|central North America|
|Linguistic classification||One of the world's primary language families|
Distribution of Tanoan languages before European contact. The pueblo languages are at the left; the nomadic Kiowa at right.
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 had historically occupied areas of Texas and Oklahoma.
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 among linguists. The once-nomadic Kiowa people of the Plains are culturally quite distinct from the Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa pueblos, and people in other language families have typically shared more culture. 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. Technically Tanoan and Kiowa–Tanoan are considered synonyms among linguists. Because of the cultural use of the name Tanoan as signifying several peoples who share a culture, the more explicit term Kiowa–Tanoan is still commonly used for the language family.
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 chart below 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
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.
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kiowa–Tanoan". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- The original Americanist phonetic symbols differ from the IPA: Amer. ⟨c⟩ = IPA ⟨ts⟩, Amer ⟨ʒ⟩ = IPA ⟨dz⟩.
- The null set symbol ∅ represents the lack of a consonant, i.e. the reconstructed proto-sound was deleted in the daughter language.
- Taos (and also Picuris) /tʃ/ varies between post-alveolar [tʃ] and alveolar [ts].
- This consonant is transcribed as a palatalized [tʸ] in Hale (1967) and palatalized [kʸ] in Hale (1962).
- Taos (and also Picuris) /tʃʼ/ varies between post-alveolar [tʃʼ] and alveolar [tsʼ].
- 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.
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Cordell, Linda A. (1979). Prehistory: Eastern Anasazi. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest (Vol. 9, pp. 131–151). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Davis, Irvine. (1959). Linguistic cues to northern Rio Grande prehistory. El Palacio, 66 (3), 73-84.
- 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.
- Dozier, Edward P. (1954). The Hopi-Tewa of Arizona. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 44 (3), 259-376.
- Eggan, Fred. (1979). Pueblos: Introduction. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest (Vol. 9, pp. 224–235). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Ellis, Florence Hawley. (1967). Where did the Pueblo people come from? El Palacio, 74 (3), 35-43.
- Ford, Richard I.; Schroeder, Albert H.; & Peckham, Stewart L. (1972). Three perspectives on Puebloan prehistory. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), New perspectives on the Pueblos (pp. 19–39). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
- Foster, Michael K. (1999). Language and the culture history of North America. In I. Goddard (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Languages (Vol. 17, pp. 64–110). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Hale, Kenneth L. (1962). Jemez and Kiowa correspondences in reference to Kiowa–Tanoan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 28 (1), 1-5.
- Hale, Kenneth L. (1967). Toward a reconstruction of Kiowa–Tanoan phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics, 33 (2), 112-120.
- Hale, Kenneth L. (1979). Historical linguistics and archeology. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest (Vol. 9, pp. 170–177). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Harrington, J. P. (1910). On phonetic and lexic resemblances in Kiowan and Tanoan. American Anthropologist, 12 (1), 119-123.
- Harrington, J. P. (1928). Vocabulary of the Kiowa language. Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin (No. 84). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
- Hill, Jane H. (2002). Toward a linguistic prehistory of the Southwest: "Azteco-Tanoan" and the arrival of maize cultivation. Journal of Anthropological Research, 58 (4), 457-476.
- Hill, Jane H. (2008). Northern Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa–Tanoan: Evidence of contact between the proto-Languages? International Journal of American Linguistics, 74 (2), 155–188.
- Kinkade, M. Dale; & Powell, J. V. (1976). Language and prehistory of North America. World Archaeology, 8 (1), 83-100.
- Leap, William L. (1971). Who were the Piro? Anthropological Linguistics, 13 (7), 321-330.
- Miller, Wick R. (1959). A note on Kiowa linguistic affiliations. American Anthropologist, 61 (1), 102-105.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Mooney, James. (1898). Calendar history of the Kiowa Indians. In 17th annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for 1895-1896 (Part 1, pp. 129–445). Washington, D.C.
- Mooney, James. (1907). Kiowa. In F. W. Hodge (Ed.), Handbook of American Indians (Part 1, pp. 669–701). Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin (No. 30). Washington, D.C.
- Newman, Stanley S. (1954). American Indian linguistics in the Southwest. American Anthropologist, 56 (4), 626-634.
- Nichols, Lynn. (1994). Subordination and ablaut in Kiowa–Tanoan. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 13, 85-99.
- Nichols, Lynn. (1996). Toward a reconstruction of Kiowa–Tanoan ablaut. In Proceedings of the 22nd annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
- Plog, Fred. (1979). Prehistory: Western Anasazi. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest (Vol. 9, pp. 108–130). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Reed, Erik K. (1949). Sources of upper Rio Grande Pueblo culture and population. El Palacio, 56 (6), 163-184.
- Snow, Dean R. (1976). The archaeology of North America. New York: The Viking Press.
- Trager, George L. (1942). The historical phonology of the Tiwa languages. Studies in Linguistics, 1 (5), 1-10.
- Trager, George L. (1951). Linguistic history and ethnologic history in the Southwest. Journal of the Washington Academy of Science, 41, 341-343.
- Trager, George L. (1967). The Tanoan settlement of the Rio Grande area: A possible chronology. In D. H. Hymes & W. E. Bittle (Eds.), Studies in southwestern ethnolinguistics: Meaning and history in the languages of the American Southwest (pp. 335–350). The Hague: Mouton.
- Trager, George L. (1969). Taos and Picuris: How long separated. International Journal of American Linguistics, 35 (2), 180-182.
- Trager, George L.; & Trager, Edith Crowell. (1959). Kiowa and Tanoan. American Anthropologist, 61 (6), 1078-1083.
- Wendorf, Fred. (1954). A reconstruction of northern Rio Grande prehistory. American Anthropologist, 56 (2), 200-227.
- Wendorf, Fred; & Reed, Erik K. (1955). An alternative reconstruction of northern Rio Grande prehistory. El Palacio, 62 (5/6), 131-173.