AIS 100: Introduction to American Indian Studies

 

 Language Phyla

Human languages are the key to understanding cultures and how humans have responded to their respective environments.  Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941 ), Sapir's student, developed theories about the profound influence of language on thought and experience. These findings were based on their research of Native American languages with an emphasis on cultural differences in thinking about concepts like time. However, other scholars lean toward the idea that language is influenced by thought and experience. Today it is becoming accepted that a systemic approach with feedback and feedforward allows a more complex picture with both language influencing culture and being influenced by culture. Also, linguistic research has shown Native American languages to be equally complex as any in the world. There were over 700 languages on the American continent from the Arctic in the North to Tierra del Fuego in the South.

The classification of languages begins to generate origin patterns and relationships between Native People more than environments. Recent studies have shown that language affiliation is reflected in genetic affiliation being constructed in the genome project. Linguistic classification is loosely modeled after Linnean taxonomy with the following hierarchy. English and Luiseno(Native Southern Californa)  are used to provide examples

Language Classification	English	Luiseno
Phyla	Indo-European	Aztec-Tanoan
Family	Teutonic/Germanic	Shoshonean
Subfamily	English	Takic
Language	American English	Luiseno
Dialect	S. California	SW Coast

 

As with many classification  system there is considerable debate about the various categories with extremes between those scholars that lump many groups together versus those that split many groups apart. There are also languages that defy classification that we will simply catogorize as UNK/unknown.

NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGE GROUPS

NORTH AMERICA

Meso America

South America