Pericú language

Pericú
Region Baja California
Ethnicity Pericú
Extinct before 1800
unclassified
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog peri1250[1]
Pericú was spoken to the south and east of Guaycura

Pericú is the extinct and essentially unattested language of the Pericú people who lived at the southern tip of Baja California. Jesuit missionaries recognized it as distinct from Waikuri (Guaycura) immediately to the north. It was spoken in the mountainous area around the mission of San José del Cabo, on the southeastern coast from Santiago to La Paz, and on the islands off the east coast as far north as Isla San José.

Data is extremely limited, amounting to only four words and ten place names.

Classification

Massey (1949) suggested a connection with Waikuri. However, with the benefit of several decades of subsequent research, Laylander (1997) and Zamponi (2004) conclude that the languages were unrelated. The Pericú may have shared with the Waikuri distinctive physical characteristics such as small bodies and dolichocephalic crania (long-headedness). Those physical characteristics set them apart from most other Native Americans and are consistent with the theory that they were an ancient people and their language was a language isolate of ancient origin.[2]

Toponyms

Attested toponyms are:[3]

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Pericú". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ Golla, Victor (2011), California Indian Languages, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 240
  3. ↑ León-Portilla 1976; "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2002-07-16. Retrieved 2002-07-16.

Bibliography

  • Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian Languages.
  • Laylander, Don. 1997. "The linguistic prehistory of Baja California". In Contributions to the Linguistic Prehistory of Central and Baja California, edited by Gary S. Breschini and Trudy Haversat, pp. 1–94. Coyote Press, Salinas, California.
  • Massey, William C. 1949. "Tribes and languages of Baja California". Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 5:272-307.
  • Zamponi, Raoul. 2004. "Fragments of Waikuri (Baja California)". Anthropological Linguistics 46:156-193.
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