--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:
> I've just begun looking at Burushaski and it is obviously an
> Indo-European language closely related to other Indo-Iranian
> languages and Armenian (like Khowar, Nuristani languages, etc.)
> in every vocabulary group. Why hasn't this been seen before and
> acknowledged?
I have already posted on the hypothesis of the linguistic affiliation
of Burushaski to the Macro-Caucasian (and, nore generally, the Dene-
Caucasian) super-phylum earlier on this week, but you seem to have
overlooked that post of mine. It's archived at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/53351
Read, in particular, John Bengtson's linked article, which you should
integrate with the reading of the many papers dealing with Burushaski
and its links with Basque, North Caucasian, and Yeniseian published
in the last ten years on _Mother Tongue_, the journal of the
Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP), which no
doubt represents the most advanced and productive association of long-
range comparativists the world over.
You should also take a look at the "Sino-Caucasian" database compiled
by S. Starostin, which is accessed at
http://tinyurl.com/2wke9e
This database is parental to North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan (or call
it Tibeto-Burman if you like it better), Yeniseian, Burushaski and
now also (Bengtson's) Basque databases, and does not include Na-Dene.
Re: your statement that Burushaski is closely related in vocabulary
to Indo-Iranian and Armenian: I don't know of any Armenian
connection, nor of any Nuristani (a sub-branch of Indo-Iranian) one.
What seems clear is that, starting from ancient times, Burushaski has
borrowed large parts of its vocabulary from the neighbouring Dardic
(northern Indic) languages and, more recently, from Urdu:
http://www.few.vu.nl/~dick/Summaries/Languages/Burushaski.pdf
"Due to external influences, more than half the present-day
Burushaski vocabulary is of Urdu, Khowar and Shina origin (Khowar and
Shina are two Northern Indic (Dardic) languages, closely related to
Kashmiri and, somewhat further away, to Hindi/Urdu). It is the rest
of its vocabulary and its structure that make Burushaski a language
isolate."
A definition -- "language isolate" -- that, in my layman's opinion,
should be avoided at all costs.
As to Burushaski's closer relationship with Yenisseian languages,
recently proposed by G. van Driem (and mentioned by Rick in an
earlier post):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burushaski_language
"Recently George van Driem at Leiden University revived links between
Burushaski and Yeniseian in a language family he calls Karasuk. He
believes the Burusho took part in the migration out of Central Asia
that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of the Indian sub-
continent, while other Karasuk peoples migrated northwards to become
the Yenisei."
I still haven't read van Driem's writings dealing with this new
taxonomic hypothesis, but I think the latter could well fit the long-
rangers' overall proposal of a Dene-Caucasian macro-family. On the
other hand, van Driem, a Tibeto-Burmanist by formation, is not more
trained in the study of Burushahski and Yenisseian (Siberian)
languages than Bengtson is. His hypothes, as far as I know, is still
to be evaluated by the community of (competent) historical linguists.
Conversely, not only Bengtson's "Macro-Caucasian" phylum
(encompassing Basque, North Caucasian and Burushahski) has
increasingly gained a wide acceptance among long-rangers, but
Bengtson himself, along with his colleague V. Blaz^ek, has proposed
tens of etymologies relating Burushaski to the Yeniseian languages.
Maybe the taxonomic disagreement here only concers Burushaksi's
closer or weaker affinity to Yeniseian than to North Caucasian (and,
more distantly, Basque) languages.
All in all, nothing at the present stage of linguistic research
allows one to maintain that Burushahski "is obviously an Indo-
European language"!
Kindest regards,
Francesco