An Amerind Etymological Dictionary

An Amerind Etymological Dictionary c 2007 by Merritt Ruhlen ! Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greenberg, Joseph H. Ruhlen, Merritt An Amerind Etymological Dictionary Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Amerind Languages—Etymology—Classification. I. Title. P000.G0 2007 000!.012 00-00000 ISBN 0-0000-0000-0 (alk. paper) This book is dedicated to the Amerind people, the first Americans Preface The present volume is a revison, extension, and refinement of the evidence for the Amerind linguistic family that was initially offered in Greenberg (1987). This revision entails (1) the correction of a number of forms, and the elimination of others, on the basis of criticism by specialists in various Amerind languages; (2) the consolidation of certain Amerind subgroup etymologies (given in Greenberg 1987) into Amerind etymologies; (3) the addition of many reconstructions from different levels of Amerind, based on a comprehensive database of all known reconstructions for Amerind subfamilies; and, finally, (4) the addition of a number of new Amerind etymologies presented here for the first time. I believe the present work represents an advance over the original, but it is at the same time simply one step forward on a project that will never be finished. M. R. September 2007 Contents Introduction 1 Dictionary 11 Maps 272 Classification of Amerind Languages 274 References 283 Semantic Index 296 Introduction This volume presents the lexical and grammatical evidence that defines the Amerind linguistic family. The evidence is presented in terms of 913 etymologies, arranged alphabetically according to the English gloss. Each etymology begins with the English gloss followed by a hypothetical phonetic form from which the individual Amerind forms are presumed to have derived. Within the body of each etymology the evidence is arrayed in terms of the thirteen branches of Amerind in a roughly north to south (or sometimes west to east) order: Almosan, Keresiouan, Penutian, Hokan, Central Amerind, Chibchan, Paezan, Andean, Equatorial, Macro-Tucanoan, Macro-Carib, Macro-Panoan, Macro-Ge. Of course not all of the etymologies presented here derive from Proto- Amerind; many are later innovations within the Amerind family and define Amerind sub-groups, but it is often difficult to distinguish the taxonomic level of each etymology because data on Amerind languages are far from complete. An example of this problem is Greenberg’s Amerind etymology 125, GIRL. Greenberg cited 17 forms from Almosan, Penutian, Hokan, and Central Amerind, some of which I have eliminated. The distribution of Greenberg’s forms could be interpreted either as an Amerind etymology whose forms never made it to South America, or as an innovation within Northern Amerind branches after the South American Amerind groups had already split off. Subsequent research has, however, clarified this issue, as can be seen in etymology 699 in this book. This etymology now contains over 800 forms and is found in all 13 branches of Amerind, leaving little doubt that it derives from Proto-Amerind. Moreover, this complex pattern was an invention of the Amerind people, and not a trait that was inherited from their Asian ancestors, for this pattern does not exist elsewhere in the world. The Amerind pronoun pattern na/ma ‘I/you’ (etymologies 399 and 781), which is widespread in Amerind and virtually absent elsewhere in the world, also almost certainly derives from Proto-Amerind, though it is not found in every branch. There is, however, another way of showing that a particular etymology derives from Proto-Amerind even though it may be found in only 2 Amerind Etymological Dictionary a few Amerind branches. If a root is found in the Old World and in Amerind, the presumption is that it was brought into the Americas with the Amerind migration and was therefore part of Proto-Amerind. Examples of such roots in this book are indicated in comments following the etymology (e.g. 53, 100, 101, 127, 137, 156, 163, 168, 172, 192, 267, 268, 272, 326, 357, 395, 796, 824). Each of the thirteen Amerind subgroups begins with the subgroup name, followed by the data from different Amerind groups (or languages) that are arranged genetically where the genetic structure is known (i.e., groups or languages closest to one another are listed side by side). The complete classification of all Amerind languages considered is given in the back of the book. Some readers will note that both Almosan-Keresiouan and Chibchan-Paezan are here broken up into their two branches, rather than treated as single branches, as in Language in the Americas. This is not to be interpreted as a retraction of the claim that Almosan and Keresiouan, and Chibchan and Paezan, are both valid higher-level taxa within the Amerind family. It is done merely as a clearer way of arraying the evidence. Furthermore, the internal structure of the Amerind family is a vastly more difficult problem than the simple delineation of the family as a whole. De- spite claims often made to the contrary, higher-level families are often much easier to discern than intermediate subgroups, as Indo-European, Austrone- sian, and Amerind all attest. This is especially important for Amerind. It is often claimed that as one goes back in time words are lost in all languages at a gradual rate so that the taxonomic picture gets dimmer and dimmer and finally turns to black. While it seems obvious to anyone that as one goes back in time things do get dimmer, it’s not true. Sometimes as one goes back in time things become more clear. The failure to understand this fundamental taxonomic principle is the source of much of the current confusion in historical linguistics. Linguistics, unlike biology, was from its inception strictly cladistic, that is, each node in a phylogenetic tree is defined by one or more innovations. However, whether such innovations develop, thus revealing the internal subgrouping of a family, depends on the rate of disintegration of that family, as illustrated in Fig. 1 on the following page. Let us assume that there is a population on island A. At some point in time part of that population moves to island B. Later part of that population moves to island C, and finally part of that population moves to island D. Let us further assume that there is no further contact between these populations. The correct phylogenetic tree will then be as in 1a and many historical lin- guists believe that F3 will be more obvious, and better supported, than F2, and F2 more obvious than F1. Whether this is true or not depends on the amount of time between the separation of the populations. Let us assume that 4 Amerind Etymological Dictionary some people on island A moved to B on Monday, then part of that population to C on Tuesday and part of that population to D on Wednesday, and then 500 years pass. Under these circumstances the phylogenetic tree, based on linguistic evidence, will be as in 1b since there will not have been any time for innovations to develop which would distinguish F2 and F3. The language on each island would have been identical at the start and each would have then gone its own way, in a process similar to genetic drift. If, however, the time of the separations was 500 years, not one day, then both F2 and F3 will be well defined by innovations that have accumulated during those 500 years. In both scenarios, however, F1 will be well defined by those words that have been preserved on islands A, B, C, and D. Thus, whether the intermediate nodes can be identified or not depends on the rate of separation. With a rapid disintegration it is only the highest level node that will be clear, the intermediate nodes often being unclear or even invisi- ble. An example of this principle is the initial peopling of the Americas by the Amerind family. Archaeological evidence indicates that the initial peopling of the New World was a very rapid migration that filled two empty continents with people in 1,000 years. Under these circumstances it is the highest level node—Proto-Amerind—that will be the most obvious, as the n/m pronoun pattern (see etymolgies 399 and 781) and the t’ina/t’ana/t’una root (see etymology 699) clearly show, as does the rest of this dictionary. In fact, the t’ina/t’ana/t’una etymology itself gives linguistic support for the rapid ex- pansion through all of North and South America because this entire complex system can be reconstructed on the South American evidence as well as on the North American evidence, indicating that the entire system made it in- tact into South America before breaking up, as it has in all extent Amerind languages. There is also genetic evidence that the Americas were peopled by a small population in a short period of time. Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1988) found in their seminal work on the genetic structure of human populations that New World populations were divided into the same three groups that Greenberg had identified on linguistic evidence: Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. However, subsequent research on the correlation of genes and language within Amerind often found virtually no correlation at all. Does this mean that genes and languages do not correlate after all? Not at all. What it shows is genetic drift at work. When small populations break up into even smaller populations the distribution of genes can diverge radically in any direction, thus quickly obscuring the original unity and making subgrouping difficult, or impossible, to discern.

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