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Language Lineage

Proto-Uto-Aztecan

The reconstructed ancestor of about thirty languages from Oregon to El Salvador, with a well-documented set of sound correspondences: Proto-Uto-Aztecan *pa 'water' survives in Hopi paa-, and, with its p lost, in Nahuatl ā-tl.

c. 3000 – 2000 BCE (reconstructed; dating debated)Disputed: the Great Basin and Southwest, or northwestern and central Mexico
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. North and South
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

Origins

Uto-Aztecan was one of the first families of the Americas to be established by the comparative method. In the early 20th century Edward Sapir showed that its sound correspondences are as regular as those of Indo-European. It spans an enormous range, from the Shoshone of Idaho to the Pipil of El Salvador, and from desert foragers to the builders of the Aztec empire.

That range lies behind the central debate about its homeland. The traditional view places Proto-Uto-Aztecan among foragers in the Great Basin or the American Southwest, with the southern languages later moving into Mexico. Jane Hill argued the reverse: Proto-Uto-Aztecan speakers were early maize farmers in Mexico, and their languages spread north together with maize agriculture. Genetic and archaeological studies of how maize reached the Southwest have been cited on both sides.

02

North and South

Most classifications divide the family into a Northern group (Numic, Hopi, Takic and Tübatulabal, all in the United States) and a Southern group (Tepiman, Taracahitan, Corachol and Aztecan, mostly in Mexico). The Southern group is widely accepted. The Northern one is more contested, because its members may simply be neighbours that stayed behind.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. MexicoTepiman c. 55,000 · Taracahitan c. 150,000 · Corachol c. 93,000 · Aztecan c. 1.65 million
  2. United StatesNumic A few thousand at most · Hopi c. 6,800 · Tübatulabal · Takic Very few · Tepiman c. 14,000 · Taracahitan A few hundred
  3. El SalvadorAztecan A few hundred at most

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 3000 – 2000 BCEContested

    Foragers or farmers?

    Proto-Uto-Aztecan begins to break up. Whether it did so among foragers in the north or among maize farmers in Mexico, and whether the family spread north with maize, is one of the main debates in American historical linguistics.

    Sources (2)
    • Hill, Jane H. 2001. Proto-Uto-Aztecan: A community of cultivators in central Mexico? American Anthropologist 103(4).
    • Merrill, William L., et al. 2009. The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(50).

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Minority position

    Aztec-Tanoan

    Uto-Aztecan is related to the Kiowa-Tanoan languages of the Pueblos and the southern Plains

    Evidence for

    Benjamin Lee Whorf and George Trager (1937) proposed sound correspondences between Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa-Tanoan, and Edward Sapir included both in a larger 'Aztec-Tanoan' stock in his sweeping classification of North American languages.

    Evidence against

    The proposed correspondences rest on a small set of words, some of which may be borrowings between neighbours in the Southwest. Campbell and others consider the relationship not demonstrated. Uto-Aztecan is normally treated as a family with no proven relatives.

    Sources (2)
    • Whorf, Benjamin Lee & George L. Trager. 1937. The relationship of Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan. American Anthropologist 39(4).
    • Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.