The Takic languages are a putative group of
Uto-Aztecan languages
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 ...
historically spoken by a number of
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
of
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
. Takic is grouped with the
Tubatulabal,
Hopi
The Hopi are a Native American ethnic group who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, there are 19,338 Hopi in the country. The Hopi Tribe is a sovereign nation within the Unite ...
, and
Numic languages in the northern branch of the Uto-Aztecan family.
Distribution
Prior to European contact, the Takic languages were spoken along coastal California between modern
Malibu and
Carlsbad
Carlsbad may refer to:
*Carlsbad, California, United States
*Carlsbad, New Mexico, United States
*Carlsbad, Texas, United States
*Karlovy Vary
Karlovy Vary (; german: Karlsbad, formerly also spelled ''Carlsbad'' in English) is a spa town, spa ...
and on the
Southern Channel Islands. The Takic languages also were spoken in the Southern California interior, in portions of the
Coachella Valley
, map_image = Wpdms shdrlfi020l coachella valley.jpg
, map_caption = Coachella Valley
, location = California, United States
, coordinates =
, width =
, boundaries = Salton Sea (southeast), Santa Rosa Mountains (southwest), San Jacint ...
,
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...
and
Tehachapi Mountains.
List of Takic languages
*
Cahuilla language
*
Cupeño language
*
Luiseño language
*
Serrano language
*
Tongva language
The Tongva language (also known as Gabrielino or Gabrieleño) is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who live in and around Los Angeles, California. It has not been a language of everyday conve ...
*
Kitanemuk language
*
Tataviam language ?
*
Nicoleño language ?
Classification
As classified by Victor Golla.
Serrano-Kitanemuk group
:
Serrano-Vanyume †
::''Serrano dialect''
::''
Vanyume (Desert Serrano) dialect''
:
Kitanemuk
The Kitanemuk are an indigenous people of California. They traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States. Today some Kitanemuk people are enrolled in ...
†
Tataviam
The Tataviam (Kitanemuk: ''people on the south slope'') are a Native American group in Southern California. The ancestral land of the Tataviam people includes northwest present-day Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County, primarily in th ...
(?)
†
Tongva
The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...
†
:''Gabrielino dialect cluster''
:''Fernandeño dialect''
Cupan group
:
Luiseño-Juaneño
::''Luiseño dialect cluster''
::''Juaneño (Ajachemem) dialect''
†
:
Cahuilla
The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.[Cupeño
The Cupeño (or Kuupangaxwichem) are a Native American tribe of Southern California.
They traditionally lived about inland and north of the modern day Mexico–United States border in the Peninsular Range of Southern California. Today their ...]
†
Morphology
Takic languages are
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 langu ...
languages, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
s strung together.
History
Historians have long recognized that Takic-speaking peoples arrived in their current placement following a southward migration from a desert homeland. This migration is termed the Takic expansion.
According to the model developed by anthropologist Mark Q. Sutton, proto-Gabrielino-Cupan speakers of the western Mojave Desert and Southern San Joaquin Valley were pushed southwards around 3,500
BP by expanding and migrating
Chumash and
Penutian
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian st ...
peoples. Displaced, this population moved into coastal Southern California, replacing existing,
Millingstone peoples. By 3,200 BP, the group had further expanded to the
Southern Channel Islands.
Around 1,500 BP, the proto-Gabrielino language diffused southwards and was adopted by a Yuman population, forming proto-Cupan. By 1000, this language had diverged into Luiseño and proto-Cahuilla-Cupeño. The latter diffused eastwards.
Contemporaneously, Kitanemuk, which had remained in the pre-expansion Takic homeland, diverged and diffused eastwards to two Millingstone, Yuman populations. These populations would later become the Vanyume and Serrano.
References
External links
The Limu Project(Active Language Revitalization)
Agglutinative languages
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