Palaihnihan (also Palaihnih) is a
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...
of northeastern
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. It consists of two closely related languages, both now extinct:
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Atsugewi
The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern California, United States. Their traditional lands are near Mount Shasta, specifically the Pit River drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related ...
''(†)''
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Achumawi ''(†)'' (ís siwa wó disi, also known as Achomawi, Pit River Indian)
Reconstruction
The original reconstruction of proto-Palaihnihan suffered from poor quality data. David Olmsted's dictionary depends almost entirely upon de Angulo, who did not record the phonological distinctions consistently or well, and carelessly includes
Pomo
The Pomo are an Indigenous people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small grou ...
vocabulary from a manuscript in which he (de Angulo) set out to demonstrate that Achumawi and Pomo are not related.
William Bright
William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics.
Biography
Bright earned a bachelor's degree in linguist ...
has also pointed out problems with Olmsted's methods of reconstruction.
The reconstruction is being refined with newer data.
[Good, McFarland, & Paster (2003) "Reconstructing Achumawi and Atsugewi: Proto-Palaihnihan revisited"]
/ref>
Good, McFarland, & Paster (2003) conclude there were at least three vowels, *a *i *u, and possibly marginal *e, along with vowel length and ablaut. Consonants were as follows:[
]
Genetic relations
The Palaihnihan family is often connected with the hypothetical Hokan
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
Etymology
The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan ...
stock. Proposed special relationships within Hokan include Palaihnihan with Shastan (known as ''Shasta-Achomawi'') and within a ''Kahi'' sub-group (also known as ''Northern Hokan'') with Shastan, Chimariko, and Karuk
The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad Ran ...
.
References
Bibliography
*
* Good, Jeff; McFarland, Teresa; & Paster, Mary. (2003). Reconstructing Achumawi and Atsugewi: Proto-Palaihnihan revisited. Atlanta, GA. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 2–5).
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .
* Nevin, Bruce E. (1991). "Obsolescence in Achumawi: Why Uldall Too?". Papers from the American Indian Languages Conferences, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, July and August 1991. Occasional Papers on Linguistics 16:97-127. Department of Linguistics, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
* Nevin, Bruce E. (1998). ''Aspects of Pit River phonology''. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
*
*
*
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* Olmsted, David L. (1958). Atsugewi Phonology, ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', Vol. 24, No. 3, Franz Boas Centennial, Volume (Jul., 1958), pp. 215–220.
* Olmsted, David L. (1964). ''A history of Palaihnihan phonology''. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 35). Berkeley: University of California Press.
{{North American languages
Language families