokan stock. A couple of years later, Campbell and Oltrogge [4] published a reconstruction of Jicaquean phonemes, based on the available information on Western and Eastern Jicaque. In that same paper they expressed strong doubt in the Hokan affiliation of Tol and mild enthusiasm regarding the possible link to Chontal of Oaxaca, but stressed that much more information was needed to be able to say anything reasonable. More recently, Kaufman [5] has expressed his continuing support of the Hokan affiliation of Tol.
Granberry & Vescelius (2004) speculate that the extinct Ciguayo language of Hispaniola might have its most likely relatives in the Tolan languages.
Proto-Jicaque | |
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Reconstruction of | Jicaquean languages |
Proto-Jicaque reconstructions by Campbell and Oltrogge (1980): [6]
Proto-Jicaque reconstructions by Campbell and Oltrogge (1980) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken mainly in California, Arizona, and Baja California.
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. Due to a large number of methodological flaws in 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.
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Tequistlatec languages, also called Chontal, are three close but distinct languages spoken or once spoken by the Chontal people of Oaxaca State, Mexico.
Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers".
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Tol (Tolpan), also known as Eastern Jicaque, Tolupan, and Torupan, is spoken by approximately 500 Tolupan people in La Montaña de la Flor reservation in Francisco Morazán Department, Honduras.
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