Proto-Nahuan (also called Proto-Aztecan) is a hypothetical daughter language of the
Proto-Uto-Aztecan language
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, na ...
. It is the common ancestor from which the modern
Nahuan languages
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 ...
have developed.
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
Jane Amanda Hill (born 10 June 1969 in Eastbourne, Sussex) is an English newsreader working for the BBC. She is one of the main presenters for BBC News, and is the main presenter on the '' BBC News at One'' and the '' BBC News at Five'', as w ...
is that Proto-Nahuatl arose within
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica ...
, and the Nahuas are the only remainders of a large-scale northward migration.
Phonology
The following phonological changes are shared by all Nahuan languages:
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan *t becomes Proto-Nahuan lateral affricate before Proto-Uto-Aztecan *a (Proto-Uto-Aztecan *taːka 'man' becomes Proto-Nahuan *tlaːka-tla 'man').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan initial *p is lost in Proto-Nahuan (Proto-Uto-Aztencan *pahi 'water' becomes Proto-Nahuan *aː-tla 'water').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan *u merges with *i in Proto-Nahuan *i (Proto-Uto-Aztencan *muki 'to die' becomes Proto-Nahuan *miki 'to die').
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan sibilants *ts and *s split into *ts, *ch and *s , respectively.
*Proto-Uto-Aztecan's fifth vowel, reconstructed as or , merged with *e in Proto-Nahuan *e (Proto-Uto-Aztencan 'to walk' becomes Proto-Nahuan *nemi 'to live, to walk').
*Many
metatheses in which Proto-Uto-Aztecan roots of the shape *CVCV become *VCCV (Proto-Uto-Aztencan *puːli 'to tie' becomes Proto-Nahuan *ilpi 'to tie').
Morphology
Proto-Nahuan was an
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...
language, and its words used suffix complexes for a variety of purposes, with several
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
s strung together.
Lexicon
Some Proto-Aztecan (i.e., Proto-Nahuan) reconstructions by Davletshin (2012):
[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.
:
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahuan, Proto-Nahuan, Language
Agglutinative languages
Nahuan languages
Proto-languages