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The Amerind Personal Pronouns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Johanna Nichols  and
David A. Peterson
Johanna Nichols*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
David A. Peterson*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Johanna Nichols, Department of Slavic Languages, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2979 [johanna@uclink.berkeley.edu]
David A. Peterson, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 [daveap@garnet.berkeley.edu]
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Abstract

Personal pronouns with first person n and second person m have been claimed to be frequent in the native languages of the Americas, widespread there, and rare elsewhere, and thus to indicate genetic unity of Amerind. A controlled cross-linguistic survey shows that these pronouns have an extensive yet restricted geographical range limited to the western Americas, and that they recur (though not frequently) elsewhere around the Pacific rim. This distribution removes the strongest (and perhaps the only) evidence for genetic relatedness of Amerind. In addition, on statistical grounds the n:m paradigm fails as a diagnostic of genetic relatedness, though equally clearly it cannot be due to universals or random chance. Certain other linguistic features and one mitochondrial DNA lineage have much the same geographical and statistical distribution. Though the language families in which these features appear cannot be shown to be genetically related, the families have clearly had some shared history (the type and degree not precisely specifiable) in the distant past. The n:m pronouns reflect a single, datable, noninitial and nonterminal phase in the settlement of the Americas and are probably the best linguistic marker of that phase.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 336 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Linguistic Society of America

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