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 -----
From: Alexander Stolbov
To: nostratic@yahoogroups.com
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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