| Penutian | |
|---|---|
| (controversial) | |
| Geographic distribution | North America |
| Linguistic classification | Proposedlanguage family |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
 Pre-contact distribution of proposed Penutian languages | |
Penutian is a proposed grouping oflanguage families that includes manyNative American languages of westernNorth America, predominantly spoken at one time inBritish Columbia,Washington,Oregon, andCalifornia. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.[1]
Some of the more recently proposed subgroupings of Penutian have been convincingly demonstrated. The Miwokan and the Costanoan languages have been grouped into aUtian language family byCatherine Callaghan.[2] Callaghan has more recently provided evidence supporting a grouping of Utian andYokutsan into aYok-Utian family.[3][4] There also seems to be convincing evidence for thePlateau Penutian grouping (originally namedShahapwailutan by J. N. B. Hewitt andJohn Wesley Powell in 1894) which would consist ofKlamath–Modoc,Molala, and theSahaptian languages (Nez Percé andSahaptin).[5]
The namePenutian is based on the words meaning "two" in theWintuan,Maiduan, andYokutsan languages (where it is pronounced something like[pen]) and theUtian languages (where it is pronounced something like[uti]).[6]
Although perhaps originally intended to be pronounced/pɪˈnjuːtiən/, which is indicated in some dictionaries, the term is pronounced/pɪˈnjuːʃən/ by most if not all linguists.
The original Penutian hypothesis, offered in 1913 byRoland B. Dixon andAlfred L. Kroeber, was based on similarities observed between five California language families:
That original proposal has since been called alternatelyCore Penutian,California Penutian, or thePenutian Kernel. In 1919 the same two authors published their linguistic evidence for the proposal.[7] The grouping, like many of Dixon & Kroeber's other phylum proposals, was based mostly on shared typological characteristics and not the standard methods used to determine genetic relationships. Starting from this early date, the Penutian hypothesis was controversial.
Prior to the 1913 Penutian proposal of Dixon and Kroeber,Albert S. Gatschet had grouped Miwokan and Costanoan into aMutsun group (1877). That grouping, now termedUtian, was later conclusively demonstrated byCatherine Callaghan. In 1903 Dixon & Kroeber noted a "positive relationship" among Costanoan, Maidu, Wintun, and Yokuts within a "Central or Maidu Type", from which they excluded Miwokan (their Moquelumnan).[8] In 1910 Kroeber finally recognized the close relationship between theMiwokan andCostanoan languages.[9]
In 1916Edward Sapir expanded Dixon and Kroeber's California Penutian family with a sister stock,Oregon Penutian, which included the Coosan languages and also theisolates Siuslaw and Takelma:
Later Sapir andLeo Frachtenberg added theKalapuyan and theChinookan languages and then later theAlsean andTsimshianic families, culminating in Sapir's four-branch classification (Sapir 1921a:60):
By the time Sapir's 1929Encyclopædia Britannica article was published, he had added two more branches:
resulting in a six-branch family:
(Sapir's full 1929 classification scheme including the Penutian proposal can be seen here:Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas#Sapir (1929): Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Other linguists have suggested other languages be included within the Penutian grouping:
Or have produced hypotheses of relationships between Penutian and other large-scale families:
Note: Some linguists have proposed a relationship between Penutian and theZuni language. This link, proposed by Stanley Newman,[10] is now generally rejected, and may have even been intended as a hoax by Newman.[11][12]
Scholars in the mid-twentieth century became concerned that similarities among the proposed Penutian language families may be the result of borrowing that occurred among neighboring peoples, not of a shared proto-language in the distant past.Mary Haas states the following regarding this borrowing:
Even where genetic relationship is clearly indicated ... the evidence of diffusion of traits from neighboring tribes, related or not, is seen on every hand. This makes the task of determining the validity of the various allegedHokan languages and the various alleged Penutian languages all the more difficult ... [and] point[s] up once again that diffusional studies are just as important for prehistory as genetic studies and what is even more in need of emphasis, it points up the desirability of pursuing diffusional studies along with genetic studies. This is nowhere more necessary than in the case of the Hokan and Penutian languages wherever they may be found, but particularly in California where they may very well have existed side by side for many millennia.(Haas 1976:359)
Despite the concern of Haas and others, the Consensus Classification produced at a 1964 conference inBloomington, Indiana, retained all of Sapir's groups for North America north of Mexico within the Penutian Phylum. The opposite approach was taken following a 1976 conference atOswego, New York, when Campbell and Mithun dismissed the Penutian phylum as undemonstrated in their resulting classification of North American language families.[13]
Consensus was reached at a 1994 workshop on Comparative Penutian at theUniversity of Oregon that the families within the proposed phylum's California, Oregon, Plateau, and Chinookan clusters would eventually be shown to be genetically related.[14] Subsequently,Marie-Lucie Tarpent reassessedTsimshianic, a geographically isolated family in northern British Columbia, and concluded that its affiliation within Penutian is also probable.[15]
Earlier groupings, such as California Penutian andTakelma–Kalapuyan ("Takelman") are no longer accepted as valid nodes by many Penutian researchers.[16] However, Plateau Penutian, Coast Oregon Penutian, andYok-Utian (comprising theUtian andYokutsan languages) are increasingly supported.[17]Scott DeLancey suggests the following relationships within and among language families typically assigned to the Penutian phylum:[citation needed]
TheWintuan languages,Takelma, andKalapuya, absent from this list, continue to be considered Penutian languages by most scholars familiar with the subject, often in an Oregonian branch, though Takelma and Kalapuya are no longer considered to define a branch of Penutian.[18]
A lexicostatistical classification and list of probable Penutian cognates has also been proposed by Zhivlov (2014).[19]
Perhaps because many Penutian languages haveapophony, vowels are difficult to reconstruct. However, consonant correspondences are common. For example, the proto-Yokuts (Inland Penutian)retroflexes*/ʈ/*/ʈʼ/ correspond to Klamath (Plateau Penutian)/t͡ʃt͡ʃʼ/, whereas the Proto-Yokuts dental*/t̪/*/t̪ʰ/*/t̪ʼ/ correspond to Klamath alveolar/dttʼ/. Kalapuya, Takelma, and Wintu do not show such obvious connections.
Below are some Penutian sound correspondence proposed byWilliam Shipley,[20] cited in Campbell (1997).[21]
| Proposed Proto-Penutian | Klamath | Maidu | Wintu | Patwin | Yokuts | Miwok | Costanoan (Ohlone) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **p,**ph | p, ph | p | p, ph | p, ph | p, ph | p | p |
| **k | k | k | k | k | k | k | k |
| **q,**qh | q, qh | k | q | k | x (-k) | k | k |
| **m | m | m | m | m | m | m | m |
| **n | n | n | n | n | n | n | n |
| **w | w- | w- | w- | w- | w- | w- | w- |
| (l) | -l- | -l- | -l-, -l | -l-, -l | -l- | -l- | -l-. -r |
| #**r | s[C, L[V | h | tl, s | tl | ṭh | n | l, r |
| **-r- | d, l | d | (r?) | r | ṭh | (n?) | r |
| **-r | ʔ | ʔ | r | r | ṭh | n | r |
| **s | s- | s- | s- | s- |
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