Chimuan (also Chimúan) or Yuncan (Yunga–Puruhá, Yunca–Puruhán) is a hypothetical small extinctlanguage family of northern Peru and Ecuador (inter-Andean valley).
Campbell (2012) classifies Mochica and Cañar–Puruhá each as separate language families.[1]
Mochica was one of the major languages of pre-Columbian South America. It was documented by Fernando de la Carrera and Middendorff in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively. It became extinct ca. 1950, although some people remember a few words. Adelaar & Muysken (2004) consider Mochica a language isolate for now.
Cañari and Puruhá are documented with only a few words. These two languages are usually connected with Mochica. However, as their documentation level is so low, it may not be possible to confirm this association. According to Adelaar & Muysken (2004), Jijón y Caamaño's evidence of their relationship is only a single word: Mochica nech "river", Cañari necha; based on similarities with neighboring languages, he finds a Barbacoan connection more likely.
Quingnam, possibly the same language as Lengua (Yunga) Pescadora, is sometimes taken to be a dialect of Mochica, but it is unattested, unless a list of numerals discovered in 2010 turns out to be Quingnam or Pescadora as expected. Those numerals are not, however, Mochica.
Mason (1950)
Yunca-Puruhán (Chimuan) internal classification by Mason (1950):[2]
Mason (1950) also included Atalán, which is no longer considered to be part of the Yunca-Puruhán (Chimuan) family.
Tovar (1961)
Tovar (1961),[3] partly based on Schmidt (1926),[4] adds Tallán (Sechura–Catacao) to Chimuan (which he calls Yunga-Puruhá). Tovar's (1961) classification below is cited from Stark (1972).[5]
^Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN978-3-11-025513-3.
^Tovar, Antonio (1961). Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur, pp. 162-165. Buenos Aires.
^Schmidt, Wilhelm (1926). Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde, p. 214. Heidelberg.
^ abStark, Louisa R. (1972). "Maya-Yunga-Chipayan: A New Linguistic Alignment". International Journal of American Linguistics. 38 (2): 119–135. doi:10.1086/465193. ISSN0020-7071. S2CID145380780.
Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The languages of the Andes. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-509427-5.
Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
