Re: [tied] Sino-Caucasian and Nostratic

On Mon, 17 May 2004 15:52:03 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard
Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:

>On Mon, 17 May 2004, Michael Smith wrote:
>
>>   What are opinions on this list regarding the proposed Sino-
>> Caucasian family, or Dene-Caucasian as I believe it is also known. 
>> It seems there is debate as to whether Sumerian and ChukchiKamchatkan
>> belong with Nostratic or Sino-Caucasian.
>> Or, could Eurasiatic, Sino-Caucasian (minus Sumerian and
>> ChukchiKamchatkan), Afro-Asiatic, Kartvellian, Sumerian,
>> ChukchiKamchatkan and Elamo-Dravidian all be early seperate branches
>> of SCAN?  I wonder where Eskimo-Aleut would fit into all this.
>
>For what it's worth, I believe I can see the reason to group IE together
>with Uralic, and the two together with Altaic (I also believe my
>amateurish acquaintance with Altaic languages confirm that Altaic is in
>fact a genetic unit), and the lot together with Eskimo-Aleut and
>apparently also Chukchi-Kamtchatkan. Those who know say they can see the
>relationship with Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian and Dravidian also, and
>Bomhard's etymologies seem to confirm this. Waiting in the wings are Nivkh
>which may be hooked on to the IE-Ur-Alt-ChK-EA line, and Sumerian which is
>perhaps just a relative of it all.

I agree completely. I'm perhaps somewhat more confident
about Afro-Asiatic and Kartvelian (but I haven't looked at
Dravidian enough to be sure). I would add Etruscan, as far
as it's known, and Yukaghir. The Basque personal pronouns
are virtually identical (in the singular) with the
Afro-Asiatic ones, so I'm pretty sure Basque belongs here
too, although the details of a how the rest of Basque
grammar ties in with Nostratic still remain a bit unclear.

>That is the picture I have at the moment, but I have not looked seriously
>at the alternatives, i.e. what degree of similarity one perceives between
>a member of Nostratic and a member of Sino-Caucasian, or between elements
>reconstructed for the two superprotolanguages. It would ne interesting if
>anybody could give us an impression of the degrees of closeness involved
>in this overall classiffication.

I've seen a number of Caucasian etymologies (Starostin)
which are quite similar to words found in Nostratic
(Illich-Svitych, Bomhard), so in principle I'm not opposed
to a connection between Nostratic and (NE/NW) Caucasian.
But to get beyond the stage of looking for look-alike words,
I would have to see something like a comparative grammar of
the NE or NW Caucasian languages, which I haven't (and
possibly doesn't exist).

I discovered some striking resemblances between the
Sino-Tibetan, NW and NE Caucasian numerals some 10 years
ago, but that doesn't decide the issue whether the
connection is one of borrowing (on the assumption that NW/NE
Caucasian occupied the Western part and Sino-Tibetan the
Eastern part of the Eurasiatic steppe), or a genetic one.

I don't know anything about Na-Dene, except that its
existence (Haida, Tlingit) is disputed.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...