In addition to its use by social scientists to refer (broadly) to the various indigenous languages of The Americas, the term Amerind languages may controversially refer to one of the three families in Joseph H. Greenberg's classification of all Native American languages—the other two being Na-Dene and Eskimo_Aleut. Most modern linguists agree, however, that there is not enough evidence to theorize a single Amerind language family, and instead classify these languages into many smaller families.
See also
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
References
Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987) Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Amerind is one of the three main families in Joseph Greenberg's controversial classification of all Native American languages, obtained by his mass lexical comparison method — the other two being the widely accepted Na-Dené and Eskimo-Aleut families.
Those who have reviewed his data for languages in which they have expertise typically estimate that fifty percent of the data is in error.
The term is also occasionally used to refer (broadly) to the various indigenous languages of the Americas.
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