Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A language phylum of North and Central America that includes Ute, Hopi, Nahuatl, and Shoshone.
- n. A tribe speaking a Uto-Aztecan language.
- n. A member of such a tribe.
- adj. Of or relating to the Uto-Aztecans or to the languages spoken by them.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A linguistic family of North American languages, which, according to certain authors, includes the languages grouped by others under the three separate families Shoshonean, Piman, and Nahuatlecan. The relationship between these three groups is at least very distant.
Wiktionary
- n. A certain Native American language family including a large number of geographically distant languages such as Hopi, Nahuatl (Aztec) and Comanche.
- adj. Of or pertaining to Uto-Aztecan.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a family of American Indian languages
Etymologies
- From Uto- (a combining form of Ute) and Aztecan (Aztec + -an). (Wiktionary)
- From Ute + Aztec. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Some languages, such as Comanche, an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by Native Americans in the United States, or Livonian, a Uralic language used in Latvia, today claim fewer than two hundred speakers.”
“And before the Spanish arrived, the Uto-Aztecan and Athapascan linguistic and cultural groups dominated this area, and there are still quite a few people who speak languages from those groups in the area.”
“In the final analysis, however, nearly all experts agree that the Uto-Aztecan trunk is a widespread language grouping, boasting a tremendous diversity of language families spread over a large area.”
“On the other hand, if one observes the locations of the indigenous people who spoke the Uto-Aztecan languages, all of their lands lay to the northwest of the Valley of Mexico.”
“The Aztecs and other Náhuatl-speaking indigenous peoples of Mexico all belong to the Uto-Aztecan Linguistic Group.”
“The Náhuatl language, classified in the Nahuan group of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages, is unrelated to most Mesoamerican native languages.”
“Studying and understanding who speak these languages and where they live provides us with clues in determining the path of the Uto-Aztecan people through the Southwest U.S. and Mexico.”
“The Northern Uto-Aztecans are best known as the "Great Basin peoples," and the majority of them belong to the Numic subdivision of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages.”
“SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) states that there are sixty-two existing Uto-Aztecan languages spread throughout the U.S.,”
“Studies in historical linguistics have analyzed the Uto-Aztecan tongues - and the Náhuatl language in particular - have determined that Náhuatl was actually not native to central Mexico.”
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