| Plateau Penutian | |
|---|---|
| Shahapwailutan, Lepitan | |
| Geographic distribution | Pacific Northwest |
| Linguistic classification | Penutian?
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | None |
 Pre-contact distribution of Plateau Penutian languages | |
Plateau Penutian (also Shahapwailutan, Lepitan) is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho.
Plateau Penutian consists of four languages:
Plateau Penutian as originally proposed was one branch of the hypothetical Penutian phylum as proposed by Edward Sapir. The original proposal also included Cayuse (which was grouped with Molala into a Waiilatpuan branch); however, this language has little documentation and that which is documented is inadequately recorded. Thus, the status of Cayuse within Penutian (or any other genealogical relation for that matter) may very well forever remain unclassified.
The Sahaptian grouping of Sahaptin and Nez Percé has long been uncontroversial. Several linguists have published mounting evidence in support of a connection between Klamath (a.k.a. Klamath-Modoc) and Sahaptian. Howard Berman [1] provides rather convincing evidence to include Molala within Plateau Penutian. Recent appraisals of the Penutian hypothesis find Plateau Penutian to be "well supported" by specialists (DeLancey & Golla (1997: 181); Campbell 1997), with DeLancey & Golla (1997: 180) cautiously stating "while all subgroupings at this stage of Penutian research must be considered provisional, several linkages show considerable promise" (Campbell 1997 likewise mentions similar caveats). Other researchers have pointed out promising similarities between Plateau Penutian and the Maiduan family, although this proposal is still not completely demonstrated. A connection with Uto-Aztecan has also been suggested (Rude 2000).
The coherence of Plateau Penutian is also supposed in an automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013). The analysis also found Algic lexical influence on the Plateau Penutian languages. [2]
Below is a comparison of selected basic vocabulary items in Proto-Sahaptian, Klamath, and Molala †.
| gloss | Proto-Sahaptian [3] | Klamath [4] | Molala [5] |
|---|---|---|---|
| head | S łamtɨ́x̣ | nʼo | laʔwi |
| hair | lag̣ | tałimt | |
| eye | lolb | tuːns | |
| ear | momʼoˑwč | taːps | |
| nose | *núšnu | psi | piłs |
| tooth | dot | taʔnf | |
| tongue | baˑwč | aʔpaːws | |
| mouth | S ɨ́m | som | similq |
| hand | nʼep | teːs | |
| foot | peč | taylaks | |
| meat | S nɨkʷɨ́t | čʼoleˑk | neːwit |
| blood | N kikeʔt | ǰeg̣le | ałp |
| bone | *pípš | qaqʼo | pupt |
| person | *tenén | maqlag̣ | |
| name | N weʔnikt | seˑss | hastu(ː)qs |
| dog | N cq̓ám-qal | wač̓aˑkʼ | saka(ʔ) |
| fish | kyem | ||
| louse | N hasas 'nit, louse egg' | kʼoY | |
| tree | N tewlikt | g̣oˑ | |
| leaf | tʼapq | ||
| flower | leˑw | ||
| water | *kéweš; N kúus | ʔambo | uq-n-s |
| fire | lolog̣ | teːc | |
| stone | qday | tqaʔnt | |
| earth | g̣eˑla | laŋs | |
| road | *ʔɨškɨ́t | sdo | |
| eat | N ké- | p’aʔst 's/he is eating' | |
| die | *ƛaʔyáwi/*ƛʔayáwi | g̣leg (sg.); čʼoˑqʼ (pl.) | |
| I | ni | ina | |
| you | ʔi | kiː |
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.
Sahaptian is a two-language branch of the Plateau Penutian family spoken by Native American peoples in the Columbia Plateau region of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in the northwestern United States.
The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribe who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States, along the Umatilla and Columbia rivers.
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, 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 was created to show that it includes both the Ute language of Utah and the Nahuan languages of Mexico.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, also referred to by the phrase Indigenous peoples of the Plateau, and historically called the Plateau Indians are Indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and the non-coastal regions of the Northwestern United States.
The Molala are a people of the Plateau culture area in the Oregon Cascades and central Oregon, United States. They are one of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, with 141 of the 882 members in the 1950s claiming Molala descent. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians also has Molalla representation among its confederation of Tribes and Bands. The Siletz Reservation was established in 1855, for the Coast, Willamette and Umpqua Tribes. The Molalla are one of the Tribes who signed the 1855 Willamette Valley Treaty.
Wintuan is a family of languages spoken in the Sacramento Valley of central Northern California.
Nez Perce, also spelled Nez Percé or called nimipuutímt, is a Sahaptian language related to the several dialects of Sahaptin. Nez Perce comes from the French phrase nez percé, "pierced nose"; however, Nez Perce, who call themselves nimiipuu, meaning "the people", did not pierce their noses. This misnomer may have occurred as a result of confusion on the part of the French, as it was surrounding tribes who did so.
The Yuki–Wappo or Yukian languages are a small language family of western California consisting of two distantly related languages, both now extinct.
Sahaptin or Shahaptin, endonym Ichishkin, is one of the two-language Sahaptian branch of the Plateau Penutian family spoken in a section of the northwestern plateau along the Columbia River and its tributaries in southern Washington, northern Oregon, and southwestern Idaho, in the United States; the other language is Nez Perce or Niimi'ipuutímt.
Klamath, also Klamath–Modoc and historically Lutuamian, is a Native American language spoken around Klamath Lake in what is now southern Oregon and northern California. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in Chiloquin, Oregon, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers.
Umatilla is a variety of Southern Sahaptin, part of the Sahaptian subfamily of the Plateau Penutian group. It was spoken during late aboriginal times along the Columbia River and is therefore also called Columbia River Sahaptin. It is currently spoken as a first language by a few dozen elders and some adults in the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon. Some sources say that Umatilla is derived from imatilám-hlama: hlama means 'those living at' or 'people of' and there is an ongoing debate about the meaning of imatilám, but it is said to be an island in the Columbia River. B. Rigsby and N. Rude mention the village of ímatalam that was situated at the mouth of the Umatilla River and where the language was spoken.
Aztec–Tanoan is a hypothetical and undemonstrated language family that proposes a genealogical relation between the Tanoan and the Uto-Aztecan families. In some forms, Aztec–Tanoan has also included the Zuni isolate. This proposed classification has not been definitively demonstrated, largely because of slow progress in the reconstruction of the intermediate stages of the two language families involved, but is still considered promising by many linguists. The grouping was originally proposed by Edward Sapir in his 1921 classification, but it was not until 1937 that supporting evidence was published by Benjamin Lee Whorf and G. L. Trager. Their proposal included some 67 proposed cognates, but subsequent reviews have found most of them to be unconvincing. A small number of their proposed cognates do seem to have some merit and in his 1997 review of the hypothesis Lyle Campbell states that the proposal is not implausible but requires detailed study. A recent article by Jane H. Hill argues that the evidence cited for the genetic relation by Whorf and Trager is better understood as a result of language contact between the Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan proto-languages.
The Cayuse language is an extinct unclassified language formerly spoken by the Cayuse Native American tribe in the U.S. state of Oregon. The Cayuse name for themselves was Liksiyu.
The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits.
Victor Golla (1939–2021) was a linguist and a leading expert on the indigenous languages of California and Oregon, especially the Pacific Coast Athabaskan subgroup of the Athabaskan language family and the languages of the region that belong to the Penutian phylum. He was emeritus professor of anthropology at Humboldt State University and lived in Trinidad, California.
The Takelma–Kalapuyan languages are a proposed small language family that comprises the Kalapuyan languages and Takelma, which were formerly spoken in the Willamette Valley and the Rogue Valley in Oregon.