Re: Burushaski

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@> wrote:
>
> > I've just begun looking at Burushaski and it is obviously an
> > Indo-European language closely related to other Indo-Iranian
> > languages and Armenian (like Khowar, Nuristani languages, etc.)
> > in every vocabulary group. Why hasn't this been seen before and
> > acknowledged?
>
>
> I have already posted on the hypothesis of the linguistic affiliation
> of Burushaski to the Macro-Caucasian (and, nore generally, the Dene-
> Caucasian) super-phylum earlier on this week, but you seem to have
> overlooked that post of mine. It's archived at
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/53351

I didn't overlook it, but once the truth is known possibilities narrow to one.

>
> Read, in particular, John Bengtson's linked article, which you should
> integrate with the reading of the many papers dealing with Burushaski
> and its links with Basque, North Caucasian, and Yeniseian published
> in the last ten years on _Mother Tongue_, the journal of the
> Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP), which no
> doubt represents the most advanced and productive association of long-
> range comparativists the world over.

From what I've seen Yenisei is related, and also IE, as well as some other Asian groups.

>
> You should also take a look at the "Sino-Caucasian" database compiled
> by S. Starostin, which is accessed at
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2wke9e
>
> This database is parental to North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan (or call
> it Tibeto-Burman if you like it better), Yeniseian, Burushaski and
> now also (Bengtson's) Basque databases, and does not include Na-Dene.
>
> Re: your statement that Burushaski is closely related in vocabulary
> to Indo-Iranian and Armenian: I don't know of any Armenian
> connection, nor of any Nuristani (a sub-branch of Indo-Iranian) one.

See message. I've previously slightly described Khowar's Arm. links.

> What seems clear is that, starting from ancient times, Burushaski has
> borrowed large parts of its vocabulary from the neighbouring Dardic
> (northern Indic) languages and, more recently, from Urdu:
>
> http://www.few.vu.nl/~dick/Summaries/Languages/Burushaski.pdf
> "Due to external influences, more than half the present-day
> Burushaski vocabulary is of Urdu, Khowar and Shina origin (Khowar and
> Shina are two Northern Indic (Dardic) languages, closely related to
> Kashmiri and, somewhat further away, to Hindi/Urdu). It is the rest
> of its vocabulary and its structure that make Burushaski a language
> isolate."

I can tell that some are borrowed, and some might be, but others of IE source show old
changes not shared by any others in the region, and the reconstructed native vocabulary
is large and shares all the same rules in my work.

What other IE language had kYu>kWu or kYw>rw for a borrowing to occur? What
preserved x- > h-, changed p > h, etc?

> A definition -- "language isolate" -- that, in my layman's opinion,
> should be avoided at all costs.
>
> As to Burushaski's closer relationship with Yenisseian languages,
> recently proposed by G. van Driem (and mentioned by Rick in an
> earlier post):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burushaski_language
> "Recently George van Driem at Leiden University revived links between
> Burushaski and Yeniseian in a language family he calls Karasuk. He
> believes the Burusho took part in the migration out of Central Asia
> that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of the Indian sub-
> continent, while other Karasuk peoples migrated northwards to become
> the Yenisei."

This is sim. to my belief, but IE instead.

>
> I still haven't read van Driem's writings dealing with this new
> taxonomic hypothesis, but I think the latter could well fit the long-
> rangers' overall proposal of a Dene-Caucasian macro-family. On the
> other hand, van Driem, a Tibeto-Burmanist by formation, is not more
> trained in the study of Burushahski and Yenisseian (Siberian)
> languages than Bengtson is. His hypothes, as far as I know, is still
> to be evaluated by the community of (competent) historical linguists.
> Conversely, not only Bengtson's "Macro-Caucasian" phylum
> (encompassing Basque, North Caucasian and Burushahski) has
> increasingly gained a wide acceptance among long-rangers, but
> Bengtson himself, along with his colleague V. Blaz^ek, has proposed
> tens of etymologies relating Burushaski to the Yeniseian languages.
> Maybe the taxonomic disagreement here only concers Burushaksi's
> closer or weaker affinity to Yeniseian than to North Caucasian (and,
> more distantly, Basque) languages.

I don't understand how the IE nature isn't obvious.

>
> All in all, nothing at the present stage of linguistic research
> allows one to maintain that Burushahski "is obviously an Indo-
> European language"!
>
> Kindest regards,
> Francesco
>

Well, I didn't mean obvious to a non-linguist, or one unfamiliar with Arm., but it's still
very surprising to me.