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Pakawan Languages
The Pakawan languages were a small language family spoken in what is today northern Mexico and southern Texas. All Pakawan languages are today extinct. Classification Five clear Pakawan languages are attested: Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudo, Garza and Mamulique. The first three were first proposed to be related by John Wesley Powell in 1891, in a grouping then called Coahuiltecan. Goddard (1979) groups the latter three in a Comecrudan family while considering the others language isolates. The current composition and the present name "Pakawan" are due to Manaster Ramer (1996). The term Coahuiltecan languages today refers to a slightly expanded and less securely established grouping. Most Pakawan languages have at times been included also in the much larger and highly hypothetical Hokan "stock". Common vocabulary The following word comparisons are given by Manaster Ramer (1996): The following sound changes and correspondences should be noted: * Vocalization of word-final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio Grande is . It originates in south-central Colorado, in the United States, and flows to the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande drainage basin (watershed) has an area of ; however, the endorheic basins that are adjacent to and within the greater drainage basin of the Rio Grande increase the total drainage-basin area to . The Rio Grande with Rio Grande Valley (landform), its fertile valley, along with its tributaries, is a vital watersource for seven US and Mexican states, and flows primarily through arid and semi-arid lands. After traversing the length of New Mexico, the Rio Grande becomes the Mexico–United States border, between the U.S. state of Texas and the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua and Coahuila, Nuevo León a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comecrudan Languages
Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by European missionaries and explorers. All Comecrudan languages are extinct. Family division The three languages were: # Comecrudo (also known as Mulato or Carrizo) ''(†)'' # Garza ''(†)'' # Mamulique (also known as Carrizo de Mamulique) ''(†)'' Genetic relationships In John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of North American languages, Comecrudo was grouped together with the Cotoname and Coahuilteco languages into a family called Coahuiltecan. John R. Swanton (1915) grouped together the Comecrudo, Cotoname, Coahuilteco, Karankawa, Tonkawa, Atakapa, and Maratino languages into a Coahuiltecan grouping. Edward Sapir (1920) accepted Swanton's propos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indigenous Languages Of Mexico
Many languages are spoken in Mexico, though Spanish is the ''de facto'' national language spoken by the vast majority of the population, making Mexico the world's most populous Hispanophone country. The indigenous languages are from eleven language families, including four isolates and one that immigrated from the United States. The Mexican government recognizes 68 national languages, 63 of which are indigenous, including around 350 dialects of those languages. The large majority of the population is monolingual in Spanish. Some immigrant and indigenous populations are bilingual, while some indigenous people are monolingual in their languages. Mexican Sign Language is spoken by much of the deaf population, and there are one or two indigenous sign languages as well. The government of Mexico uses Spanish in most official purposes, but in terms of legislation, its status is not that of an official primary language. The Law of Linguistic Rights establishes Spanish as one of the co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proposed Language Families
The following is a list of language families. It also includes language isolates, unclassified languages and other types. Major language families By number of languages ''Ethnologue'' 24 (2021) lists the following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,139 known languages in the world: # Niger–Congo (1,542 languages) (21.7%) # Austronesian (1,257 languages) (17.7%) # Trans–New Guinea (482 languages) (6.8%) #Sino-Tibetan (455 languages) (6.4%) #Indo-European (448 languages) (6.3%) #Australian 'dubious''(381 languages) (5.4%) #Afro-Asiatic (377 languages) (5.3%) #Nilo-Saharan 'dubious''(206 languages) (2.9%) #Oto-Manguean (178 languages) (2.5%) #Austroasiatic (167 languages) (2.3%) # Tai–Kadai (91 languages) (1.3%) # Dravidian (86 languages) (1.2%) #Tupian (76 languages) (1.1%) ''Glottolog'' 4.6 (2022) lists the following as the largest families, of 8,565 languages: # Atlantic–Congo (1,406 languages) # Austronesian (1,271 languages) # Indo-European (583 languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pakawan Languages
The Pakawan languages were a small language family spoken in what is today northern Mexico and southern Texas. All Pakawan languages are today extinct. Classification Five clear Pakawan languages are attested: Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudo, Garza and Mamulique. The first three were first proposed to be related by John Wesley Powell in 1891, in a grouping then called Coahuiltecan. Goddard (1979) groups the latter three in a Comecrudan family while considering the others language isolates. The current composition and the present name "Pakawan" are due to Manaster Ramer (1996). The term Coahuiltecan languages today refers to a slightly expanded and less securely established grouping. Most Pakawan languages have at times been included also in the much larger and highly hypothetical Hokan "stock". Common vocabulary The following word comparisons are given by Manaster Ramer (1996): The following sound changes and correspondences should be noted: * Vocalization of word-final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Correspondence
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages. The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The first linguist to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (phonological change), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The number of language isolates is unknown. A language isolate is unrelated to any other, which makes it the only language in its own language family. It is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationships—one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. One explanation for the existence of language isolates is that they might be the last remaining branch of a larger language family. The language possibly had relatives in the past which have since disappeared without being documented. Another explanation for language isolates is that they developed in isolation from other languages. This explanation mostly applies to sign languages that have arisen independently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869 geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon. Powell was appointed by US President James A. Garfield to serve as the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (1881–1894) and proposed, for development of the arid West, policies that were prescient for his accurate evaluation of conditions. Two years prior to his service as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Major Powell had become the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution where he supported linguistic and sociological research and publications. Biography Early life Powell was born in Mount Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hokan Languages
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 languages: ''*xwak'' in Proto-Yuman, ''c-oocj'' (pronounced ) in Seri, ''ha'k'' in Achumawi, etc. History of the proposal In the first half-century after the "Hokan hypothesis" was first proposed by Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber, and further elaborated by Edward Sapir, little additional evidence was found that these families were related to each other. But since about 1950, increased efforts to document Hokan languages and to establish sound correspondences in proposed lexical resemblance sets have added weight to the Hokan hypothesis, leading to its acceptance by many specialists in the languages of California, Oregon, and Mesoamerica. However, some skepticism remains among scholars. The Yurumanguí language of Colombia was cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mamulique Language
Mamulique is an extinct Pakawan language of Nuevo León, Mexico. Called ''Carrizo (Carrizo de Mamulique)'' by Jean-Louis Berlandier Jean-Louis Berlandier (1803 – 1851) was a French-Mexican naturalist, physician, and anthropologist. Early life Berlandier was born in Geneva, and later trained as a botanist there. During this time he probably served an apprenticeship to a ..., it was recorded in a twenty-two-word vocabulary (in two versions) from near Mamulique, Nuevo León in 1828 (Berlandier et al. 1828–1829, 1850: 68–71). These speakers were a group of about forty-five families who were all Spanish-speaking Christians. Example phrase Goddard (1979: 384), citing Berlandier, provides the following phrase for Mamulique, with ''aha'' meaning 'water'.Goddard, Ives. (1979). The languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.) ''The languages of native America'' (pp. 355–389). Austin: University of Texas Press. :''aha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garza Language
Garza is an extinct Pakawan language of Texas and Mexico. It is known from two tribal names and twenty-one words recorded from the chief of the Garza by Jean-Louis Berlandier in 1828 (Berlandier et al. 1828–1829, 1850: 143–144). At that time, the Garza all spoke Spanish and were acculturated. The Garza may have been the same as the Atanguaypacam tribe (of the Comecrudo) recorded in 1748. The Garza were called something like ''Meacknan'' or ''Miákan'' by the neighboring Cotoname (Gatschet 1886: 54) while they called the Cotoname ''Yué''. ''Garza'' is Spanish for "heron The herons are long-legged, long-necked, freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae, with 72 recognised species, some of which are referred to as egrets or bitterns rather than herons. Members of the genera ''Botaurus'' and ''Ixobrychus ...." References Sources * Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1828–1829). ocabularies of languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande (Ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
