The name Penutian is based on the words meaning "two" in the Wintuan, Maiduan, and Yokutsan languages and the Utian languages. Although perhaps originally intended to be pronounced, which is indicated in some dictionaries, the term is pronounced by most if not all linguists.
Initial concept of five core families
The original Penutian hypothesis, offered in 1913 by Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber, was based on similarities observed between five California language families listed below.
That original proposal has since been called alternately Core Penutian, California Penutian, or the Penutian Kernel. In 1919 the same two authors published their linguistic evidence for the proposal. The grouping, like many of Dixon & Kroeber's other phylum proposals, was based mostly on shared typological characteristics and not the standard methods used to determine genetic relationships. Starting from this early date, the Penutian hypothesis was controversial. Prior to the 1913 Penutian proposal of Dixon and Kroeber, Albert S. Gatschet had grouped Miwokan and Costanoan into a Mutsun group. That grouping, now termed Utian, was later conclusively demonstrated by Catherine Callaghan. In 1903 Dixon & Kroeber noted a "positive relationship" among Costanoan, Maidu, Wintun, and Yokuts within a "Central or Maidu Type", from which they excluded Miwokan. In 1910 Kroeber finally recognized the close relationship between the Miwokan and Costanoan languages.
Sapir's expansion
In 1916 Edward Sapir expanded Dixon and Kroeber's California Penutian family with a sister stock, Oregon Penutian, which included the Coosan languages and also the isolatesSiuslaw and Takelma: Later Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg added the Kalapuyan and the Chinookan languages and then later the Alsean and Tsimshianic families, culminating in Sapir's four-branch classification : By the time Sapir's 1929 Encyclopædia Britannica article was published, he had added two more branches: resulting in a six-branch family:
California Penutian
Oregon Penutian
Chinookan
Tsimshianic
Plateau Penutian
Mexican Penutian
Further expansions
Other linguists have suggested other languages be included within the Penutian grouping:
Macro-Penutian hypothesis
Or have produced hypotheses of relationships between Penutian and other large-scale families:
Note: Some linguists link the Penutian hypothesis to the Zuni language. This link, proposed by Stanley Newman, is now generally rejected, and may have even been intended as a hoax by Newman.
Mid-twentieth century doubts
Scholars in the mid-twentieth century became concerned that similarities among the proposed Penutian language families may be the result of borrowing that occurred among neighboring peoples, not of a shared proto-language in the distant past. Mary Haas states the following regarding this borrowing:
Even where genetic relationship is clearly indicated... the evidence of diffusion of traits from neighboring tribes, related or not, is seen on every hand. This makes the task of determining the validity of the various alleged Hokan languages and the various alleged Penutian languages all the more difficult... point up once again that diffusional studies are just as important for prehistory as genetic studies and what is even more in need of emphasis, it points up the desirability of pursuing diffusional studies along with genetic studies. This is nowhere more necessary than in the case of the Hokan and Penutian languages wherever they may be found, but particularly in California where they may very well have existed side by side for many millennia.
Despite the concern of Haas and others, the Consensus Classification produced at a 1964 conference in Bloomington, Indiana, retained all of Sapir's groups for North America north of Mexico within the Penutian Phylum. The opposite approach was taken following a 1976 conference at Oswego, New York, when Campbell and Mithun dismissed the Penutian phylum as undemonstrated in their resulting classification of North American language families.
Consensus was reached at a 1994 workshop on Comparative Penutian at the University of Oregon that the families within the proposed phylum's California, Oregon, Plateau, and Chinookan clusters would eventually be shown to be genetically related. Subsequently, Marie-Lucie Tarpent reassessed Tsimshianic, a geographically isolated family in northern British Columbia, and concluded that its affiliation within Penutian is also probable. Earlier groupings, such as California Penutian and Takelma–Kalapuyan are no longer accepted as valid nodes by many Penutian researchers. However, Plateau Penutian, Coast Oregon Penutian, and Yok-Utian are increasingly supported. Scott DeLancey suggests the following relationships within and among language families typically assigned to the Penutian phylum:
The Wintuan languages, Takelma, and Kalapuya, absent from this list, continue to be considered Penutian languages by most scholars familiar with the subject, often in an Oregonian branch, though Takelma and Kalapuya are no longer considered to define a branch of Penutian.
Evidence for the Penutian hypothesis
Perhaps because many Penutian languages have ablaut, vowels are difficult to reconstruct. However, consonant correspondences are common. For example, the proto-Yokuts retroflexes correspond to Klamath , whereas the Proto-Yokuts dental correspond to Klamath alveolar. Kalapuya, Takelma, and Wintu do not show such obvious connections, and DeLancey has not investigated Mexican Penutian or other geographic outliers. Below are some Penutian sound correspondence proposed by William Shipley, cited in Campbell.
