Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
In 1859, Johann Karl Buschmann, a German philologist, correctly identified all the then-known Uto-Aztecan languages as forming a family. In 1883 a French philologist, Hyacinthe de Charencey, divided Uto-Aztecan into Oregonian (=Shoshonean) and Mexican (=Sonoran), and, in 1891, in the United States, anthropologist Daniel Brinton recognized Shoshonean and...
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