Speaking as an interested
onlooker:
It seems to me that a "North Nostratic"
core group (IE, Uralic and Altaic, corresponding to Glen's "Steppe" macrofamily,
except that most Nostraticists are silent about Etruscan) is the most widely
accepted genetic unit. Dravidian has so many idiosyncratic and
hard-to-reconstruct features that various Nostraticists equivocate about its
position. I think Dolgopolsky was initially reluctant to include Dravidian in
Nostratic (notice that Greenberg excludes it, as well as Kartvelian) from
"Eurasiatic".
Alexander Vovin is sceptical about
assigning Altaic to Nostratic and treats (or at least has treated) it as a
related but separate family. It may be just a terminological problem, since he
seems to believe that Altaic is nevertheless a more promising case than AA or
Dravidian; so presumably Vovin's "Nostratic" is simply other people's
"Indo-Uralic" (assuming a really close connection between IE and
U).
As to the question "genetic or areal
affinities" -- well, that's always a problem in long-range comparison. Early
researchers, such as Møller, Cuny and Pedersen, concentrated on comparing IE
with "Hamito-Semitic". The IE/AA genetic connection is now regarded as rather
weak by most Nostraticists, and the most eye-catching correspondences between
these groups are interpreted as due to early contacts between (Proto-)Semitic
and (Proto-)IE (some also point to similar resemblances between AA and
Kartvelian). Carleton Hodge's "Lislakh Hypothesis", according to which IE and AA
(dubbed "Lisramic") are sister groups, has a small group of partisans but is
rejected by Moscow School Nostraticists as well as Bomhard and nearly all other
practitioners, and a fortiori by Greenberg and Ruhlen.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 9:41
AM
Subject: [nostratic] Internal
structure of Nostratic
I'd like to clear up for myself the internal structure of
the Nostratic
superfamily (classical composition, i.e. 6
families).
[Piotr]
> Some Nostraticists (especially Bomhard &
Kerns) consider the
> membership of Sumerian as possible, while
emphasising the loose
> relation of Afroasiatic to the rest of the
superfamily (reflecting a
> particularly ancient split).
From
other sources (Russian linguists) I also heard that Afroasiatics
relation
to other is the weakest among the 6 families.
Besides, starting from
the "Opyt sravneniya nostraticheskikh yazykov" by
Illich-Svitych the East
Nostratic subgroup (including Uralic, Altaic and
Dravidian families) is
marked out.
On the other hand some Cybalist list members consider IE
and Uralic as
especially close relatives. Is not this a geographical
instead of
"genetical" (linguistically genetical, of course) approach? Or
just a
consequence of the fact that the data on Uralic is more rich and
easier
available than the data on Dravidian or Kartvelian? (BTW, there
are
observations about special similarity between IE and Kartvelian
morphology.)
In other words, is it possible to demonstrate that Uralic
is closer related
to IE than to Dravidian or
Altaic?
Alexander
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