Re: Re[4]: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

Michael:

>Isn't there even a theory put forth by some linguists that all
>languages can be traced back to Uralic?

Never heard of it but it's definitely flawed in principle so I'd
ignore it and move on. One could say that "some linguists" think
anything. It doesn't mean it's right. That's where the ol'
noggin' comes in -- Question everything you learn.

>ANd would it be safe to say that Indo-European, Altaic, and Uralic are
>closer to one another than to any other language families (that we know of)
>?

It certainly appears that way. There are also the Tyrrhenian
languages like Etruscan and Lemnian which may be particularly
close to Indo-European. That is to say, they are non-IE but
quite IE-like because of certain uncanny features. One of them
is the genitive in *s (which Uralic and Altaic don't have).

>The problem seems to be "genetic gaps." we have evidence of
>Indo-European languages and Uralic languages, but no "missing
>link" language groups between them,

I already mentioned Tyrrhenian as a possibility.


- gLeN


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