Hokan languages

Hypothetical superfamily of North American Indian languages uniting a number of languages and language families of the western U.S. and Mexico.

The Hokan hypothesis was first proposed by Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber in 1913 and refined by Edward Sapir; like the Penutian designation, it was an attempt to reduce the number of unrelated language families in one of the most linguistically heterogeneous areas of the world. Its core consisted of languages of aboriginal California and the Southwest, with outlying members from Sonora and Oaxaca in Mexico. Except for some Yuman languages (spoken in southern California, Arizona, and Baja California), all were either extinct or spoken almost exclusively by older adults by the beginning of the 21st century.

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▪ American Indian language

      major group, or phylum, of American Indian languages; it includes three families of Mesoamerican Indian languages and 14 families of North American Indian languages. The Mesoamerican groups are Tequistlatec (two languages in Oaxaca, Mex.), Tlapanecan (one living language in Guerrero, Mex., and an extinct one in Nicaragua), and Jicaque (spoken in Honduras). The North American Indian families are Yuman (four languages), Pomo (six languages), Palaihnihan (two languages), Shastan (three languages), Yanan (two languages), Salinan (two languages), and Chumashan (six languages), plus Chimariko (extinct), Washoe, Seri, Esselen (extinct), Karok, Comecrudan (extinct), and Coahuiltecan (extinct), consisting of a single language each. The North American Hokan languages were once spoken in the southwestern United States from northern California to southern Texas and in northern Mexico.

      The Hokan languages are basically agglutinative in structure; that is, they frequently use affixes (such as prefixes and suffixes), as well as compound words, to form long words made up of several elements. Sometimes such words become so complex that a complete sentence or phrase may be expressed by one word; when this occurs, and when the units that compose such a word are “bound” forms (i.e., cannot be used except in conjunction with other elements within a word), the process has gone beyond agglutination and is called polysynthesis, a process characteristic of many American Indian languages. Some Hokan languages are extremely polysynthetic, among them the Yana language of northern California. The Yana word yābanaumawildjigummaha'nigi means “let us, each one [of us], move indeed to the west across [the creek].” It is composed of the following elements—yā “several people move,” banauma “everybody,” wil “across,” dji “to the west,” gumma “indeed,” ha' “let us,” and nigi “we.” Such word sentences are not uncommon in American Indian languages but are by no means universal. The Yana language is also of interest because it has two “dialects,” one used exclusively by males to males and the other used in speech to or by females.

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