Alan Bomhard Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis, Charleston, S. C., Signum Desktop Publishing, 1996.

See
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/ProtoLanguage-Bibliography.htm
http://www.mega.nu:8080/protolanguage/comparison.SUMERIAN.5_bibliography.htm

...

the following is written:

[start of quote]
Book: Indo-European & the Nostratic Hypothesis (Studia Nostratica Series)
Allan R. Bomhard

"TOWARDS THE MOTHER TONGUE"
"BACK TO THE MOTHER TONGUE"
"Hard to tell fact from fiction"
Customer Reviews


Rating: 5 Stars - TOWARDS THE MOTHER TONGUE
This exhaustive study includes a vocabulary of more than 650 common Nostratic stems, which are to
be found in all or most of the families of the Nostratic macrofamily, eg. Indo-European,
Uralic-Yukaghir, Kartvelian, Eskimo-Aleut etc etc as well as Sumerian. History of research and
methodology are presented, followed by a survey of the Nostratic languages and discussions of
the development of the phonological systems of the Indo-European parent and daughter languages,
plus developments in IE's sister languages. Indo-European and Nostratic are then compared by phonology
and morphology, proving the truth of the Glottalic Theory of IE via Nostratic reconstruction. The
fascinating chapter 6 investigates a Nostratic homeland and the dispersal of the daughter languages,
based on archaeology. The work of Aaron Dolgopolsky, John C Kerns and Henrik Birnbaum is quoted at
length, and the author's conclusion is that the Nostratic language with its Mesolithic culture had
its origin in or near the Fertile crescent just south of the Caucasus, 15 000 to 12 000 before the
current era. There are 9 maps indicating inter alia the Nostratic and IE homelands and the dispersal
of these languages plus the spread of agriculture from 8 000 bce to 5 000 bce. The next chapter deals
with problem areas and future prospects and includes discussions on Altaic, Etruscan, and Sumerian.
Finally, the common Nostratic roots are presented, including new material and replacements of existing
etymologies. There is a vast bibliography, a chart of the macrofamily and tables of personal pronoun,
demonstrative pronoun, relative and interrogative stems. This is a brilliant work and will be of great
value to all who are interested in human origins and prehistory. Also check out the work of Joseph
Greenberg, Meritt Ruhlen, Alan Bomhard, Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza, Marija Gimbutas and Colin Renfrew.


Rating: 5 Stars - BACK TO THE MOTHER TONGUE
This exhaustive study includes a vocabulary of more than 650 common Nostratic stems, which are to
be found in all or most of the families of the Nostratic macrofamily, eg. Indo-European, Uralic-Yukaghir,
Kartvelian, Eskimo-Aleut etc etc as well as Sumerian. History of research and methodology are presented,
followed by a survey of the Nostratic languages and discussions of the development of the phonological
systems of the Indo-European parent and daughter languages, plus developments in IE's sister languages.
Indo-European and Nostratic are then compared by phonology and morphology, proving the truth of the
Glottalic Theory of IE via Nostratic reconstruction. The fascinating chapter 6 investigates a Nostratic
homeland and the dispersal of the daughter languages, based on archaeology. The work of Aaron Dolgopolsky,
John C Kerns and Henrik Birnbaum is quoted at length, and the author's conclusion is that the Nostratic
language with its Mesolithic culture had its origin in or near the Fertile crescent just south of the
Caucasus, 15 000 to 12 000 before the current era. There are 9 maps indicating inter alia the Nostratic
and IE homelands and the dispersal of these languages plus the spread of agriculture from 8 000 bce to
5 000 bce. The next chapter deals with problem areas and future prospects and includes discussions on
Altaic, Etruscan, and Sumerian. Finally, the common Nostratic roots are presented, including new material
and replacements of existing etymologies. There is a vast bibliography, a chart of the macrofamily and
tables of personal pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, relative and interrogative stems. This is a brilliant
work and will be of great value to all who are interested in human origins and prehistory. Also check
out the work of Joseph Greenberg, Meritt Ruhlen and Patrick C Ryan's intriguing website:....


Rating: 1 Stars - Hard to tell fact from fiction
This is an abridged and much cheaper version of Bomhard & Kerns' 1994 book "The Nostratic Macrofamily :
A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship". In particular, the "Comparative Vocabulary" of 523 pages
has been reduced to 63 by removing all attested reflexes and listing only the reconstructed proto-forms
for each language family. This, however, deprives the book of any practical interest it might have had,
because the validity or not of any alleged proto-form can only be judged with an eye on the attested
words of the daughter languages on the basis of which it has been hypothesized. In short, readers are
given no indication as to whether they are reading fact of fiction, In addition, Bomhard's method is
at best controversial; his assertion that chance resemblances between languages "seldom add up to more
than a handful of examples" (17) is severly mistaken. See review by Sidwell in Diachronica 15, 341-348 (1998).
[end of quote]

You can still buy the larger The Nostratic Macrofamily at
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3110139006/booksnewasin/302-2234136-6596818



--
Mark Hubey
hubeyh@...
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey