Michael J Smith:
>Does anyone know if it's possible that Indo-European has a
>common origin with the Uralic and Altaic languages way in the
>past and with Kartvellian or any Caucasian languages?
Yes, it is possible but everyone's views on "possible" will
naturally be different.
In regards to the relationship of IE with just Uralic or Altaic,
you will find greater acceptance that the possibility is real.
Afterall, even an amateur linguist can see commonalities in the
pronouns and it seems unlikely that these words were simply
borrowed from one or the other. There are other similarities
in grammar and vocabulary that make many suspect that there is
some truth to a connection.
As for a relationship between IE and Kartvelian, there is
less to go on, and as a result, there is less acceptance in
the possibility of a link. Assuming they _are_ related, a
common ancestor of these two would have to be much older than
that for IE, Uralic and Altaic.
As for the other "Caucasian languages", you must keep it
straight in your head that there are major differences between
"South Caucasian" (referred to as "Kartvelian"), "NorthWest
Caucasian" (aka "Abkhaz-Adyghe") and "NorthEast Caucasian"
(aka "Nakh-Daghestinian"). There is a better chance of
Kartvelian being related to IE than of any other language groups
found in the Caucasus by far.
It seems that your question dances around the issue of
"Nostratic". It is the theory that attempts to link IE, Uralic,
Altaic and Kartvelian (among others) together into a larger
macro-family. Proto-Nostratic would have been spoken around
15,000 BCE after the last ice age. Please note, that this theory
is still tentative and can be thought of as "The Wild, Wild West"
of comparative linguistics at this point in time.
There are some brief descriptions of the Nostratic theory online.
One is here (scroll down):
http://www.webcom.com/petrich/writings/NostraticRefs.txt
Also, become familiar with the works of Vladislav Illich-Svitych,
Aaron Dolgopolsky, Joseph Greenberg, John C Kerns and Allan R
Bomhard. Note that Greenberg's conclusions in particular are
largely criticized because of his unprofessional "mass comparison"
technique. These authors will give you a healthy overview of the
Nostratic theory as a whole, of the differing opinions on the
proto-language, and the issues they face in gaining acceptance
in more "mainstream" linguistics.
- gLeN
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