Zuni language

Zuni, or Ashiwi, is a language isolate spoken by over 4500 people in New Mexico and much smaller numbers in parts of Arizona. It is now generally considered a language isolate. The Encyclopedia Britannica categorizes it as a Penutian language, and Bertha Dutton [1] Archived 2006-11-01 at the Wayback Machine once posed the hypothetical that according to the Swadesh list, "If the Zuni language is a member of the Penutian language family, then it is a distant relative of the Tanoan languages (Tewi)." The Penutian Hypothesis [2] was advanced by Alfred Kroeber and Roland B. Dixon [3] Archived 2006-08-31 at the Wayback Machine and later refined by Edward Sapir, and was an attempt to reduce the number of unrelated language families in a culturally diverse area that was centered in California central coast. While this theory was plausible for some of the languages, the problem of verification of this theory was that to find any evidence of any cognates between the California languages and Zuni, one would possibly have to trace the languages' lineage by as much as 3000–5000 years or more.

A bibliography of books and articles concerning the Zuni language lists items dealing with syntax and semantics, as does Zuni Curtis D. Cook's article and the work of Stanley Newman. Others, such as Ruth Bunzel's Pueblo Pottery and Jane M. Young's[4] Archived 2007-07-03 at the Wayback Machine book on Rock Art, are important in the study of pragmatics and the Zuni World View [5] as it is reflected in the Zuni language. The Zuni worldview may properly be considered as a study in orthology. The form and function of design images and pictographic rock art images and their interpretation according to Zuni mythology or cosmology sufficed as a form of communication prior to the appearance of a written language.

The Zuni Enigma, by Nancy Yaw Davis [6] Archived 2006-07-18 at the Wayback Machine offers a comparative of cognates between the Zuni language and another language isolate; the Japanese language. While speculative, it demonstrates a likeness between the Zuni and Japanese languages that is more compelling than that of the Penutian Hypothesis. Dell Hymes offers information on California languages where one can form a comparative of certain Zuni words to the languages of California, e.g.Wintu, Maidu, Miwok, and may have relevance to studies of the Pueblo Peoples, the Pecos Classification, and the Hohokam. Also important are the books on and by Frank Hamilton Cushing. He was the first anthropologist to undertake studies by means of the method of Participant observation, and became a member of the Zuni's Priesthood of the Bow during his tenure at the Pueblo from 1879-1884. Of special interest in regard to the Zuni language is his correspondences edited by Jesse Green, and their relevance to the Zuni language as it reflects their world view.