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22-448: 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 and is known only from a few early records, notably a few words recorded by Alfred L. Kroeber and John P. Harrington in the early decades of

44-449: A genetic relation between Corachol and Nahuan (e.g. Merrill (2013) ). Kaufman recognizes similarities between Corachol and Aztecan, but explains them by diffusion instead of genetic evolution. Most scholars view the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum. Below is a representation of the internal classification of the language family based on Shaul (2014) . The classification reflects

66-422: A language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid: Numic , Takic , Pimic, Taracahitic , Corachol , and Aztecan . That leaves two ungrouped languages: Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed " isolates within the family"). Some recent studies have begun to question the unity of Taracahitic and Takic and computer-assisted statistical studies have begun to question some of

88-523: A northern branch including all the languages of the US and a southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one. Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted: Numic (including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni ) and the Californian languages (formerly known as

110-507: A selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries on many of the individual languages.( = extinct ) In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, it is suspected that among dozens of now extinct, undocumented or poorly known languages of northern Mexico, many were Uto-Aztecan. A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages that became extinct before being documented. An "Aztec–Tanoan" macrofamily that unites

132-457: Is Shoshoni , which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho , while the southernmost is the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua . Ethnologue gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. Speakers of Nahuatl languages account for over 85% of these. The internal classification of the family often divides it into two branches:

154-575: Is still debate about whether to accept the proposed basic split between "Northern Uto-Aztecan" and "Southern Uto-Aztecan" languages. Northern Uto-Aztecan corresponds to Powell's "Shoshonean", and the latter is all the rest: Powell's "Sonoran" plus Aztecan. Northern Uto-Aztecan was proposed as a genetic grouping by Jeffrey Heath in Heath (1978) based on morphological evidence, and Alexis Manaster Ramer in Manaster Ramer (1992) adduced phonological evidence in

176-657: Is that Tataviam was a Chumashan language , from the Ventureño language and others, of the Chumash -Ventureño and other Chumash groups, that had been influenced by the neighboring Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples (Beeler and Klar 1977). However, the Beeler and Klar proposal is based on a word-list collected by C. Hart Merriam while the Takic proposals are based on different word lists collected by Alfred Kroeber and John P. Harrington. The current opinion

198-583: Is that the Merriam word lists represent a dialect of Ventureño (called Alliklik or Castac Chumash) and the Kroeber and Harrington word list represents a divergent Takic language (Tataviam). Uto-Aztecan languages The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language

220-638: The Nahuan languages . The homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have been in the Southwestern United States or possibly Northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory has proposed the possibility that the language family originated in southern Mexico, within the Mesoamerican language area , but this has not been generally considered convincing. Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in

242-750: The Takic group, including Cahuilla and Luiseño ) account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the Tepiman languages (including O'odham and Tepehuán ), the Tarahumaran languages (including Raramuri and Guarijio ), the Cahitan languages (including Yaqui and Mayo ), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol ), and

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264-581: The 20th century. These word lists were not from native speakers, but from the children of the last speakers who remembered a few words and phrases. Scholars have recognized Tataviam as belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family, specifically the putative Takic branch. Based on the most thorough and most recent analysis, it is part of the Serran group along with Kitanemuk and Serrano (Munro and Johnson, 2001). An earlier alternative suggestion by some scholars

286-566: The North American mountain ranges and adjacent lowlands of the western United States in the states of Oregon , Idaho , Montana , Utah , California , Nevada , and Arizona . In Mexico , they are spoken in the states of Sonora , Sinaloa , Chihuahua , Nayarit , Durango , Zacatecas , Jalisco , Michoacán , Guerrero , San Luis Potosí , Hidalgo , Puebla , Veracruz , Morelos , Estado de México , and in Mexico City . Classical Nahuatl ,

308-524: The Uto-Aztecan languages with the Tanoan languages of the southwestern United States was first proposed by Edward Sapir in the early 20th century, and later supported with potential lexical evidence by other scholars. This proposal has received much criticism about the validity of the proposed cognate sets and has been largely abandoned since the end of the last century as unproven. Mesoamerican language area Too Many Requests If you report this error to

330-415: The decision to split up the previous Taracahitic and Takic groups, that are no longer considered to be valid genetic units. Whether the division between Northern and Southern languages is best understood as geographical or phylogenetic is under discussion. The table contains demographic information about number of speakers and their locations based on data from The Ethnologue . The table also contains links to

352-494: The early 1900s Alfred L. Kroeber filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while Edward Sapir proved the unity among Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean". Sapir's applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages are regarded as groundbreaking. Voegelin, Voegelin & Hale (1962) argued for a three-way division of Shoshonean, Sonoran and Aztecan, following Powell. As of about 2011, there

374-460: The form of a sound law. Terrence Kaufman in Kaufman (1981) accepted the basic division into Northern and Southern branches as valid. Other scholars have rejected the genealogical unity of either both nodes or the Northern node alone. Wick R. Miller 's argument was statistical, arguing that Northern Uto-Aztecan languages displayed too few cognates to be considered a unit. On the other hands he found

396-549: The language of the Aztecs , and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Pipil language , an offshoot of Nahuatl , spread to Central America by a wave of migration from Mexico, and formerly had many speakers there. Now it has gone extinct in Guatemala , Honduras , and Nicaragua , and it is nearly extinct in western El Salvador , all areas dominated by use of Spanish. Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as

418-466: The long-held assumptions and consensuses. As to higher-level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently scholars also disagree as to where to draw language boundaries within the dialect continua . The similarities among the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J. C. E. Buschmann , but he failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and

440-425: The number of cognates among Southern Uto-Aztecan languages to suggest a genetic relation. This position was supported by subsequent lexicostatistic analyses by Cortina-Borja & Valiñas-Coalla (1989) and Cortina-Borja, Stuart-Smith & Valiñas-Coalla (2002) . Reviewing the debate, Haugen (2008) considers the evidence in favor of the genetic unity of Northern Uto-Aztecan to be convincing, but remains agnostic on

462-496: The rest. He ascribed the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Daniel Garrison Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell , however, rejected the claim in his own classification of North American indigenous languages (also published in 1891). Powell recognized two language families: "Shoshonean" (encompassing Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (encompassing Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol). In

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484-514: The validity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a genetic grouping. Hill (2011) also considered the North/South split to be valid based on phonological evidence, confirming both groupings. Merrill (2013) adduced further evidence for the unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a valid grouping. Hill (2011) also rejected the validity of the Takic grouping decomposing it into a Californian areal grouping together with Tubatulabal. Some classifications have posited

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