At 07:07 30.07.03 +0000, John wrote:

Alan Bomhard places Sumerian as a linguistic isolate firmly in the
Nostratic camp.  This would also seem to make sense when we think of
the East Arabian culture circa 7,000 BCE ultimately had links with
the Kebaran techniques of the Levant, which according to the work I
have done was the cultural "carrier" for Nostratic languages coming
from Africa.

Yep, sounds very plausible. I also noted syntacto-typologically Sumerian (as well as Elamite) fits Heine's D2 type which is prevalent in Africa with the notable exception of Khoisan (and an isolated occurrence of D1 in Ijo), lexically it partakes in some pan-Africanisms (e.g. gur "drehen", gúr "Kreis"), but that's all (macro-) areal stuff only. When I read through Ehret's reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan there hardly was anything that reminded me of Sumerian (although I enjoy the regular lecture very much as NS is an interesting family, too). Unfortunately I also found little in Sumerian that looked promising for trying some internal reconstruction.

I know Bengtson and Blazek in 1995, and Nikolaev in 1996 tried to fit Sumerian into Sino-Dene-Caucasian, along with Burushaski, Yenisean and Basque.

Yeah, also Jan Braun, actually an orientalist, but somehow his shortish monography is tragic, because instead of comparing Sumerian directly to PTB, which very conviently could have been done using Benedict's conspectus (which at least appears in his bibliography), he mainly browsed through IMSNHO dreadful (as trying to read texts with them often had me ending up with a fit of rage...) Tibetan dictionaries. A few word equations seem viable nevertheless, though that's still a far cry from an etymology, but most just discredit the approach.

Vitaly Shevoroshkin adds Etruscan to this group. It seems that it has the danger of becoming a "catch-all" for those
languages which seem to not fit into the major phyla.

Agreed. The state of the art account of Etruscan, btw, is Steinbauer, Dieter H.: Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen. (Subsidia Classica, Bd. 1) St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag 1999 (ISBN 3 - 89590 - 080 - X). Both Steinbauer and the editor have websites up and running AFAIK, so ordering should be no problem. Actually, his subgrouping of Anatolian isn't quite up to date, but if one reads through his improved text analyses, it looks very Anatolian, though just not necessarily particularly close to Lydian.

A more promising relationship appears to be when comparing separate groups of Caucasian languages. Those are Abkhaz-Adyghe-Hattic and Nakh-Dagestanic-Hurrian hypotheses.

I think many Ancient Near Eastern folks are accepting of these also, especially HU and Eastern Caucasian.

Igor M. Diakonoff before he died wrote an article proposing a genetic relationship between Sumerian and the Munda languages of India ("External Connections of the Sumerian Language," Mother Tongue III:54-62, 1997).  Munda is often connected to the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer family, and this is another connection that needs to be taken
into account.

Comparative AA is actually well established, e.g. the phonology since Pinnow's Versuch einer historischen Lautlehre der Kharia-Sprache. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1959), which which (as well as of some other work of his, especially on ND) I happened to be acquainted, but again, neither PAA (nor PND) reminded me of very much else, and his attempts at comparing a few PND to PTB items I found containing too much ad hoc assumptions.

All the best,

Heike