Re: Origin of Sanskrit (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:

> I grossly conflated both main macro-comparative affiliations for
> Sino-Tibeto-Burman - Dene-Caucasian and (IMHO much more
> trustworthy) South-East Asian - into one; sorry for that, I realize
> to have over-simplified the subject.

AFAIK, the only long-range linguist who hypothesized a genetic relationship of Dene-Caucasian and Austric, forming a taxonomic node called "Dene-Daic" (which would have split into two macro-families, i.e Dene-Caucasian and Austric, at circa 10,000 BCE), is the late S. Starostin -- see p. 309 at

http://www.eastling.org/paper/Driem.pdf

The so-called "Borean" language mega-phylum, in its latest taxonomic formulations, would include: 1) Dene-Caucasian (Basque, Starostin's problematic North Caucasian macrofamily, Burushaski, Yenisseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na-Dene); 2)Nostratic (or, alternatively, Greenberg's Eurasiatic); 3) Benedict's Austro-Thai macrofamily or, alternatively, Schmidt's Austric one. Yet, Harold Fleming's original "Borean" model did not include Austroasiatic and Austronesian -- see at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borean_languages

> Kuzmina's nice book is, for what we can know, a satisfactorily
> argument for Indo-Iranianness of BMAC, provided this is still just
> inclusive, by no means necessarily exclusive.

If you read Kuz'mina's book in detail you will realize she adheres to Mallory's "Kulturkugel" paradigm according to which the language(s) of the BMAC (originally non-IE) wouls have been replaced by Indo-Iranian only in the latest phase of that Central Asian civilization. Following the work of other scholars, she hypothesizes the BMAC people(s) may have spoken languages related to Elamite or even to the Dravidian family. However, Witzel has made a case for a Macro-Caucasian affiliation of the language(s) spoken in the BMAC area during the Bronze Age.

Kind regards,
Francesco