Aquila:
>Why do you think Uralic is nearer to EskAleut than to indoeuropean?
Some peculiar grammatical and phonological commonalities that
have already been noted by published authors.
First, accent falls consistently on the first syllable in
these languages.
There is a use of a plural in *-t as well as a special oblique
plural *-i. A third person in *sa is used a lot in these
languages. Verbs distinguish between "subjective" and "objective"
and are often conjugated according to both the subject AND the
object. Posessive suffixes, unique from verbal suffixes, occur
frequently and might be reconstructable to the Boreal stage.
Whatever three-way stop contrast we see in IE (which I presume
to originate from Proto-Steppe) has completely collapsed in
initial and final position, showing only a voiceless stop. Both
Uralic and EskAleut have similar restrictions on initial voiced
stops. Geminate stops are commonplace, probably because the stop
contrast only partially collapsed in medial position to a dual
opposition.
>I have not studied the material in details, but I find more
>similarities between Uralic and IE than between Uralic and Eskaleut.
Some of the similarities might be the result of loans into
Finno-Ugric from Indo-Iranian. There is the classic example of
IE *wodr versus Uralic *weti which I feel is not the result
of contact but which derive from an inherited verb root, *wet:-.
However, there are many differences as well. The accent system
is different in IE, being mobile, and so is the declension on a
whole aside from a couple of case suffixes. The verb system in
IE distinguishes active and mediopassive, indicative and non-
indicative, imperfect and perfect... but not subjective and
objective. The verb is also never conjugated according to both
the subject and the object. To boot, IE shows special sound
changes that do not occur in Boreal languages such as the ol'
*-t > *-s which affected, among other things, the form of the
plural. Compare IE *-(e)s to Boreal *-t, whose traces can be
found in both Uralic and EskAleut.
- gLeN
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