Neither. The Nostratic hypothesis and the Eurasiatic hypothesis are two alternative, though partly similar relationship proposals.

The classic version of the Nostratic hypothesis (that of the "Moscow school", and more or less accepted by Bomhard) groups together Indo-European, Uralic (with Yukaghir), Kartvelian, Altaic (= Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Korean and Japanese), Dravidian (or "Elamo-Dravidian", a dubious grouping), and Afroasiatic. Some Nostraticists make Sumerian a member too.

As far as I recall, Greenberg and Ruhlen's Eurasiatic originally overlapped Nostratic as defined above but excluded Dravidian, Kartvelian and Afroasiatic, while including Nivkh (a.k.a. Gilyak) and Ainu. Since then, Etruscan, Chukchee-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut have been included as well, and Ruhlen also treats Elamo-Dravidian as the most divergent branch of Eurasiatic, while leaving Afroasiatic outside as a more distantly related sister group to Eurasiatic.

Of course both proposals can't be right at the same time (while it's possible that both are wrong ;-)), and there are also a number of compromise solutions that combine elements of both hypotheses.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geraldine Reinhardt" <waluk@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 8:21 PM
Subject: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?


Question for Glen or Piotr,

Should Nostratic be viewed as the parent or a derivative of Eurasiatic?

Gerry