Re: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

From: Gerry
Message: 19853
Date: 2003-03-16

Piotr,

Here are a few compromise solutions for Nostratic (taken from the internet):

Nostratic is a highly controversial language "super-family" that putatively links multiple different language families. As a term, "Nostratic" is difficult to pin down, as its proponents are unable to agree on the set of language families they believe should be included. Some of the proposed matings are:

  1. Indo-European, Dravidian, Mongolian, South Caucasian, Tungusic, Turkic, Uralic, and perhaps Afro-Asiatic.
  2. Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Sumerian, Uralic, Altaic, Elamo-Dravidian, and Kartvelian.

Joseph H. Greenberg has also proposed the similar Eurasiatic Hypothesis, which combines Indo-European, Sumerian, Uralic, Altaic, Elamo-Dravidian, Kartvelian, Ainu, Japanese and some eastern Siberian languages to form a supposed macrofamily.

Based on the lectures by Valery P. Alexeev, I have constructed the following Nostratic Mega Family:

-- Indo-European, Semitic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Uralo-Altaic (including Athapaskan), Yukaghirian, Euroasiatic, Austronesian and Paleoasiatic/Eskaleut.

[please note that this listing places both Yukaghirian and Athapaskan into Uralo-Altaic and connects Ainu to Altaic].

Is this listing now complete?

Gerry

----- Original Message -----

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

Neither. The Nostratic hypothesis and the Eurasiatic hypothesis are two alternative, though partly similar relationship proposals.

The classic version of the Nostratic hypothesis (that of the "Moscow school", and more or less accepted by Bomhard) groups together Indo-European, Uralic (with Yukaghir), Kartvelian, Altaic (= Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Korean and Japanese), Dravidian (or "Elamo-Dravidian", a dubious grouping), and Afroasiatic. Some Nostraticists make Sumerian a member too.

As far as I recall, Greenberg and Ruhlen's Eurasiatic originally overlapped Nostratic as defined above but excluded Dravidian, Kartvelian and Afroasiatic, while including Nivkh (a.k.a. Gilyak) and Ainu. Since then, Etruscan, Chukchee-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut have been included as well, and Ruhlen also treats Elamo-Dravidian as the most divergent branch of Eurasiatic, while leaving Afroasiatic outside as a more distantly related sister group to Eurasiatic.

Of course both proposals can't be right at the same time (while it's possible that both are wrong ;-)), and there are also a number of compromise solutions that combine elements of both hypotheses.

Piotr