Yok-Utian languages
While connections between Yokuts and Utian languages were noticed through attempts to reconstruct their proto-languages in 1986,[1] it was not until 1991 that Yok-Utian was proposed and named by Geoffrey Gamble.[2][3] Yok-Utian has been further supported by Catherine Callaghan, who has argued for the family's existence on the basis of lexical, morphological, and phonological similarities between the reconstructed proto-languages.The language that remained in the Great Basin turned into Proto-Yokuts before gradually splitting into the various Yokuts dialects and only later began to migrate into California.[2] However, Scott DeLancey and Victor Golla have proposed that the language distribution could be the result of a single migration of Yok-Utian speakers who later spread out throughout California.[2][3][4] As the speakers of the Yokuts and Utian languages were in contact with one another for hundreds or thousands of years, it is entirely possible that the sound correspondences are the result of borrowing, rather than a common linguistic ancestor.