Tanoan languages

The Tanoan language family has seven languages in four branches:

Kiowa–Towa might form an intermediate branch, as might Tiwa–Tewa.

Tanoan has long been recognized as a major family of Pueblo languages, consisting of Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa. The inclusion of Kiowa 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 paraphyletic, 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. Arizona 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 as migrating to 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.

The Tanoan family has been connected to the Uto-Aztecan family in a hypothetical Aztec–Tanoan proposal. Although it is undemonstrated, many linguists find this hypothesis to be promising.

The chart below[1] contains the reconstructed 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.

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	∅ [2]	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 [3]	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 [4]	s		*kʰ		x	x	h	kʰ
*tʼ	tʼ	tʼ	tʼ	tʼ		*kʷʰ		xʷ	xʷ
*tsʼ	tʃʼ [5]	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[6]

	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)

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

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