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Glottochronologic Counts of Hokaltecan Material

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

William Bright
William Bright*
Affiliation:
Deccan College, Poona
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Extract

A recently published paper by Gordon H. Fairbanks discusses a question pertinent to the glottochronologic counts of Morris Swadesh and others: On what phonological basis are words to be correlated for lexicostatistical purposes? The most desirable basis is undoubtedly that of determining cognates on the basis of phonemic correspondences. But if this is the only basis, glottochronological methods must be largely inapplicable at present to such groupings as Hokan and Penutian, where few phonemic correspondences have been established. It is apparent that Swadesh does not always limit himself to such a basis. To take an example from his more recent work, his relating of words for ‘man’ in languages of both Americas, ranging from Kwakiutlan *wism to Yamana win, can hardly be based on knowledge of a regular correspondence between Kwakiutlan *w and Yamana w. The basis must then be general phonetic similarity, rather than correspondence. We may apply the term correlate to pairs connected either as cognate or as phonetically similar. The question then remains, what degree of phonetic similarity is necessary to establish a pair or set of correlates? To judge from Swadesh's list of cognate words for ‘man’, which includes such diverse items as Lokono uadili, Caxinaua ina, and Quechua runa, the degree need not be great. The exact degree appears to be determined more by intuitition than by any objective factor.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 32 , Issue 1: January-March , March 1956, pp. 42 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 A note on glottochronology, IJAL 21.116–20 (1955). I am indebted to Fairbanks for advice in the preparation of this paper.

2 Perspectives and problems of Amerindian comparative linguistics, Word 10.306–32 (1954).

3 This research was done in connection with a seminar on Middle American Languages directed by Norman McQuown at the Linguistic Institute held at the University of Chicago in 1954.

4 Data on these languages are from the following sources : Seri from unpublished material supplied by Edward Moser of the Summer Institute of Linguistics; Tequistlatec from unpublished work by Viola Waterhouse and May Morrison, also of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, made available to me by Morris Swadesh; Supanec, represented by the Tlapaneca dialect, as recorded by Paul Radin, Notes on the Tlappanecan language of Guerrero, IJAL 8.45–72 (1935) ; Jicaque from V. Wolfgang von Hagen, The Jicaque (Torrupan) Indians of Honduras (Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, Indian Notes and Monographs, No. 53, 1943); Comecrudo from John R. Swanton, Linguistic material from the tribes of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico (BAE-B 127,1940); Yuma from A. M. Halpern, Yuma, IJAL 12.25–33, 147–51, 204–12 (1946), 13.18–30, 92–107, 147–56 (1947); Salinan, represented by the Migueleño dialect, as recorded by J. Alden Mason, The language of the Salinan Indians, UCPAAE 14.1–154 (1918); Tonkawa from Harry Hoijer, An analytical dictionary of the Tonkawa language, UCPL 5.1–174 (1949). For the sake of uniform transcription, some substitutions of symbols have been made in the data used. Radin's tone markers in Supanec are omitted as irrelevant to the comparisons.

5 Yuman, Seri, and Tequistlatec were classed together by D. G. Brinton in The American race 148 (New York, 1891). A better documented connection was established by A. L. Kroeber in his Serian, Tequistlatecan and Hokan, UCPAAE 11.279–90 (1915). To this grouping Edward Sapir added Comecrudo and Tonkawa, and later Supanec, in his paper The Hokan affinity of Subtiaba in Nicaragua, A A 27.402–35, 491–527 (1925).

6 Joseph H. Greenberg and Morris Swadesh, Jicaque as a Hokan language, IJAL 19.216–22 (1953).

7 A presumably improved list, containing only 100 words, has now been published by Swadesh in his paper Towards greater accuracy in lexicostatistic dating, IJAL 21.121–37 (1955). This list is intended, so far as possible, to exclude terms likely to be loans, such as certain numerals in many languages. However, a recent application of this list to Kannada, a Dravidian language of South India, shows a considerable number of loans, mostly from Sanskrit: būdi ‘ashes’ (Skt. bhūti), hakki ‘bird’ (Skt. pakṣin), rakta ‘blood’, candra ‘moon’, manuṣya ‘person’, raste ‘road’ (Hindi rastā), bīja ‘seed’, carma ‘skin’, nakṣatra ‘star’, sūrya ‘sun’, bāla ‘tail’.

8 No claim is made that all these pairs are actually cognate; they are presented merely as the data underlying the apparent phonological correspondences. Especially in such pairs as -xkim- : wíško- ‘throw’, where allowance is made for metathesis altering the order of the pairs k : k and m : w, there may be doubt of a cognate relationship. But ?aX : axá? ‘water’ are likely to be cognates in spite of the apparent metathesis affecting ? : ? and X : x, since words of similar shape occur in all the Hokaltecan languages.

9 A. L. Kroeber, The Seri (Southwest Museum Papers, No. 6, 1931).

10 Central and North American languages, Encyclopaedia Britannica14 5.138–41 (1929).