Tanoan languages

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Tanoan
Kiowa–Tanoan
Geographic distribution	central North America
Native speakers	~5,625
Linguistic classification	One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions	Tiwa Tewa Towa Kiowa
Language codes
Glottolog	kiow1265
Linguasphere	64-C
Distribution of Tanoan languages before European contact. The Pueblo languages are at the left; the nomadic Kiowa at right.

Tanoan (/təˈnoʊ.ən/ tə-NOH-ən), also Kiowa–Tanoan or Tanoan–Kiowa, is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in present-day New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Historical distribution of Pueblo Tanoan languages

Current distribution of Pueblo Tanoan languages

Most of the languages – Tiwa (Taos, Picuris, Southern Tiwa), Tewa, and Towa – are spoken in the Native American Pueblos of New Mexico (with one outlier in Arizona). These were the first languages collectively given the name of Tanoan. Kiowa, which is a related language, is now spoken mostly in southwestern Oklahoma. The Kiowa historically inhabited areas of modern-day Texas and Oklahoma but originally inhabited western Montana before European contact.

Name

In older texts, Tanoan and Kiowa–Tanoan were used interchangeably. Because of the cultural use of the name Tanoan as signifying several peoples who share a culture, the more explicit term Kiowa–Tanoan is now commonly used for the language family as a whole, with Tanoan being the branch that contains the languages now spoken in New Mexico and Arizona (i.e. Arizona Tewa).

Development of the hypothesis

Tanoan has been recognized as a family of Pueblo languages since 1891, with the division of the family into Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa languages proposed by John Peabody Harrington in 1910. The traditionally nomadic Kiowa people of the Plains are culturally quite distinct from the agricultural Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa pueblos, which obscured somewhat the linguistic connection between Tanoans and the Kiowa. Harrington was the first to propose a Kiowa-Tanoan relationship in 1910, but it was not proven until 1967 when Kenneth L. Hale constructed a phonology of Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan. Linguists now accept that a Tanoan family without Kiowa would be paraphyletic.

A relationship between Tanoan and Uto-Aztecan, the Aztec–Tanoan languages, was first proposed by Edward Sapir in 1921 and enjoyed broad support for decades, but is now generally considered to be weakly supported and ascribed to language contact.

Internal classification

The Tanoan language family has seven languages in four branches:

Clades within the family are unsettled. Kiowa has often been taken as sister to the remaining "Tanoan" languages, within which Towa is sister to Tiwa-Tewa, but a variety of contending systems have been suggested. Rather than an early division into Kiowa and Tanoan George L. Trager proposed that Kiowa–Towa might form a clade. Tiwa and Tewa are often theorized to form a clade. Still other authors have concluded that the family consists of four coordinate branches without internal structure.

To explain the existence of phonological innovations across otherwise separate clades, Ortman proposes that the languages diverged following the traditional sequence of Kiowa first, followed by Towa and then Tewa, but that this process was gradual, with Kiowa only reaching isolation after the development of proto-Towa and Towa reaching isolation after the development of proto-Tewa. He suggests that the ancestral dialects were once arranged sequentially on the landscape, during which time innovations diffused between neighboring dialects without reaching fixation across the family. However, the absence of shared innovations between Tiwa and Tewa suggest a much more clean separation of the two following their isolation from Towa and Kiowa, perhaps due to migration.

Pecos, spoken at Pecos Pueblo, is an extinct Tanoan language traditionally assumed to be a dialect of Towa, but the surviving material is insufficient to demonstrate its identity, with some non-linguistic evidence instead suggesting a relationship with the southern Tewa.

History

An analysis of reconstructed Kiowa-Tanoan cognates indicates that the language family's linguistic homeland was in an upland environment, most likely near the Rocky Mountains, and that the speakers were hunter-gatherers. Glottochronological analyses suggest Kiowa and Tanoan diverged between 4000+ and 3000 years ago, prior to the advent of agriculture in the Southwest, but this is contradicted by the presence of cognate agricultural terms in the descendant branches. Based on shared innovations, Ortman suggests a Late Archaic origin on the Colorado Plateau for proto-Kiowa-Tanoan which diversified as its speakers gradually adopted agriculture, singling out the Eastern Basketmaker II Culture of 50-450 CE as possible Kiowa-Tanoan ancestors. The same methods suggest that proto-Tanoan was spoken during the Basketmaker III period, with proto-Tiwa-Tewa separating during the Pueblo I period between 725 and 920 CE. Lastly, the consolidation of proto-Tiwa is identified with the Pueblo II period, in part due to the presence of cognates linked to the Chaco Canyon trade system.

Ortman proposes a gradual southeastern migration of Tanoan speakers from the San Juan River basin to the Rio Grande, beginning with the Tiwa between 920 and 980 CE. Under this model, the Towa had entered the Rio Puerco valley from southwest Utah by around 1200 CE, while the Tewa arrived to the Tewa Basin from Mesa Verde during the Pueblo III period around 1275 CE.

Phonology

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding missing information. (May 2008)

The chart below contains the consonants of the Tanoan proto-language as reconstructed by Hale (1967) based on consonant correspondences in stem-initial position.

		Labial	Apical	Apical Fricated	Velar	Velar Labial	Glottal
Plosive	voiced	*b	*d	*dz	(*ɡ)	*ɡʷ
	plain	*p	*t	*ts	*k	*kʷ
	glottalized	*pʼ	*tʼ	*tsʼ	*kʼ	*kʷʼ	*ʔ
	aspirated	*pʰ	*tʰ	*tsʰ	*kʰ	*kʷʰ
Nasal		*m	*n
Fricative				*s			*h
Glide						*w

The evidence for *ɡ comes from prefixes; *ɡ has not been found in stem-initial position and thus is in parentheses above. Hale reconstructs the nasalization feature for nasal vowels. Vowel quality and prosodic features like vowel length, tone, and stress have not yet been reconstructed for the Tanoan family. Hale (1967) gives certain sets of vowel quality correspondences.

The following table illustrates the reconstructed initial consonants in Proto-Tanoan and its reflexes in the daughter languages.^{[citation needed]}

Initial consonants in proto-language and daughter languages

Proto-Tanoan	Tiwa	Tewa	Towa	Kiowa		Proto-Tanoan		Tiwa	Tewa	Towa	Kiowa
						consonant	environment
*h	h	h	∅	h		*dz		j	j, dʒ	z	d
*ʔ	ʔ	ʔ	ʔ	∅		*d	before oral vowel	l	d	d
*p	p	p	p	p			before nasal vowel	n	n	n
*pʼ	pʼ	pʼ	pʼ	pʼ		*n					n
*pʰ	pʰ	f	ɸ	pʰ		*w		w	w	w	j
*b	m	m	m	b		*ɡʷ				kʷ	ɡ
*m				m		(*ɡ)		k	ɡ	k
*t	t	t	t	t		*k			k		k
*ts	tʃ	ts	s			*kʷ		kʷ	kʷ	ɡ
*tʰ	tʰ	θ	ʃ	tʰ		*kʷʼ		kʷʼ	kʷʼ		kʼ
*tsʰ	s	s				*kʼ		kʼ	kʼ	kʼ
*s	ɬ		c	s		*kʰ		x	x	h	kʰ
*tʼ	tʼ	tʼ	tʼ	tʼ		*kʷʰ		xʷ	xʷ
*tsʼ	tʃʼ	tsʼ

As can be seen in the above table, a number of phonological mergers have occurred in the different languages. Cognate sets supporting the above are listed below:

Cognate sets demonstrating initial consonant correspondences

	Tiwa	Tewa	Towa	Kiowa	meaning(s)
*b	mɑ̃	mãʔ	mĩ́ː	bɔ	"to bring"
*m	mæ̃̀n-	mãn	mãté	mɔ̃ː-dɔ	"hand"
*d (+ V)	līlū-	diː	délʔɨː	–	"fowl"
*d (+ Ṽ)	ˈnæ̃̄m-	nãn	nṍː	dɔ̃-m	"sand" (in Taos), "ground" (in Tewa, Kiowa), "space" (in Jemez)
*n	næ̃̄	nãː	nĩ́ː	nɔ̃ː	first person singular
*ts	ˈtʃī	tsíː	sé	ta	"eye"
*t	tũ̀	tṹ	tɨ̃́	tõ-	"to say"
*tsʰ	sũ̀	sũwẽ	sɨ̃́	tʰõ-m	"to drink"
*tʰ	ˈtʰɤ̄	θáː	ʃó	tʰa-	"to break" (in Taos, Tewa, Jemez), "to sever several" (in Kiowa)
*ts’	ˈtʃʼɑ̄-	–	–	tʼɔ-l	"liver"
*t’	tʼɑ́-	tʼon	tʼaː	tʼɔː	"antelope"
*dz	jɑ̄-	–	zǽː	dɔ	"song" (in Taos, Jemez), "to sing" (in Kiowa)

Notes

Bibliography

Wiktionary has a list of reconstructed forms at Appendix:Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan reconstructions

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