Re: [tied] Sino-Caucasian and Nostratic

Miquel, I've never heard that Basque and NE and NW Caucasian might
be part of Nostratic, but these are part of the proposed Sino-
Caucasian macrofamily. So do you see these as well as Sumerian and
Chukchi-Kamchatkan being more likely placed with Nostratic than with
Sino-Tibetan and the other proposed families in Sino-Caucasian?

Or could Nostratic, Sino-Caucasian and Na-Dene be three branches of
an earlier macrofamily?

-Michael

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> 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@...