Mosan languages
Mosan is a hypothetical language family consisting of the Salishan, Wakashan, and Chimakuan languages of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It was proposed by Edward Sapir in 1929 in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Little evidence has been adduced in favor of such a grouping, no progress has been made in reconstructing it, and it is now thought to reflect a language area rather than a genetic relationship. The term persists outside academic linguistic literature because of Sapir's stature.
| Mosan | |
|---|---|
| (obsolete) | |
| Geographic distribution | British Columbia, Washington |
| Linguistic classification | Algonquian–Wakashan ? |
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | None |
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013) found lexical similarities between Salishan and Chimakuan. Wakashan was not included. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.