Numic is a branch of the

Uto-Aztecan language Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) 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 na ...

family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the

Great Basin The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California ...

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...

basin,

Snake River The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...

basin, and southern

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

. The word Numic comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "person." For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages it is . In

Kawaiisu The Kawaiisu (pronounced: ″ka-wai-ah-soo″) are a Native Californian ethnic group in the United States who live in the Tehachapi Valley and to the north across the Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierra Nevada, toward Lake Isabella and Walker P ...

it is and in

, and .

Classification

These languages are classified in three groups: * Central Numic languages **

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...

Timbisha The Timbisha ("rock paint", Timbisha language: Nümü Tümpisattsi) are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in sout ...

(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western, Central, and Eastern) **

Shoshoni The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, easter ...

(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western, Gosiute, Northern, and Eastern) * Southern Numic languages **

(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and

Ute Ute or UTE may refer to: * Ute (band), an Australian jazz group * Ute (given name) * ''Ute'' (sponge), a sponge genus * Ute (vehicle), an Australian and New Zealand term for certain utility vehicles * Ute, Iowa, a city in Monona County along ...

) * Western Numic languages **

Mono Mono may refer to: Common meanings * Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease" * Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono * Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single Music Performers * Mono (Japanese b ...

(two main dialects: Eastern and Western) **

Northern Paiute Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a r ...

(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada, Oregon, and Bannock) Apart from

, each of these groups contains one language spoken in a small area in the southern

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...

and valleys to the east (Mono, Timbisha, and Kawaiisu), and one language spoken in a much larger area extending to the north and east (Northern Paiute, Shoshoni, and Colorado River). Some

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

s have taken this pattern as an indication that Numic speaking peoples expanded quite recently from a small core, perhaps near the

Owens Valley Owens Valley (Numic Numic is a 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 Pl ...

, into their current range. This view is supported by

lexicostatistical Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a p ...

studies. Fowler's reconstruction of Proto-Numic ethnobiology also points to the region of the southern Sierra Nevada as the homeland of Proto-Numic approximately two millennia ago. Recent

mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...

studies have supported this linguistic hypothesis. The anthropologist Peter N. Jones thinks this evidence to be of a circumstantial nature, but this is a distinctly minority opinion among specialists in Numic. David Shaul has proposed that the Southern Numic languages spread eastward long before the Central and Western Numic languages expanded into the Great Basin. Bands of eastern Shoshoni split off from the main Shoshoni body in the very late 17th or very early 18th century and moved southeastward onto the Great Plains. Changes in their Shoshoni dialect eventually produced Comanche. The Comanche language and the Shoshoni language are quite similar although certain low-level consonant changes in Comanche have inhibited mutual intelligibility. Recent lexical and grammatical diffusion studies in Western Numic have shown that while there are clear linguistic changes that separate Northern Paiute as a distinct linguistic variety, there are no unique linguistic changes that mark Mono as a distinct linguistic variety.

Major sound changes

The sound system of Numic is set forth in the following tables.David Iannucci. 1972. "Numic historical phonology," Cornell University PhD dissertation.
Michael Nichols. 1973. "Northern Paiute historical grammar," University of California, Berkeley PhD dissertation
Wick R. Miller. 1986. "Numic Languages," ''Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11, Great Basin''. Ed. by Warren L. d’Azevedo. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Pages 98–106.

Vowels

Proto-Numic had an inventory of five vowels.

Consonants

Proto-Numic had the following consonant inventory: In addition to the above simple consonants, Proto-Numic also had nasal-stop/affricate clusters and all consonants except , , , and could be geminated. Between vowels short consonants were lenited.

Major Central Numic consonant changes

The major difference between Proto-Central Numic and Proto-Numic was the phonemic split of Proto-Numic geminate consonants into geminate consonants and preaspirated consonants. The conditioning factors involve stress shifts and are complex. The preaspirated consonants surfaced as voiceless fricatives, often preceded by a voiceless vowel. Shoshoni and Comanche have both lost the velar nasals, merging them with or turning them into velar nasal-stop clusters. In Comanche, nasal-stop clusters have become simple stops, but and from these clusters do not lenite intervocalically. This change postdates the earliest record of Comanche from 1786, but precedes the 20th century. Geminated stops in Comanche have also become phonetically preaspirated.

Major Southern Numic consonant changes

Proto-Southern Numic preserved the Proto-Numic consonant system fairly intact, but the individual languages have undergone several changes. Modern Kawaiisu has reanalyzed the nasal-stop clusters as voiced stops, although older recordings preserve some of the clusters. Geminated stops and affricates are voiceless and non-geminated stops and affricates are voiced fricatives. The velar nasals have fallen together with the alveolar nasals. The dialects of Colorado River east of Chemehuevi have lost . The dialects east of Kaibab have collapsed the nasal-stop clusters with the geminated stops and affricate.

Major Western Numic consonant changes

Proto-Western Numic changed the nasal-stop clusters of Proto-Numic into voiced geminate stops. In Mono and all dialects of Northern Paiute except Southern Nevada, these voiced geminate stops have become voiceless.

Sample Numic cognate sets

The following table shows some sample Numic cognate sets that illustrate the above changes. Forms in the daughter languages are written in a broad phonetic transcription rather than a phonemic transcription that sometimes masks the differences between the forms. Italicized vowels and sonorants are voiceless.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Numic Languages Northern Uto-Aztecan languages Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of the North American Great Basin Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest Agglutinative languages Uto-Aztecan languages Indigenous languages of North America