My questions were very simple Danny.  Why did you ignore them?
 
Gerry
----- Original Message -----
From: Danny Wier
To: nostratic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: [nostratic] Proposal of a name for a possible family

Well it's much more Bomhard proposing than me proposing.  (I just split Afro-Asiatic into North and South branches, added "Boreanesian", and combined Chuk-Kam and Esk-Aleut.)  You got it right; it's basically those four or five first-order branches.  Afro-Asiatic (or Afrasian) is about on the same level as Eurasiatic and both comprise of a large number of languages.

As for Afro-Eurasiatic, that would seem to be an alternate name for Nostratic, as it would have to include Kartvelian and Sumero-Elamo-Dravidian. You know, that's not a bad name at all; it would communicate the tri-continental nature of the superfamily!

About Sumerian: Bomhard does link Sumerian with Elamo-Dravidian as a paired branch.  The exact family tree given by Bomhard (this will look much better with a monospaced font at 10 pt with an 800x600 or finer resolution):

          | Afroasiatic
          |             | Sumerian
NOSTRATIC |      | ---- |
          |      |      | Elamo-Dravidian                   | Indo-European
          | ---- |                        | Kartvelian      |
                 |                        |                 | Uralic-Yukaghir
                 | ---------------------- |                 |
                                          |                 | Altaic
                                          | EURASIATIC ---- |
                                                            | Chukchi-Kamchatkan
                                                            |
                                                            | Gilyak
                                                            |
                                                            | Eskimo-Aleut

Notice that Etruscan is not included; he does discuss this in a chapter (as well as Sumerian and Altaic).

Glen in his webpages also adds Basque-Aquitanian, as a VERY distant relative.  Others place it in another megafamily: Sino-Caucasian (or a wider and more ambitious variant: Dene-Caucasian).

I don't have Illich-Svytich handy.  Dolgopolsky has something simlar to that shown above.

~DaW~

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, 22 September, 2001 17:47
Subject: Re: [nostratic] Proposal of a name for a possible family

What you and Bomhard propose is:
 
-Afro-Asiatic
-Kartvelian
-Elamite-Darvidian
-Sumerian
-Eurasiatic
 
Question:  Cannot Afro-Asiatic and Eurasiatic combine to produce Afro-Eurasiatic?
 
Thusly:
 
-Afro-Eurasiatic
-Kartvelian
-Elamite-Dravidian
-Sumerian
 
Your analogy of language classification to a cracked windshield is good.  Alekseev always said that all languages are related even at the earliest of dates.  And why is Sumerian in a category all by itself?  Isn't it related to Elamite-Dravidian?
 
Gerry


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