Proto-Nahuan language

Last updated
Proto-Nahuan
Proto-Aztecan
Reconstruction of Nahuan languages
Reconstructed
ancestor

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 have developed.

Contents

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 is that Proto-Nahuatl arose within Mesoamerica, and the Nahuas are the only remainders after a large-scale northward migration.

Phonology

The following phonological changes are shared by all Nahuan languages:

Morphology

Proto-Nahuan was an agglutinative language, and its words used suffix complexes for a variety of purposes, with several morphemes strung together.

Lexicon

Some Proto-Aztecan (i.e., Proto-Nahuan) reconstructions by Davletshin (2012): [7]

glossProto-Aztecan
all (todos)*mochɨ-m
ashes*nɨx-tlɨ
bark*ɨwaː-yoː-tl
belly*-ɨhtɨ
big*wehey(ɨ)
bird*toːtoː-tl
bite*-kɨh-tzoma
black*tliːl-tɨ-k
blood*ɨs-tlɨ
bone*oːmɨ-tl
breast*-chiːchiːwal
burn tr.*-tla-tɨ-ha
claw (nail)*-ɨstɨ
cloud*mix-tlɨ
cold*sese-k
come*wiːtz (preterit-as-present form)
die*mɨki
drink*-ihi
dry*waːk
ear*nakas-tlɨ
earth*tlaːl-lɨ
eat*-kwa-haː
eye*-iːx
feather*-ɨ?wɨ
fire*tlahi-tl
fish*mɨ-chɨ-m
fly*patlaːni
foot*-ɨkxɨ
full*teːn-tok
give tr.*-maka
good*yeːk-tlɨ
hair*-tzom
hand*-mah
head*-kwah
hear*-kaki
heart*-yoːl
I*naha
kill*mɨk-tɨ-ha
knee*-tlan-kwah
know*mati
leaf*ɨswa-tl
lie*mo-teːka
long*weheya-k
louse*atɨmɨ-tl
man*tlaːka-tl
many*mɨyak
meat*naka-tl
moon*meːtz-tlɨ
mountain*tɨpeː-tl
mouth*teːn-tlɨ
name*toːkaːhɨ-tl
neck*kəch-tlɨ
new*yankwi-k
night*yowal-lɨ
nose*yaka-tl
one*seː(m)
red*chiːl-tɨ-k ?
road*oh-tlɨ
root*nelwa-tl ?
round*yawal-tɨ-k ?
sand*xaːl-lɨ
see*-ɨhta
seed*aːch-tlɨ
sit*mo-tlalɨ-ha
skin*eːwa-tl
sleep*kochɨ
smoke*poːk-tlɨ ?
stand*kɨtza
star*sitlalɨ-m
stone*tə-tl
tail*-kwitla-pɨl
that*oːn- ?
this*in- ?
thou*təha
tongue*-nɨnɨ-pɨl
tooth*-tlan
tree*kwa-wɨ-tl
two*oːmə
walk (go)*nɨh-nɨmi
warm (hot)*to-toːnɨ-k ?
water*aː-tl
we*təha-mɨ-t
what*tla-(hi ?)
white*istaː-kɨ ?
who*aːk
woman*si/owaː-tl
yellow*kos-tɨ-k ?

Related Research Articles

Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanoan languages</span> North American aboriginal language family

Tanoan, also Kiowa–Tanoan or Tanoan–Kiowa, is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in present-day New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesoamerican languages</span> Languages indigenous to Mesoamerica

Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador and Nicaragua. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uto-Aztecan languages</span> North American language family

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numic languages</span> Uto-Aztecan language branch of US

Numic is the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word Numic comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for “person”, which reconstructs to Proto-Numic as. For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages it is. In Kawaiisu it is and in Colorado River, and.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nahuan languages</span> Uto-Aztecan language family in North America

The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the 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 changed this to or back to, but it can still be seen that the language went through a stage. The best known Nahuan language is Nahuatl. Nahuatl is spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples.

Ronald Wayne Langacker is an American linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known as one of the founders of the cognitive linguistics movement and the creator of cognitive grammar. He has also made significant contributions to the comparative study of Uto-Aztecan languages, publishing several articles on historical Uto-Aztecan linguistics, as well as editing collections of grammar sketches of under-described Uto-Aztecan languages.

Tübatulabal is an Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California, United States. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal, who still speak the traditional language in addition to English. The language originally had three main dialects: Bakalanchi, Pakanapul and Palegawan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Paiute language</span> Numic language spoken in western US

Northern Paiute, endonym Numu, also known as Paviotso, is a Western Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, which according to Marianne Mithun had around 500 fluent speakers in 1994. It is closely related to the Mono language.

Cora is an indigenous language of Mexico of the Uto-Aztecan language family, spoken by approximately 30,000 people. It is spoken by the ethnic group that is widely known as the Cora, but who refer to themselves as Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its indigenous inhabitants. A significant portion of Cora speakers have formed an expatriate community along the southwestern part of Colorado in the United States. Cora is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Under the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, it is recognized as a "national language", along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tarahumara language</span> Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico

The Tarahumara language is a Mexican Indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara (Rarámuri/Ralámuli) people in the state of Chihuahua, according to a 2002 census conducted by the government of Mexico.

Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct. In the 1970s another investigator found two speakers around Pochutla who still remembered a few of the words recorded by Boas.

Tetelcingo Nahuatl, called Mösiehuali̱ by its speakers, is a Nahuatl variety of central Mexico. It is one of the core varieties closely related to Classical Nahuatl. It is spoken in the town of Tetelcingo, Morelos, and the adjacent Colonia Cuauhtémoc and Colonia Lázaro Cárdenas. These three population centers lie to the north of Cuautla, Morelos and have been largely absorbed into its urban area; as a result the Tetelcingo language and culture are under intense pressure.

Huasteca Nahuatl is a Nahuan language spoken by over a million people in the region of La Huasteca in Mexico, centered in the states of Hidalgo (Eastern) and San Luis Potosí (Western).

The Pueblo linguistic area is a Sprachbund consisting of the languages spoken in and near North American Pueblo locations. There are also many shared cultural practices in this area. For example, these cultures share many ceremonial vocabulary terms meant for prayer or song.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nahuatl</span> Uto-Aztecan language of Mexico

Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Authorities on the history of the language group have usually placed the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the United States and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert and the western part of the Chihuahuan Desert. It would have been spoken by Mesolithic foragers in Aridoamerica, about 5,000 years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles F. Voegelin</span> American linguist (1906–1986)

Charles Frederick "Carl" Voegelin, often cited as C. F. Voegelin, was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was one of the leading authorities on Indigenous languages of North America, specifically the Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan languages. He published many influential works on Delaware, Shawnee, Hopi and the Tübatulabal languages.

Whorf's law is a sound law in Uto-Aztecan linguistics proposed by the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. It explains the origin in the Nahuan languages of the phoneme which is not found in any of the other languages of the Uto-Aztecan family. The existence of in Nahuatl had puzzled previous linguists and caused Edward Sapir to reconstruct a phoneme for Proto-Uto-Aztecan based only on evidence from Aztecan. In a 1937 paper published in the journal American Anthropologist, Whorf argued that phoneme was a result of some of the Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change changing the original */t/ to in the position before */a/. The sound law was labeled "Whorf's law" by Manaster Ramer and is still widely though not universally considered valid, although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has been developed.

Florence Marie "Flo" Voegelin, also known as Florence Marie Robinett and Florence Marie Robinett Voegelin, was an American anthropologist and linguist. She was a prominent figure in the documentation of the indigenous languages of North America, and co-wrote many articles and books with her second husband, Carl Voegelin. She also published under the name F.M. Voegelin and other variants.

References

  1. Dakin (1982), pp. 25, 67-8
  2. Voegelin, Voegelin & Hale (1962)
  3. Langacker (1977), p. 23
  4. Dakin (1982), p. 51-62
  5. Langacker (1977), p. 23
  6. Dakin (1982), p. 62-3
  7. Davletshin, Albert (2012). Proto-Uto-Aztecans on their way to the Proto-Aztecan homeland: linguistic evidence. Journal of Language Relationship , no. 8, 2012 - p.75-92.

Sources