>I am a little surprized because you write as much about Uralo-
>altaic, and nothing abvout Uralic-Indoeuropean.
Personally, I think Uralic is as seperate from Indo-European as
it is from Altaic. I used to think that Uralic was closely related
to Altaic, then I switched and thought Uralic was more closely
related to Indo-European. Now I've given up both ideas and I
now consider them to be representatives of three seperate
branches of Proto-Steppe (with shared areal features between
any two branches).
>Besides, there are a lot of basic gramatical elements that are
>nearly identical in both IE and U.
One of the things I've suggested is that the case systems of
IE and Uralic are mostly independent innovations. The accusative
*-m is shared alright, but the other cases are based on inherited
postpositions that have been suffixed independently in both
branches, causing some differences in usage and form.
Another thing I proposed was a penultimate accent for an earlier
stage of IE along with a loss of unstressed vowels. When we re-add
the lost vowels, particularly between initial consonant clusters
and at the end of consonant-final stems with final accentuation,
we start to see clearer connections.
- gLeN
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