Concept
Uto-Aztecan languages
Overview
The Uto-Aztecan languages, also known as the Uto-Aztekan or Uto-Nahuatl languages, are a family of Native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ancestry of the Ute language of Utah and the Nahuan languages (also known as Aztecan) of Mexico.
The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language is Shoshoni, which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho, while the southernmost is the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Ethnologue gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. Speakers of Nahuatl languages account for over 85% of these.
The internal classification of the family often divides it into two branches: a northern branch including all the languages of the US and a southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one. Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted: Numic (including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni) and the Californian languages (formerly known as the Takic group, including Cahuilla and Luiseño) account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the Tepiman languages (including Oʼodham and Tepehuán), the Tarahumaran languages (including Raramuri and Guarijio), the Cahitan languages (including Yaqui and Mayo), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol), and the Nahuan languages.
The homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have been in the Southwestern United States or possibly Northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory has proposed the possibility that the language family originated in southern Mexico, within the Mesoamerican language area, but this has not been generally considered convincing.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Uto-Aztecan languages is.
This is indicated primarily by the fact that these languages lack what we would call grammatical categories. As regards this point, Westermann's grammar of the Ewe language is in entire agreement with the much earlier results which Steinthal reached in his investigation of the Manda language, which is also of the Soudan region. These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Uto-Aztecan languages is.
Rio Negro.—S. Josef.—Port Desire, white pumiceous mudstone with Infusoria.—Port S. Julian.—Santa Cruz, basaltic lava of.—P. Gallegos.—Eastern Tierra del Fuego; leaves of extinct beech-trees.—Summary on the Patagonian tertiary formations.—Tertiary formations of the Western Coast.—Chonos and Chiloe groups, volcanic rocks of.—Concepcion.—Navidad.—Coquimbo.—Summary.—Age of the tertiary formations.—Lines of…
Charles Darwin, Geological Observations on South America
Close in meaning to Uto-Aztecan languages; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Language family
- Extinct language
- Mexico City
- Writing system
- Nahuatl
- Mexico
- Aztecs
- Comparative method
- Pre-Columbian era
- Edward Sapir
- Language revitalization
Place in the tradition
Part of Language.