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 ...

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 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 Plains. The word Numic com ...

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 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 The Tehachapi Mountains (; Kawaiisu: ''Tihachipia'', meaning "hard climb") are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States. The range extends for approximately in southern Kern County and northwest ...

List of Takic languages

Cahuilla language Cahuilla , or Ivilyuat (''ʔívil̃uʔat'' or ''Ivil̃uɂat'' ), is an endangered Uto-Aztecan language, spoken by the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the Coachella Valley, San Gorgonio Pass and San Jacinto Mountains region of so ...

Cupeño language Cupeño is an language death, extinct Uto-Aztecan languages, Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, United States. Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño. The Cupeño people ...

Luiseño language The Luiseño language is a Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of first contact with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging fro ...

Serrano language The Serrano language (Serrano: ''Maarrênga'twich'') is a language in the Serran branch of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken by the Serrano people of Southern California. The language is closely related to Tongva, Tataviam, Kitanemuk and Vanyume. ...

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 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 language The Tataviam language was spoken by the Tataviam people of the upper Santa Clara River basin, Santa Susana Mountains, and Sierra Pelona Mountains in southern California. It had become extinct by 1916 and is known only from a few early records, ...

? *

Nicoleño language The Nicoleño were an Uto-Aztecan people who lived on San Nicolas Island in California. Its population was "left devastated by a massacre in 1811 by sea otter hunters". Its last surviving member was given the name Juana Maria, who was born before ...

Classification

As classified by Victor Golla. Serrano-Kitanemuk group : Serrano-Vanyume ^† ::''Serrano dialect'' ::''

Vanyume The Vanyume or Desert Serrano are an Indigenous people of Southern California. Traditional Vanyume territory extended along the Mojave River from the Eastern Mojave Desert to present day Victorville and may have included portions of southern ...

(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 Chumash may refer to: *Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism *Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California *Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California See also * Chumash traditional ...

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 s ...

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 {{California-stub