Fig. 14. Some important linguistic families of North America: 1, Eskimo; 2, Athabascan; 3, Algonkin; 4, Iroquoian; 5, Siouan; 6, Muskogean; 7, Uto-Aztecan; 8, Mayan. SA1, Arawak, No. 1 on South American map ([Fig. 15]). SA8, Chibcha, No. 8 on South American map. The white areas are occupied by nearly seventy smaller families, according to the classification usually accepted.
North and South America, according to the usual reckoning, contain more native language families than all the remainder of the world. The orthodox classification allots about seventy-five families to North America (some fifty of them represented within the borders of the United States) and another seventy-five to South America. They varied greatly in size at the time of discovery, some being confined to a few hundred souls, whereas others stretched through tribe after tribe over enormous areas. Their distribution is so irregular and their areas so disproportionate as to be impossible of vivid representation except on a large-scale map in colors. The most important in extent of territory, number of speakers, or the cultural importance of the nations adhering to them, are, in North America, Eskimo, Athabascan, Algonkin, Iroquoian, Muskogean, Siouan, Uto-Aztecan, Maya; and in South America, Chibcha, Quechua, Aymara, Araucanian, Arawak, Carib, Tupi, Tapuya. It will be seen on the maps (Figs. [14], [15]) that these sixteen groups held the greater part of the area of the double continent, the remaining smaller areas being crowded with about ten times as many stocks. Obviously, as in New Guinea, there cannot well have been such an original multiplicity; in fact, recent studies are tending to consolidate the hundred and fifty New World families into considerably fewer groups. But the evidence for such reductions is necessarily difficult to bring and much of it is still incomplete. The stocks mentioned above have been long determined and generally accepted.
About a third of humanity to-day speaks some form of Indo-European. A quarter talks some dialect of Sinitic stock. Semitic, Dravidian, Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu have each from about fifty to a hundred million speakers. The languages included in these eight families form the speech of approximately ninety per cent of living human beings.
51. Classification of Languages by Types
A classification is widely prevalent which puts languages according to their structure into three types: inflective, agglutinating, and isolating. To this some add a fourth type, the polysynthetic or incorporating. While the classification is largely misrepresentative, it enters so abundantly into current thought about human speech that it is worth presenting, analyzing, and, so far as it is invalid, refuting.
Fig. 15. Some important linguistic families of South America: 1, Arawak; 2, Carib; 3, Tapuya; 4, Tupi; 5, Araucanian; 6, Aymara; 7, Quechua (Inca); 8, Chibcha. The white areas are occupied by about seventy smaller families, according to the usually accepted classification. (Based on Chamberlain.)