Yok-Utian is a proposed

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 ...

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 the

Yokuts language Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, missi ...

and the

Utian Utian (also Miwok–Costanoan, previously Mutsun) is a family of indigenous languages spoken in Northern California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued tha ...

language family. While connections between Yokuts and Utian languages were noticed through attempts to

reconstruct Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

their

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...

s in 1986,Whistler, Kenneth & Golla, Victor. (1986)
Proto-Yokuts Reconsidered.
''International Journal of American Linguistics, 52'', 317-358. it was not until 1991 that Yok-Utian was proposed and named by

Geoffrey Gamble Geoffrey Gamble (born 1942) is an American linguist who served from 2000 to 2009 as the 11th president of Montana State University. Early life Gamble was born in 1942 and raised on a farm near Fresno, California.

.Golla, Victor. (2011). ''California Indian Languages''. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London. 130, 147-168, 252-253. .Callaghan, Catherine. (1997)
Evidence for Yok-Utian.
''International Journal of American Linguistics, 63,'' 18-64. Yok-Utian has been further supported by Catherine Callaghan, who has argued for the family's existence on the basis of lexical, morphological, and phonological similarities between the reconstructed proto-languages.Callaghan, Catherine. (2001)
More Evidence for Yok-Utian: A Reanalysis of the Dixon and Kroeber sets.
''International Journal of American Linguistics, 67 ''(3), 313-346. However, she and others have noted that while it is compelling, the evidence presented is not conclusive. According to the proposal, the Yok-Utian proto-language was spoken by a group originating in the Great Basin at least as early as 4500 BC. There was a division around 2500 BC, as the group which began speaking Proto-Utian migrated from 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 ...

into California. Proto-Miwok began to emerge in the northern Bay Area between 1000 and 500 BC, and began to spread west and south. Proto-Costanoan emerged in the eastern Bay Area, splitting from the larger Utian group sometime after 1500 BC, if not earlier. The language that remained in the Great Basin turned into proto-Yokuts before gradually splitting into the various Yokuts dialects and only later began to migrate into California. However, Scott DeLancey and Victor Golla have proposed that the language distribution could be the result of a single migration of Yok-Utian speakers who later spread out throughout California.DeLancey, Scott & Golla, Victor. (1997)
The Penutian Hypothesis: Retrospect and Prospect.
''International Journal of American Linguistics'', 63, 171-202. One component of the evidence offered for Yok-Utian is that of sound correspondences in the reconstructed proto-languages for Yokuts and the Utian family, such as the sample below. However, while the reconstructed correspondences can be compelling, they are not conclusive. As the speakers of the Yokuts and Utian languages were in contact with one another for hundreds or thousands of years, it is entirely possible that the sound correspondences are the result of borrowing, rather than a common linguistic ancestor. While Yok-Utian can be included in the larger

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 ...

proposal, the Yok-Utian proposal does not directly support Penutian.

References

External links

Native Tribes, Groups, Language Families and Dialects of California in 1770
(map after Kroeber) {{North American languages Penutian languages Indigenous languages of California Proposed language families