Nostratic controversial
Geographic distribution:	most of Europe; Asia except the east and southeast; north coast of North America; ?northern Africa
Genetic classification:	—  Nostratic
Subdivisions:	Indo-European Uralic Yukaghir (not always considered) Chukotko-Kamchatkan (not always considered) Eskimo-Aleut (not always considered) Altaic (controversial) Kartvelian Dravidian (usually included) Afro-Asiatic (usually included) Nivkh (sometimes included) Elamite (sometimes included) Tyrsenian (including Etruscan – sometimes included) Sumerian (sometimes included)
A schematic representation of one version of the Nostratic hypothesis

The Nostratic languages are a proposed language superfamily to which some linguists believe a large number of language families from Europe, Asia, and Africa possibly belong. The supposed language from which these other languages are believed to have descended is referred to as the Proto-Nostratic language. Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Geographical distribution of Yukaghir, Finnic, Ugric and Samoyedic languages The Yukaghir languages are a family of related languages spoken in Russia by the Yukaghir, a Siberian people, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. ... The Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages (commonly also Chukchi-Kamchatkan) are a language family of northeastern Siberia. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... It has been suggested that Kartvel be merged into this article or section. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages[1] that are mainly spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and overseas in other countries such... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... Nivchische Sprache Nivkh language ---- (more info) Stage 1 : Request (How-to) Danke!! Yupik 23:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC) Because the German article contains a ton of info that the English does not. ... Elamite is an extinct language, which was spoken by the ancient Elamites (also known as Ilamids). ... A close relationship of the Etruscan language and the Rhaetic language has been established by Rix (1998), who together with the Lemnian language classifies them as Tyrsenian (Tyrsenisch, also Tyrrhenian), after the Tyrrhenoi. ... Languages in Iron Age Italy, 6th century BC Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. ... Sumerian ( native tongue) was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language in the beginning of the 2nd millenium BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific... Image File history File links Nostratic_tree. ... Image File history File links Nostratic_tree. ... In linguistics, a superfamily (or macrofamily) is a phyletic unit encompassing several language families. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ...

In contrast to some other proposed linguistic superfamilies, most versions of the Nostratic hypothesis rely upon an application of the comparative method, involving systematic sound-and-meaning correspondences between the constituent families as well as systematic correspondences in their grammar. However, the hypothesis does not have wide acceptance among linguists. Some of the methodology used in its support has been heavily criticized, and most linguists remain undecided. The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ...

Edward Finnegan, for example, has offered a pithy summation of the current state of the Nostratic hypothesis, saying "there's too much there to be nothing, but not enough there to be something."

Origin of the Nostratic hypothesis

In 1903 the pioneering Danish linguist Holger Pedersen proposed "Nostratian," a protolanguage for the protolanguages of the Semitic (later broadened into Afro-Asiatic), Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and Eskimo-Aleut language families, and possibly some others. The name derives from the Latin word nostras, meaning 'our fellow-countryman' (plural: nostrates), because about three quarters of the world population (such as Pedersen himself) have been speaking one of these languages in the last few centuries. 1900 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Friday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... Holger Pedersen (April 7, 1867 - October 25, 1953) was a Danish linguist who made significant contributions to language science and wrote about 30 authoritative works concerning several languages. ... Proto-language may either refer to a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or to system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... 14th century BCE diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

While the hypothesis did not make much headway in the West, it became quite popular in what was then the Soviet Union. Working independently at first, Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky elaborated the first version of the modern form of the hypothesis during the 1960s. Under the slightly modified name "Nostratic" they expanded it to include additional language families. Illich-Svitych also published the first comprehensive dictionary of the hypothetical language. Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (1934-66) was a founding father of comparative Nostratic linguistics. ... Aharon Dolgopolsky (born 1930) is a Russian-born Israeli comparative linguist and one of the modern founders of comparative Nostratic linguistics. ...

Membership

Proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis have assigned various (and varying) language families to the Nostratic superfamily. However, general agreement exists on including at a minimum the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic languages. Following Pedersen, Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky, many advocates of the theory have included the Afro-Asiatic languages as well, though criticisms by Joseph Greenberg and others from the late 1980s onward suggested a reassessment of this position. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ...

A fairly representative grouping would include:

• Afro-Asiatic
• Kartvelian
• Indo-European
• Uralic
• Dravidian
• Altaic
• Eskimo-Aleut

The Sumerian and Etruscan languages, usually regarded as language isolates, are thought by some to be Nostratic languages as well. (Others, however, consider one or both to be members of another postulated language superfamily called Dené-Caucasian.) Another notional isolate, the Elamite language, also figures in a number of Nostratic classifications: it is frequently appended to Dravidian, but may well be an independent branch. The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... It has been suggested that Kartvel be merged into this article or section. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages[1] that are mainly spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and overseas in other countries such... Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Sumerian ( native tongue) was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language in the beginning of the 2nd millenium BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific... Languages in Iron Age Italy, 6th century BC Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. ... A language isolate is a natural language with no demonstrable genetic relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been proved to descend from a common ancestor to any other language. ... The Dené-Caucasian (also called Sino-Caucasian or Dené-Sino-Caucasian) language family is a proposed language superfamily containing at least the Basque, Caucasian, Yeniseian, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, and Na-Dené languages. ... Elamite is an extinct language, which was spoken by the ancient Elamites (also known as Ilamids). ...

In 1987 Joseph Greenberg proposed a similar or overlapping macrofamily which he called Eurasiatic and which he linked, remotely, to the Amerind languages of the Americas. It excluded some of the above-listed families, most notably Afro-Asiatic. At about this time Russian Nostraticists, notably Sergei Starostin, constructed a revised version of Nostratic which was slightly broader than Greenberg's grouping but which similarly left out Afro-Asiatic. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by the late Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America. ... In addition to its use by social scientists to refer (broadly) to the various indigenous languages of The Americas, the term Amerind languages may controversially refer to one of the three families in Joseph H. Greenbergs classification of all Native American languages—the other two being Na-Dene... Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (b. ...

Recently, however, a consensus has been emerging among the proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis. Greenberg in fact basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern 'tier' (his Eurasiatic) and a southern 'tier' (principally Afro-Asiatic and Dravidian). The American Nostraticist Allan R. Bomhard considers Eurasiatic a branch of Nostratic alongside other branches: Afro-Asiatic, Elamo-Dravidian, and Kartvelian. Similarly, Georgiy Starostin (2002) arrives at a tripartite overall grouping (that is, he considers Afro-Asiatic, Nostratic and Elamite to be roughly equidistant and more closely related to each other than to anything else), and Sergei Starostin's school has now re-included Afro-Asiatic in a broadly defined Nostratic while reserving the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping which comprises the rest of the superfamily. Recent proposals thus differ mainly on the precise placement of Kartvelian and Dravidian. Allan R. Bomhard was born in 1943. ... The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothesised language family which includes the living Dravidian languages of India and Pakistan, in addition to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... Georgiy Sergeevich Starostin, (Russian: , born July 4, 1976) is a linguistics researcher, head of the Sinology Department of the Institute of Oriental Cultures at the Russian State University for the Humanities, where he also teaches. ...

(Part of the confusion stems from the definition of Nostratic: "those families that are related to Indo-European" [Pedersen as cited by Ruhlen, 2001]. Thus, which languages are Nostratic depends on which are considered to be discoverably related to Indo-European, and this is where opinions differ.)

Although Greenberg speculated that both the Amerind and the Nilo-Saharan families or superfamilies are related to Nostratic, their actual inclusion within the latter does not have strong support even amongst Nostraticists. Map showing the distribution of the Nilo-Saharan languages. ...

It is too early to evaluate the emerging hypotheses of remoter affiliations in which Nostratic itself is incorporated into an even broader linguistic 'mega-phylum', sometimes called Borean, which would also include at least the Dené-Caucasian and perhaps the Amerind and Austric superfamilies. Borean languages is a hypothetical language family proposed by Sergei Starostin that would include most languages of Eurasia, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and some or all of the Americas. ... The Austric language superfamily is a large theoretical grouping of languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and the eastern Indian subcontinent. ...

Background: From Indo-European to Nostratic

One can best understand the concept of the Nostratic languages in the context of the discovery, methods of investigation, and application of the Indo-European family of languages. When Sir William Jones first suggested the Indo-European hypothesis in 1786, he backed up his idea with a systematic examination of what one might term "phono-semantic sets" — words which, in different languages, had both similar sounds and meanings. Jones essentially argued that too many of these sets occurred for mere coincidence to explain their existence, laying particular emphasis on the resemblance between morphological patterns: declensions and conjugations. He proposed that the languages in question must have stemmed from one language at some time in the past, and that they diverged from one another due to geographical separation and the passage of time. The idea of a "root language" thus took hold, a concept to which the evolution of the Romance languages from Latin offered itself as a clear parallel. Sir William Jones Sir William Jones (September 28, 1746 – April 27, 1794) was an English philologist and student of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

A second major concept to keep in mind involves the argument, starting with Jacob Grimm, that languages would not evolve in a haphazard manner, but rather that they evolved according to certain rules. Using these rules, one could theoretically run the evolutionary process backwards and reconstruct the root language. Comparative linguists have done this, producing parts of the hypothetical language, named Proto-Indo-European. The Brothers Grimm on a 1000DM banknote. ... The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ...

A third concept suggests that, by analysing the words in the Proto-Indo-European language, one can to some extent examine the time and place of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Words for concepts and objects that were not familiar to these people would receive essentially random names after the time when the languages began to split; only things they knew would produce phono-semantic sets in their successor languages. Proto-Indo-European features many words related to agriculture, animal husbandry, and plains-like landscapes. From this, scholars have plausibly argued that Proto-Indo-European existed as a living language some time from 6000 BC to 4000 BC, in the plains to the north of the Black Sea. (As a measure of the difficulty of this task, some argue that the reconstructed vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European, together with other known information about migrations, indicates a northern Anatolian landscape, although this area notably lacks flat ground.) (7th millennium BC – 6th millennium BC – 5th millennium BC – other millennia) Events c. ... (5th millennium BC – 4th millennium BC – 3rd millennium BC - other millennia) Events City of Ur in Mesopotamia (40th century BC). ... NASA satellite image of the Black Sea Map of the Black Sea The Black Sea is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Anatolia that is actually a distant arm of the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mediterranean Sea. ... Anatolia and Europe Anatolia (Turkish: from Greek: Ανατολία - Anatolia) is a peninsula of Western Asia which forms the greater part of the Asian portion of Turkey, as opposed to the European portion (Thrace, or traditionally Rumelia). ...

Altogether, the Indo-European hypothesis has proven wildly successful, and naturally linguists have tried to apply the same general theory to a wide variety of other languages. Many languages, though not all, have been shown to be related to other languages, forming large families similar to Indo-European. These families have been only as "high-level" as the connections which have plausibly been made. On the face of it, though, it is logical that the family tree could converge further, and that some or all language families could be related to one another.

Reconstructed phonology

The phonemes tabulated below are commonly reconstructed for the Proto-Nostratic language (Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1988). Allan R. Bomhard, who relies more heavily on Indo-European and less on the other Nostratic branches than the "Moscow School", reconstructs a different vowel system, with three pairs of vowels connected by Ablaut: /a/-/ə/, /e/-/i/, /o/-/u/. In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... Allan R. Bomhard was born in 1943. ... In linguistics, the term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense down, reducing + Laut sound) designates a system of vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages. ...

Consonants

¹ These phonemes do not occur in some or most reconstructions of Proto-Nostratic. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Sagittal section of alveolo-palatal fricative In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx. ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ...

² [j] is of course the voiced palatal approximant; it is included here among the postalveolars for mere space reasons. The palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in very many spoken languages. ...

Vowels

¹ This phoneme does not occur in all non-Bomhard reconstructions of Proto-Nostratic. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... Vowels See also: IPA, Consonants Near‑close Close‑mid Mid Open‑mid Near‑open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ...

Sound correspondences

The following table is compiled from data given by Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988) and Starostin [1]. Because linguists working on Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and Proto-Dravidian do not usually use the IPA, the transcriptions used in those fields are also given. The IPA symbols are between slashes because this is a phonemic transcription. The exact values of the phoneme "p₁" in Proto-Afro-Asiatic and Proto-Dravidian are unknown. "0" indicates disappearance without a trace. Hyphens indicate different developments at the beginning and in the interior of words; no consonants ever occurred at the ends of word roots. Starostin's list of affricate and fricative correspondences does not mention Afro-Asiatic or Dravidian, and Kaiser & Shevoroshkin don't mention these sounds much; hence the holes in the table. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ...

Note that, due to lack of research, there are at present several different mutually incompatible reconstructions of Proto-Afro-Asiatic (see [2] for two recent ones). The one used here has been said to be based too strongly on Proto-Semitic (Yakubovich 1998 [3]). Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. ...

Similarly, the paper by Kaiser & Shevoroshkin is much older than the newest Altaic Etymological Dictionary (2003; see Altaic languages article) and therefore assumes a somewhat different phonological system of Proto-Altaic. Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ...

To be completed and updated further.

• ¹ Some (such as Kaiser & Shevoroshkin, 1988) regard the inconsistency in the evolution of this phoneme as evidence that it did not exist. Compare the extreme, and mysterious, rarity of its expected derivative, /b/, in Proto-Indo-European.
• ² Which phoneme appears in Proto-Indo-European depends on the vowel that followed it in Proto-Nostratic: a following /a/ kept the consonant plain (and changed itself into /e/ in the process); a following /æ/, /e/, or /i/ produced palatalization (and became /e/ in the process), except in the cases where /i/ became a diphthong; and a following /o/, /u/, or /y/ produced labialization (and again became /e/ in the process), except where /u/ became a diphthong.
• ³ The values of the Proto-Indo-European h₁, h₂, h₃ and of the Proto-Uralic x are controversial; the only evidence for the precise values shown here comes from the comparison with other Nostratic languages.
• ⁴ In Proto-Indo-European, all vowels became /e/ unless preceded by /ʔ/ or diphthongized or affected by Ablaut. The latter phenomenon prevents reconstruction of the vowels of most Proto-Afro-Asiatic roots; in addition, /i/ partially merged with /j/ and /u/ (at least sometimes derived from Proto-Nostratic /u/, /o/, and /y/) with /w/. Kartvelian, too, has Ablaut.

The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three (or more) consonant sounds that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language. ... In linguistics, the term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense down, reducing + Laut sound) designates a system of vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages. ...

Morphological correspondences

Because grammar is less easily borrowed than words, grammar is usually considered stronger evidence for language relationships than vocabulary. The following correspondences (slightly modified to account for the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic by Starostin et al. [2003]) have been suggested by Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988); /N/ could be any nasal consonant, /V/ could be any vowel. The above cautionary notes on Afro-Asiatic and Dravidian apply.

• ¹ Quote from Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988), p. 313.
• ² Marked with a question mark in Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988).
• ³ The Eskimo-Aleutan languages, too, have a plural marker -/t/. – Like them, Proto-Altaic did not distinguish animate and inanimate nouns.
• ⁴ The Proto-Indo-European animate plural marker -s has been suggested to belong here.
• ⁵ The Kurukh language has -/kan/.
• ⁶ Only in Proto-Turkic and its descendants.
• ⁷ As in Latin senatus populusque romanus "the Roman senate and people".

In addition, Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988, p. 314f.) write the following about Proto-Nostratic grammar (two asterisks are used for reconstructions based on reconstructions; citation format changed): The Oraon are a tribal (Adivasi) people of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, India. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

"The verb stood at the end of the sentence (SV and SOV type). The 1st p[er]s[on] was formed by adding the 1st ps. pronoun **mi to the verb; similarly, the 2nd ps. was formed by adding **ti. There were no endings for the 3rd ps. present [or at least none can be reconstructed], while the 3rd ps. preterit ending was **-di (Illich-Svitych 1971, pp. 218–19). Verbs could be active and passive, causative, desiderative, and reflective; and there were special markers for most of these categories. Nouns could be animate or inanimate, and plural markers differed for each category. There were subject and object markers, locative and lative enclitic particles, etc. Pronouns distinguished direct and oblique forms, animate and inanimate categories, notions of the type 'near':'far', inclusive:exclusive […], etc. Apparently there were no prefixes. Nostratic words were either equal to roots or built by adding endings or suffixes. There are some cases of word composition […]" In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... This article is about the grammatical term. ... Voice, in grammar, is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... In linguistics, a desiderative form is one that has the meaning of wanting to X. Desiderative forms are often verbs, derived from a more basic verb through a process of morphological derivation. ... The term reflection (also spelt reflexion) can refer to several different concepts: In mathematics, reflection is the transformation of a space. ... In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. ... Locative is a case which indicates a location. ... Lative is a case which indicates motion to a location. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ... Inclusive we is a pronoun or verb conjugation that indicates the inclusion of the speaker, the addressee, and perhaps other people, as opposed to exclusive we, which specifically excludes the addressee. ...

A sample Nostratic etymology

As an example of the kind of etymologies put forward by supporters of the Nostratic hypothesis, we can cite the following (from Bomhard and Kerns, The Nostratic Macrofamily, p. 219). Not to be confused with Entomology, the study of insects. ...

• Proto-Nostratic *bar-/*bər- 'seed, grain':
  • A. Proto-Indo-European *b[h]ars- 'grain': Latin far 'spelt, grain'; Old Icelandic barr 'barley'; Old English bere 'barley'; Old Church Slavonic brašъno 'food'. Pokorny 1959:111 *bhares- 'barley'; Walde 1927-1932. II:134 *bhares-; Mann 1984-1987:66 *bhars- 'wheat, barley'; Watkins 1985:5-6 *bhares- (*bhars-) 'barley'; Gamkrelidze-Ivanov 1984.II: 872-873 *b[h]ar(s)-.
  • B. Proto-Afro-Asiatic *bar-/*bər- 'grain, cereal': Proto-Semitic *barr-/*burr 'grain, cereal' > Hebrew bar 'grain'; Arabic burr 'wheat'; Akkadian burru 'a cereal'; Sabaean brr 'wheat'; Harsūsi berr 'corn, maize, wheat'; Mehri ber 'corn, maize, wheat'. Cushitic: Somali bur 'wheat'. (?) Proto-Southern Cushitic *bar-/*bal- 'grain (generic) > Iraqw balaŋ 'grain'; Burunge baru 'grain'; Alagwa balu 'grain' K'wadza balayiko 'grain'. Ehret 1980:338.
  • C. Dravidian: Tamil paral 'pebble, seed, stone of fruit'; Malayalam paral 'grit, coarse grain, gravel, cowry shell'; Kota parl 'pebble, one grain (of any grain)'; Kannaḍa paral, paral 'pebble, stone' Koḍagu para 'pebble'; Tuḷu parelụ 'grain of sand, grit, gravel, grain of corn, etc.; castor seed'; Kolami Parca 'gravel'. Burrow-Emeneau 1984:353, no. 3959.
  • D. Sumerian bar 'seed'.

Comments Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... The Old Icelandic language was the most prominent of the Old Norse languages. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Old English: ) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian or Old Slavic) is the first literary Slavic language, developed from the Slavic dialect of Thessaloniki (Solun) by the 9th century Byzantine missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius. ... This article needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ... Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Akkadian (lišānum akkadītum) was a Semitic language (part of the greater Afro-Asiatic language family) spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly by the Assyrians and Babylonians. ... The Sabaeans were a people who lived in what is today Yemen in the final millennium BCE. They may be the same nation as the biblical Sheba. ... Harsusi is a Semitic language closely related to Mehri. ... Map of the Protectorate of South Arabia Mahra or Al Mahrah (Arabic: المهرة) is a governorate of Yemen in the southern Arabian Peninsula. ... The Cushitic languages are a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages phylum, named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Semitic. ... The Burunge are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the Kondoa District of Dodoma Region in central Tanzania. ... The Alagwa, or Chasi, are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the Kondoa District of Dodoma Region in central Tanzania. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages[1] that are mainly spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and overseas in other countries such... Tamil ( ; IPA ) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, with smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. ... Malayalam (മലയാളം ) is the language spoken predominantly in the state of Kerala, in southern India. ... Kota can refer to: The Indonesian word for city. ... Kolami is a tribal Dravidian language used in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states of India. ... Sumerian ( native tongue) was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language in the beginning of the 2nd millenium BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific...

— This exemplifies what some linguists find suspect about the Nostratic hypothesis: a single proto-form is being suggested as the ancestor of words meaning 'barley', 'wheat', 'pebbles', and 'seeds'. Were one to collect all the words from the various known Indo-European languages and dialects which have at least one of these 4 meanings, one could easily form a list that would cover any conceivable combination of two consonants and a vowel (of which there are only about 20*20*5=2000).

— On the other hand, proponents point to parallels in standard Indo-European etymological dictionaries in which seemingly disparate meanings can convincingly be derived from reconstructed proto-forms.

Even within English, the word 'grain' has a wide range of meanings:

1. 'grain' of sand (= 'pebble, gravel, grit, etc.')
2. 'grain' of salt (= small crystal of salt)
3. 'grain' = 'seed' or 'fruit' of a cereal grass
4. overall term for plants producing 'grain'
5. 'grain' of wood (= stratification of wood fibers)
6. 'small quantity', a 'minute portion', or the 'least amount possible' (as in, 'not a grain of truth in what she said'), etc.

— Yet others argue that the terms on this list are not all from equal eras. The usage of the word grain in 'a grain of truth' is far predated by the usage of the word 'grain'.

For comparison, here is a typical Indo-European etymology (from Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, p. 598):

• PIE *pʰeis-/*pʰis- 'thresh; mill (grain)': Ved. Skt. pináṣṭi 'threshes; grinds', piṣṭá- 'threshed, ground', Avest. pišant- 'threshing', Gk. ptíssō 'thresh, grind', Lat. pīnsō 'thresh, grind', Lith. paisýti 'thresh barley a second time, cleaning it of husks' (Būga 1958-1961:I.300), Czech pěchovati 'stamp, pound, ram down'; nominal derivatives: Skt. peṣṭar- 'one who threshes', Lat. pistor 'miller, baker', pīsō 'mortar', pīlum, pistillum 'pestle', MHG vīsel 'mortar', OCS pĭšeno 'meal, flour', OPruss. som-pisinis 'bread made from coarse-ground flour'.

Further proposed cognates

The following are taken from Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988) and Bengtson (1998) (and transcribed into IPA). The same cautionary notes as for the sound correspondence table apply. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are seldom borrowed between languages. Therefore the many correspondences between Nostratic pronouns are rather strong evidence for the existence of a Proto-Nostratic language. The difficulty of finding Afro-Asiatic cognates is, however, taken by some as evidence that Nostratic has two or three branches, Afro-Asiatic and Eurasiatic (and possibly Dravidian), and that most or all of the pronouns in the following table can only be traced to Proto-Eurasiatic. Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Nivkh is a living (if moribund) language with an orthography, which is given here. /V/ means that it is not clear which vowel should be reconstructed.

For space reasons, Etruscan is not included, but the fact that it had /mi/ "I" and /mini/ "me" seems to fit the pattern reconstructed for Proto-Nostratic ideally, leading some^{[citation needed]} to argue that the Aegaean or Tyrsenian languages were yet another Nostratic branch. Languages in Iron Age Italy, 6th century BC Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. ... A close relationship of the Etruscan language and the Rhaetic language has been established by Rix (1998), who together with the Lemnian language classifies them as Tyrsenian (Tyrsenisch, also Tyrrhenian), after the Tyrrhenoi. ...

There does not appear to be a reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, even though the existence of the Eskimo-Aleutan family is generally accepted.

• ¹ From Indo-European data alone, this difference between "I" and "me" seems impossible to explain. Based on comparisons to other Nostratic languages, however, some linguists (e. g. Ruhlen, 1998) interpret "I" as a compound of a Proto-Nostratic demonstrative pronoun /ʔe/~/ʔi/, a Proto-Nostratic (or Proto-Eurasiatic) verb /gæ/~/ge/~/gi/ that probably meant "to be", and -/m/ – in short, "that's me" (that demonstrative pronoun, is verb, and a derivative of Proto-Nostratic /minV/) or "c'est moi" (ce demonstrative pronoun, est verb, and another derivative of Proto-Nostratic /minV/). As support, Ruhlen (1998) cites Chukchi -/eɣəm/ and /ɣem/ "I" and -/eɣət/ and /ɣet/ "thou", Itelmen ким /kim/ "I" and ма /ma/ "me", the Proto-Eskimo suffix -/mkət/ (see table), and several Uralic occurrences like Kamassian /igæm/ "I am" or Hungarian engemet /ɛmgɛmɛt/ "me", tégedet /teːgɛdɛt/ "thee" (where -et is the accusative ending). Norquest (1998) cites many of the same forms and adds "Western Kamchadal" /kəmːa/ "I" and /kəzːa/ "thou".
• ² Chadic only.
• ³ A Cushitic verb suffix.
• ⁴ Genitive.
• ⁵ Brahui has -/ti/ as the expected verb suffix; other Dravidian languages do not seem to have a cognate.
• ⁶ /c/ may have been [c] or [t͡ʃ].
• ⁷ Amur dialect only.
• ⁸ In Proto-Indo-European the derivatives of /mæ/ and /na/ are thought to have fused, the former becoming the nominative stem and the latter the oblique stem. See Proto-Indo-European pronouns and particles for the whole declension paradigm. – Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988) report that it has been speculated that Proto-Indo-European /ne/- had "an archaic meaning of exclusivity", which is, according to them, untestable from Indo-European data alone, but "strongly corroborated" by comparison with other Nostratic languages.
• ⁹ Exclusive meaning only in Chadic.
• ¹⁰ Verb prefix with exclusive meaning only in Svan.
• ¹¹ Verb suffix.

Nivchische Sprache Nivkh language ---- (more info) Stage 1 : Request (How-to) Danke!! Yupik 23:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC) Because the German article contains a ton of info that the English does not. ... The Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages (commonly also Chukchi-Kamchatkan) are a language family of northeastern Siberia. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. ... An oblique case (Latin: ) in linguistics is a noun case of analytic languages that is used generally when a noun is the predicate of a sentence or a preposition. ... Most modern English speakers think of thou as a relic of Shakespeares day. ... Most modern English speakers think of thou as a relic of Shakespeares day. ... Inclusive we is a pronoun or verb conjugation that indicates the inclusion of the speaker, the addressee, and perhaps other people, as opposed to exclusive we, which specifically excludes the addressee. ... Inclusive we is a pronoun or verb conjugation that indicates the inclusion of the speaker, the addressee, and perhaps other people, as opposed to exclusive we, which specifically excludes the addressee. ... Itelmen, also sometimes known as Kamchadal, is a language belonging to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family traditionally spoken in the Kamchatka Peninsula. ... Kamassian is an extinct Uralic language belonging to the southern group of the Samoyedic languages. ... The Chadic languages are a language family spoken across northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic and Cameroon, belonging to the Afro-Asiatic phylum. ... The Cushitic languages are a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages, named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Semitic. ... The Brahui (بروہی) or Bravi (براوِ) language, spoken by the Brahui, is mainly spoken in Balochistan, Pakistan, although it is also spoken in Afghanistan and Iran. ... Proto-Indo-European pronouns and particles. ... The Svan language (ლუშნუ ნინ, lushnu nin in Svan; სვანური ენა, svanuri ena in Georgian) is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia. ...

Other words

Below are selected reconstructed etymologies from Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988) and Bengtson (1998). Reconstructed ( = unattested) forms are marked with an asterisk. /V/ means that it is not clear which vowel should be reconstructed; likewise, /E/ could have been any front vowel and /N/ any nasal consonant. Only the consonants are given of Proto-Afro-Asiatic roots (see above).

• Proto-Nostratic */k̕o/ or */q̕o/ 'who'
  • Proto-Indo-European *kʷo- /kʷo/- 'who', kʷi- /kʷi/- (with suffix -i-) 'what'. Ancestors of the English wh- words.
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic */k̕(w)/ and /k(w)/ 'who'. The change from ejective to plain consonants in Proto-Afro-Asiatic is apparently regular in grammatical words (Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1988; see also */tV/ instead of */t̕V/ above).
  • Proto-Altaic ?*/kʰa/-. The presence of /a/ instead of /o/ is unexplained, but Kaiser & Shevoroshkin (1988) regard this alternation as common among Nostratic languages.
  • Proto-Uralic *ko-~ku- /ko/-~/ku/- 'who'
  • "Yukaghir" (Northern, Southern, or both?) кин /kin/ 'who'
  • Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan */mki/, */mkin/- 'who'
  • Proto-Eskimo-Aleut */ken/ 'who'

• Proto-Nostratic */k̕ærd/, */k̕erd/, or */k̕ird/ 'heart~chest' (Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1988; the Proto-Eskimo form given by Bengtson [1998] may indicate that the vowel was /æ/ or not)
  • Proto-Indo-European *ḱerd- /kʲerd/- 'heart'. The occurrence of *d instead of *dʰ is regular: voiceless and aspirated consonants never occur together in the same Proto-Indo-European root.
  • Afro-Asiatic: Proto-Chadic */k̕Vrd/- 'chest'
  • Proto-Kartvelian */mk̕erd-/ (/m/ being a prefix) 'chest~breast'
  • Proto-Eskimo */qatə/ 'heart~breast'; the presence of /q/ instead of /k/ is not clear.

• Proto-Nostratic */q̕iwlV/ 'ear~hear'
  • Proto-Indo-European *ḱleu̯- /kʲleu̯/- 'hear'. Ancestor of English listen, loud.
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic */k̕(w)l/ 'hear'
  • Proto-Kartvelian */q̕ur/ 'ear'
  • Proto-Altaic */kʰul/- 'ear'
  • Proto-Uralic *kūle- /kuːle/- (long vowel from fusion of -/iw/-) 'hear'
  • Proto-Dravidian *kēḷ /keːɭ/ 'hear' must figure out if it's /g/- instead
  • Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan */vilvV/, possibly from earlier /kʷilwV/ 'ear'

• Proto-Nostratic */kiwæ/~/kiwe/~/kiwi/ 'stone'
  • Afro-Asiatic: Proto-Chadic */kw/- 'stone'
  • Proto-Kartvelian */kwa/- 'stone'
  • Proto-Uralic *kiwe- /kiwe/- 'stone'
  • Proto-Dravidian */kwa/ 'stone'
  • Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan */xəvxə/ 'stone'; Kamchadal квал /kβal/, ков /koβ/ 'stone'
  • Proto-Eskimo-Aleut */kew/- 'stone'

• Proto-Nostratic */wete/ 'water'
  • Proto-Indo-European *wed- /wed/- 'water~wet'
  • Altaic: Proto-Tungusic */ødV/ 'water'
  • Proto-Uralic *wete /wete/ 'water'
  • Proto-Dravidian *ōtV-~wetV- /oːtV/-~/wetV/- 'wet'

• Proto-Nostratic */burV/ 'storm'
  • Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- /bʱer/- 'storm'
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic (?) */bwr/- 'storm'
  • Proto-Altaic */burV/~/borV/ 'storm'
  • Proto-Uralic *purki /purki/- 'snow storm~smoke' -/k/- unexplained

• Proto-Nostratic */qant̕V/ 'front side'
  • Proto-Indo-European *h₂ant- /χant/- 'front side'
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic */χnt/ 'front side'; the change from */nt̕/ to */nt/ is apparently regular
  • Proto-Altaic */antV/- 'front side'

• Proto-Nostratic */d͡zeɢV/ 'eat'
  • Proto-Indo-European *seh₃(w)- /seʁ(w)/- 'satiated'
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic (?) */zʁ/- 'be fed'~'be abundant'
  • Proto-Kartvelian */d͡zeʁ/- 'become sated'
  • Proto-Altaic */d͡ʒeː/ 'eat'
  • Proto-Uralic *sexi- /seʁi/- or *sewi- /sewi/- 'eat'

• Proto-Nostratic */nʲamo/ 'grasp'
  • Proto-Indo-European *i̯em- /jem/- 'grasp'
  • Proto-Dravidian *ñamV- /ɲamV/- 'grasp'

• Proto-Nostratic */k̕ut̕V/ 'little'
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic */k̕(w)t̕/~/k(w)t̕/~/kt/ 'little'
  • Proto-Kartvelian */k̕ut̕/~/k̕ot̕/ 'little'
  • Proto-Dravidian *kuḍḍ- /kuɖː/- 'little' must figure out if plosives correct

The Northern or Tundra Yukaghir language is one of only two Yukaghir languages. ... Itelmen, also sometimes known as Kamchadal, is a language belonging to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family traditionally spoken in the Kamchatka Peninsula. ...

Nostratic Urheimat

Allan Bomhard and Colin Renfrew are in broad agreement with the earlier conclusions of Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky in seeking the Nostratic urheimat within the Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic Middle East, the stage which directly preceded the Neolithic and was transitional to it. Looking at the cultural assemblages of this period, two sequences in particular stand out as being possible archeological correlates of the earliest Nostratians or their immediate precursors. Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (born 25 July 1937), English archaeologist, notable for his work on the radiocarbon revolution, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, and the prevention of looting of archaeological sites. ... Urheimat (German: ur- original, ancient; Heimat home, homeland) is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language. ... The Mesolithic (Greek mesos=middle and lithos=stone or the Middle Stone Age[1]) was a period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age. ... The Epipalaeolithic (or Epi-Palaeolithic, Epipaleolithic, or Epi-Paleolithic) was a period in the development of human technology that immediately precedes the neolithic period, as an alternative to mesolithic. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools. ...

The first of these is focussed on Palestine. The Kebaran culture of Palestine (18,000-10,500 BCE) not only introduced the microlithic assembly into the region; it also has African affinity, specifically with the Ouchtata retouch technique associated with the microlithic Halfan culture of Egypt (24-17,000 BCE). The Kebarans in their turn were directly ancestral to the succeeding Natufian culture of Palestine and the Levant (10,500-8,500 BCE) which has enormous significance for prehistorians as the clearest evidence of hunters and gatherers in actual transition to Neolithic food production. Both cultures extended their influence outside the region into Southern Anatolia: for example in Cilicia the Belbaşi culture (13-10,000 BCE) has Kebaran influence whilst the Beldibi (10-8,500 BCE) shows clear Natufian influence. The Holy Land or Palestine Showing not only the Old Kingdoms of Judea and Israel but also the 12 Tribes Distinctly, and Confirming Even the Diversity of the Locations of their Ancient Positions and Doing So as the Holy Scriptures Indicate, a geographic map from the studio of Tobiae Conradi... Kebarans were the first anatomically modern humans to live in the eastern Mediterranean area (c. ... The Natufian culture existed in the Mediterranean region of the Levant. ... The Levant The Levant (IPA: /lÉ™vænt/) is an imprecise geographical term historically referring to a large area in the Middle East south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern Arabian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia to the east. ... Anatolia and Europe Anatolia (Turkish: from Greek: Ανατολία - Anatolia) is a peninsula of Western Asia which forms the greater part of the Asian portion of Turkey, as opposed to the European portion (Thrace, or traditionally Rumelia). ...

The second possibility as a culture associated with the Nostratic family is the Zarzian (12,400-8,500 BCE) culture of the Zagros mountains, stretching northwards into Kobistan in the Caucasus and eastwards into Iran. In Western Iran the M’lefatian (10,500-9,000 BCE) culture was ancestral to the assemblages of Ali Tappah (9,000-5,000 BCE) and Jeitun (6,000-4,000 BCE). Even further east the Hissar culture has been seen as the Mesolithic precursor to the Keltiminar (5,500-3,500 BCE) culture of the Kirghiz Steppe. The Zagros Mountains (In Persian:رشته‌کوه‌های زاگرس) make up Irans second largest mountain range. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Caucasus Mountains. ... Hissar (also spelled Hisar or Hissarya) is a small resort town in Bulgaria, in Plovdiv Region. ... A traditional Kyrgyz Manaschi performing part of the Manas epic poem at a yurt camp in Karakol Kyrgyz are a Turkic ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan. ...

To have spread so widely suggests some cultural advantages were possessed by these people. It has been proposed that the broad spectrum revolution of Andrew Sherratt, associated with microliths, the use of the bow and arrow, and the domestication of the dog, all of which are associated with these cultures, may have been the cultural "motor" that led to their expansion. Certainly cultures with these adaptations (at Franchthi cave in the Aegean, Lipinski Vir in the Balkans, and the Murzak-Koba (9,100-8,000 BCE) and Grebenki (8,500-7,000 BCE) cultures of the Ukrainian steppe, all of which had these cultural adaptations. The Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) hypothesis, proposed by Kent Flannery in 1969 in The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, suggested that the emergence of the Neolithic in western Asia was prefaced by increases in dietary breadth in Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic foraging societies just before this period. ... Professor Andrew Sherratt was born in 1946 and died suddenly of a heart attack on 24 February 2006, in Witney, near Oxford, England. ... The Franchthi or Frankithi cave is a prehistoric site in the Greek Peloponnese. ... Lepenski Vir is an important Mesolithic archaeological site located in Serbia in the central Balkan peninsula. ...

The search for a cultural urheimat for the Nostratic languages will of course only continue if the existence of the language family becomes firmly established.

Criticisms of the Nostratic theory

1. Certain critiques have pointed out that the data from individual, established language families that is cited in Nostratic comparisons often involves a high degree of errors; Campbell (1998) demonstrates this for Uralic data.
2. The technique of comparing grammatical structures (as opposed to words) has suggested to some that the Nostratic candidates lack interrelatedness.
   However, some grammatical endings and words have been reconstructed to proto-Nostratic.

Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ...

Nostratic Poetry

The late Vladislav Illich-Svitych, a notable Russian Nostraticist, decided to create a poem using his version of Proto-Nostratic. (Compare Schleicher's fable for similar attempts with several different reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European.) The famous poem is as follows: Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (1934-66) was a founding father of comparative Nostratic linguistics. ... Schleichers fable is a reconstructed text in Proto-Indo-European (PIE), published by August Schleicher in 1868. ...

The value of K̥ or K̕ is uncertain -- it could be /k̕/ or /q̕/; H could similarly be at least /h/ or /ħ/; V or ʌ is an uncertain vowel.

References

• Bengtson, John D. (1998). "The 'Far East' of Nostratic". Mother Tongue Newsletter 31:35–38 (image files)
• Bomhard, Allan R., and John C. Kerns (1994). The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-013900-6
• Campbell, Lyle (1998). "Nostratic: a personal assessment". In Joseph C. Salmons and Brian D. Joseph (eds.), Nostratic: Sifting the Evidence. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 142. John Benjamins.
• Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
• Gamk¹relidze, Thomas V., and Vjačeslav V. Ivanov (1995). Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, translated by Johanna Nichols, 2 volumes. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-014728-9
• Greenberg, Joseph (2000, 2002), Indo-European and its Closest Relatives. The Eurasiatic Language Family (Stanford University), v.1 Grammar, v.2 Lexicon.
• [Illich-Svitych, V. M.] В. М. Иллич-Свитыч (1971). Опыт сравнения ностратических языков (семитохамитский, картвельский, индоевропейский, уральский, дравидийский, алтайский). Введение. Сравнительный словарь (b – K̕). Moscow: Наука.
• Kaiser, M., and V. Shevoroshkin (1988). "Nostratic". Ann. Rev. Anthropol. 17:309–329.
• Norquest, Peter (1998). "Greenberg's Visit to Arizona". Mother Tongue Newsletter 31:25f. (image files)
• Renfrew, Colin (1991). "Before Babel: Speculations on the Origins of Linguistic Diversity". Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1(1):3-23.
• Ruhlen, Merritt (1998). "Toutes parentes, toutes différentes". La Recherche 306:69–75. (French translation of a Scientific American article.)
• Ruhlen, Merritt (2001). "Taxonomic Controversies in the Twentieth Century". Pages 197–214 in Jürgen Trabant and Sean Ward (eds.): New Essays on the Origin of Language, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.
• Starostin, Georgiy S. (1998). "Alveolar Consonants in Proto-Dravidian: One or More?". (pdf) Pages 1–14 (?) in Proceedings on South Asian languages
• Starostin, Georgiy S. (2002). "On the Genetic Affiliation of the Elamite Language". (pdf) Mother Tongue 7
• Trask, R. L. (1996). Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Yakubovich, I. (1998) Nostratic studies in Russia

¹ Actually /q̕/ in Georgian.

See also

• Borean languages
• Elamo-Dravidian languages
• Eurasiatic languages
• Indo-Uralic languages
• Proto-Pontic language
• Proto-World language
• Universal grammar
• Ural-Altaic languages
• Uralo-Siberian languages

Borean languages is a hypothetical language family proposed by Sergei Starostin that would include most languages of Eurasia, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and some or all of the Americas. ... The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothesised language family which includes the living Dravidian languages of India and Pakistan, in addition to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by the late Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America. ... Indo-Uralic is a hypothetical language family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic. ... Proto-Pontic is a postulated proto-language. ... The term Proto-World language refers to the hypothetical, most recent common ancestor of all the worlds languages – an ancient proto-language from which are derived all modern languages, all language families, and all dead languages known from the past 6,000 years of recorded history. ... Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... It has been suggested that Altaic hypothesis be merged into this article or section. ... Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family proposed by Michael Fortescue in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait in 1998. ...

External links

• Starling Database: Nostratic Etymologies section
• New York Times article
• Mother Tongue Newsletter, issue 31 - contains a table of various linguists' versions of Nostratic. (Warning: image files.)
• "Nostratic"
• "Nostraticist Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych"
• Sergei Starostin's proposed descent tree for "Borean" languages including Nostratic