Aztec–Tanoan is a hypothetical and undemonstrated language family that proposes a genealogical relation between theTanoan and theUto-Aztecan families. This proposed classification has not been definitively demonstrated, largely because of slow progress in the reconstruction of the intermediate stages of the two language families involved,[1] but is still considered promising by many linguists.[2][3] The grouping was originally proposed byEdward Sapir in his 1921 classification, but it was not until 1937 that supporting evidence was published byBenjamin Lee Whorf andG. L. Trager. Their proposal included some 67 proposed cognates, but subsequent reviews have found most of them to be unconvincing (monosyllables, onomatopoeia). A small number of their proposed cognates do seem to have some merit and in his 1997 review of the hypothesisLyle Campbell states that the proposal is not implausible but requires detailed study.[4] A recent article byJane H. Hill argues that the evidence cited for the genetic relation by Whorf and Trager is better understood as a result oflanguage contact between the Uto-Aztecan and Tanoanproto-languages.[5]
^Kenneth L. Hale. 1967. Toward a Reconstruction of Kiowa-Tanoan Phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics , Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 112-120
^DAVIS, Irvine, author. 1989. "A new look at Aztec-Tanoan." In General and Amerindian ethnolinguistics: In remembrance of Stanley Newman, Mary Ritchie Key and Henry M. Hoenigswald (eds.). pages 365-79. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
^NEWMAN, S. (1954), American Indian Linguistics in the Southwest. American Anthropologist, 56: 626–634. doi: 10.1525/aa.1954.56.4.02a00180
^Hill, Jane H. 2002. Toward a Linguistic Prehistory of the Southwest: "Azteco-Tanoan" and the Arrival of Maize Cultivation. Journal of Anthropological Research , Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 457-475
^Hale, Kenneth L. (1967). Toward a reconstruction of Kiowa–Tanoan phonology.International Journal of American Linguistics, 33 (2), 112-120.
Davis, Irvine. 1979. The Kiowa-Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni languages. In The languages of Native America: historical and comparative assessment, ed. Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, 390-443. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Campbell, Lyle. (1997).American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-509427-1.
Campbell, Lyle; &Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979).The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996).Handbook of North American Indians: Languages (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.ISBN0-16-048774-9.
