Tanoan ( ), also Kiowa–Tanoan or Tanoan–Kiowa, is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in present-day New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Most of the languages – Tiwa languages (Taos, Picuris, Southern Tiwa), Tewa language, and Towa language – are spoken in the Native American of New Mexico (with one outlier in Arizona). These were the first languages collectively given the name of Tanoan. Kiowa language, which is a related language, is now spoken mostly in southwestern Oklahoma. The Kiowa historically inhabited areas of modern-day Texas and Oklahoma.
Languages
The Tanoan language family has seven languages in four branches:
Kiowa–Towa might form an intermediate branch, as might Tiwa–Tewa.
Name
Tanoan has long been recognized as a major family of
Pueblo people languages, consisting of
Tiwa language,
Tewa language, and
Towa language. The inclusion of
Kiowa language into the family was at first controversial given the cultural differences between those groups. The once-nomadic
Kiowa people of the Plains are culturally quite distinct from the Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa pueblos, which obscured somewhat the linguistic connection between Tanoans and Kiowans. Linguists now accept that a Tanoan family without Kiowa would be
Paraphyly, as any ancestor of the Pueblo languages would be ancestral to Kiowa as well. Kiowa may be closer to Towa than Towa is to Tiwa–Tewa. 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.
Hopi-Tewa).
The prehistory of the Kiowa people is little known. As a result, the history is obscure about the separation of the members of this language family into two groups ('Puebloan' and 'Plains') with radically distinct lifestyles. There is apparently no oral tradition of any ancient connection between the peoples. Scholars have not determined when the peoples were connected so that the common linguistic elements could have developed. The earliest traditions and historical notices of the Kiowa record them migrating from the north and west, to the territory now associated with the tribal nation. Today this area is within the modern states of Texas and Oklahoma, which they occupied from the late 18th century.
Historical phonology
The chart below
[The original Americanist phonetic symbols differ from the IPA: Amer. = IPA , Amer = IPA .] contains the consonants of the Tanoan
proto-language as reconstructed by Hale (1967) based on consonant correspondences in stem-initial position.
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The evidence for comes from prefixes; 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.
>| |+ style="line-height: 1.5em;" Initial consonants in proto-language and daughter languages
! rowspan="2" | Proto-Tanoan
! rowspan="2" | Tiwa
! rowspan="2" | Tewa
! rowspan="2" | Towa
! rowspan="2" | Kiowa | ! colspan="2" Proto-Tanoan
! rowspan="2" | Tiwa
! rowspan="2" | Tewa
! rowspan="2" | Towa
! rowspan="2" | Kiowa |
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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[The data here is from Hale (1967), which in turn is gathered from G. Trager's publications (for Taos), Harrington's publications (for Kiowa), Dozier in personal communication to Hale (for Tewa), and Hale's own fieldwork on Jemez.]
! !! Tiwa !! Tewa !! Towa !! Kiowa !! meaning(s)
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Notes
Bibliography
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Davis, Irvine. (1979). The Kiowa–Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni languages. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.), The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment (pp. 390–443). Austin: University of North Texas.
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Dozier, Edward P. (1954). The Hopi-Tewa of Arizona. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 44 (3), 259–376.
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