Old California Uto-Aztecan

Abstract

Old California Uto-Aztecan Michael J. P. Nichols San Francisco, California Linguistic reconstruction of California languages is complicated by the pervasive intersection of linguistic forms and conventions that transcend genetic boundaries throughout the California linguistic area (cf. Haas 1964).1 The areal spread of phonological features, patterns of sound symbolism, shared onomatopoeic and other oral cultural tradi- tions, and whole grammatical systems of pronouns, instrumentals, and affixes is accompanied by massive lexical borrowing. Californianista are at last emerging from a restrictive stage analogous to that of the geologists of a few years ago. “hen the geologists were confronted with evidence of previous contact among distant continents, the majority reacted by postulating now-completely-lost land bridges that spanned the oceans, or by denying the validity of the contact evidence. It has since been proven that the continents themselves had moved, and not just once, but many times. Linguists have the exact counterpart in their attempts to span the geographic separation of related languages by postulating lost dialect chains based only on the separation, or by denying the relationship where the physical separation appears too great for any particularly intimate contact. Now we are rediscovering population mobility. Long distance population movements in short periods of time areim amply reported in contemporary ethnographic studies, and it must be remembered that the size of most hunter-gatherer groups was never very: l large. Rather they were small hands. often in relatively separated ‘