Aztec–Tanoan is a hypothetical and undemonstrated language family that proposes a genealogical relation between the

Tanoan 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. Most of the languages – Tiwa (Taos, Picuris, Southern Tiwa), Tewa, and Towa � ...

and the

Uto-Aztecan The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, 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 reflects the common ...

families. 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 Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States ...

in his 1921 classification, but it was not until 1937 that supporting evidence was published by

Benjamin Lee Whorf Benjamin Atwood Lee Whorf (; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer best known for proposing the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He believed that the structures of different languages shape how the ...

and G. L. Trager. Their proposal included some 67 proposed cognates, but subsequent reviews have found most of them to be unconvincing (monosyllables, onomatopoeia). A small number of their proposed cognates do seem to have some merit and in his 1997 review of the hypothesis

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...

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 Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

between the Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

s.Hill, Jane H. 2002. Toward a Linguistic Prehistory of the Southwest: "Azteco-Tanoan" and the Arrival of Maize Cultivation. Journal of Anthropological Research , Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 457-475

Proposed cognates

The following word pairs are the proposed cognates from Whorf & Trager (1937) and Davis (1979) considered promising by Campbell (1997:273). *'stand', Uto-Aztecan ''wine/wene/wi''-; Proto-Tanoan ''gwine'' (Whorf & Trager's set 12) *Uto-Aztecan ''siwa''- 'woman'; Proto-Tanoan ''liw''- (Davis Kiowa-Tanoan *''siu'') (Whorf & Trager's set 31 / Davis' set 85) *'three', Uto-Aztecan ''pahi''; Proto-Tanoan ''poyuwo'' (Davis' UA *''pahi/*pahayu''; Kiowa-Tanoan *''podzu(a)/*pocua'') (Whorf & Trager's set 73) *Proto-Numic ''*pi(h)wi, *pi(h)yi'' 'heart'; Kiowa-Tanoan *''pia'' (Davis) (Davis' set 3, Whorf & Trager's set 84) *Uto-Aztecan ''*pu:la'' 'tie'; Kiowa-Tanoan ''*phe, *ph^'' 'wrap, tie' (Davis' set 14, Whorf & Tragers' set 87)

Vocabulary

Below is a comparison of selected basic vocabulary items in Proto-Uto-Aztecan and Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan. :

References

Bibliography

*Davis, Irvine. 1979. The Kiowa-Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni languages. In The languages of Native America: historical and comparative assessment, ed. Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, 390-443. Austin: University of Texas Press. * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). ''The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment''. Austin: University of Texas Press. * Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). ''Handbook of North American Indians: Languages'' (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. . * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Whorf, Benjamin L.; & Trager, George L. (1937). The relationship of Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan. ''American Anthropologist'', ''39'', 609–624. {{DEFAULTSORT:Aztec-Tanoan languages Proposed language families