Indo-Uralic is a highly controversial linguistic hypothesis proposing a genealogical family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic .
83-464: The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869 (Pedersen 1931:336), though an even earlier version was proposed by Finnish linguist Daniel Europaeus in 1853 and 1863. Both were received with little enthusiasm. Since then, the predominant opinion in the linguistic community has remained that the evidence for such
166-474: A Japonic language family rather than dialects of Japanese, the Japanese language itself was considered a language isolate and therefore the only language in its family. Most of the world's languages are known to be related to others. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called language isolates , essentially language families consisting of
249-545: A paraphyletic clade. An authoritative if brief and sketchy history of early Indo-Uralic studies can be found in Holger Pedersen 's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century (1931:336-338). Although Vilhelm Thomsen first raised the possibility of a connection between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in 1869 (336), "he did not pursue the subject very far" (337). The next important statement in this area
332-607: A " Borean languages " hypothesis linking the Indo-European , Uralic , and Altaic (including Korean in his later papers) language families. Andreev also proposed 203 lexical roots for his hypothesized Boreal macrofamily. After Andreev's death in 1997, the Boreal hypothesis was further expanded by Sorin Paliga (2003, 2007). Among the sound correspondences which Čop did assert were (1972:162): The history of early opposition to
415-767: A common SOV word order. Other, less obvious correspondences are suggested, such as the Indo-European plural marker *-es (or *-s in the accusative plural * -m̥-s ) and its Uralic counterpart *-t . This same word-final assibilation of *-t to *-s may also be present in Indo-European second-person singular *-s in comparison with Uralic second-person singular *-t . Compare, within Indo-European itself, *-s second-person singular injunctive, *-si second-person singular present indicative, *-tHa second-person singular perfect, *-te second-person plural present indicative, *tu "you" (singular) nominative, *tei "to you" (singular) enclitic pronoun. These forms suggest that
498-678: A common origin. The short name "Indo-Uralic" (German Indo-Uralisch ) for the hypothesis was first introduced by Hannes Sköld 1927. Björn Collinder , author of the Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages (1960), a standard work in the field of Uralic studies, argued for the kinship of Uralic and Indo-European (1934, 1954, 1965). Alwin Kloekhorst , author of the Etymological Dictionary of
581-690: A core of vocabulary common to Indo-European and Uralic remains. As examples they advance such comparisons as Proto-Uralic * weti- (or * wete- ) : Proto-Indo-European * wodr̥ , oblique stem * wedn- , both meaning 'water', and Proto-Uralic * nimi- (or * nime- ) : Proto-Indo-European * h₁nōmn̥ , both meaning 'name'. In contrast to * śata and * kuningas , the phonology of these words shows no sound changes from Indo-European daughter languages such as Indo-Iranian. In contrast to * kuningas and * porćas , they show no morphological affixes from Indo-European that are absent in Uralic. According to advocates of
664-664: A genealogical relationship between Uralic and Indo-European. The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea , and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages , absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to
747-476: A genetic relation between Uralic and Indo-European is very unlikely and mostly all similarities are explained through borrowings and chance resemblances. Marcantonio argued that the fundamental typological differences between Uralic and Indo-European are so much, that a relationship is unlikely. In 2022, a group of scholars concluded that Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European do not share a genealogical relationship with each other, as "whether based on cognacy or loans
830-509: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic , Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family. The concept of language families
913-482: A novel number system and the domestic pig from Indo-Europeans in the south. Similarly, the Indo-Europeans themselves had acquired such words and cultural items from peoples to their south or west, including possibly their words for "ox", * gʷou- (compare English cow ) and "grain", * bʰars- (compare English barley ). In contrast, basic vocabulary – words such as "me", "hand", "water", and "be" –
SECTION 10
#1732772653700996-426: A number of sign languages have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another, even if this family's relation to other families is not known. Language contact can lead to the development of new languages from the mixture of two or more languages for
1079-422: A preceding "laryngeal". See Delamarre 2003:50 for a summary of views, with references. The o timbre of the root is assured by, among others, Greek ónoma and Latin nōmen (with secondary vowel lengthening). As roots with inherent o are uncommon in Indo-European, most roots having e as their vowel, the underlying root is probably *nem- . The -(e)n is an affixal particle. Whether the e placed in parentheses
1162-679: A region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996). Alternatively, the common protolanguage may have been located north of the Black Sea, with Proto-Uralic moving northwards with the climatic improvement of post-glacial times. Expanding upon his earlier hypothesis, Kortlandt (2021) proposes that Proto-Indo-European, rather than being
1245-489: A relationship is insufficient to confirm a genetic relationship versus similarity due to language contact . However, quite a few prominent linguists have always taken the contrary view (e.g. Henry Sweet , Holger Pedersen , Björn Collinder , Warren Cowgill , Jochem Schindler , Eugene Helimski , Frederik Kortlandt and Alwin Kloekhorst ). The Indo-Uralic hypothesis has been questioned by recent linguistic data, contradicting previous argued cognates , finding no support for
1328-427: A single language and have no single ancestor. Isolates are languages that cannot be proven to be genealogically related to any other modern language. As a corollary, every language isolate also forms its own language family — a genetic family which happens to consist of just one language. One often cited example is Basque , which forms a language family on its own; but there are many other examples outside Europe. On
1411-512: A single language. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. Classifications of the Japonic family , for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages within
1494-462: A single language. There are an estimated 129 language isolates known today. An example is Basque . In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives or had relatives at some point in their history but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them. A language isolate is classified based on the fact that enough is known about the isolate to compare it genetically to other languages but no common ancestry or relationship
1577-399: A sister of Proto-Uralic, is a daughter of Proto-Uralic, and that Indo-European is a branch of the Uralic family. More specifically, he proposes that Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Finno-Ugric share a more recent common ancestor with each other than either of them do with Proto-Samoyedic . If valid, this would mean the traditional conception of the Uralic family (with Indo-European excluded) is
1660-433: Is Finno-Ugric * śata "hundred". The Proto-Indo-European form of this word was * ḱm̥tóm (compare Latin centum ), which became * ćatám in early Indo-Iranian (reanalyzed as the neuter nominative–accusative singular of an a stem > Sanskrit śatá- , Avestan sata- ). This is evidence that the word was borrowed into Finno-Ugric from Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan . This borrowing may have occurred in
1743-424: Is lexical . Numerous words in Indo-European and Uralic resemble each other (see list below). The problem is to distinguish between cognates and borrowings. Uralic languages have been in contact with a succession of Indo-European languages for millennia. As a result, many words have been borrowed between them, most often from Indo-European languages into Uralic ones. An example of a Uralic word that cannot be original
SECTION 20
#17327726537001826-487: Is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the Indian subcontinent . Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with
1909-483: Is also a sister language to that fourth branch, then the two sister languages are more closely related to each other than to that common ancestral proto-language. The term macrofamily or superfamily is sometimes applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take
1992-452: Is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other modern language despite numerous attempts. A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The Aquitanian language , spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to the ancestor of Basque. In
2075-410: Is an accepted version of this page A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree , or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy . Linguists thus describe
2158-543: Is based on the historical observation that languages develop dialects , which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed. It is more like the evolution of microbes, with extensive lateral gene transfer . Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through language contact , which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be creoles or mixed languages . In addition,
2241-470: Is found with any other known language. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Albanian and Armenian within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of the word "isolate" in such cases is usually clarified with a modifier . For instance, Albanian and Armenian may be referred to as an "Indo-European isolate". By contrast, so far as is known, the Basque language
2324-482: Is inherently part of the word is disputed but probable. The ḷ in Indo-European *pḷlu- represents a vocalic l , a sound found in English in for instance little , where it corresponds to the -le , and metal , where it corresponds to the -al . An earlier form of the Indo-European word was probably *pelu- . The following resemblance sets are from Aikio (2019). Genetic relationship (linguistics) This
2407-429: Is much less readily borrowed between languages. If Indo-European and Uralic are genetically related, there should be agreements regarding basic vocabulary, with more agreements if they are closely related, fewer if they are less closely related. Advocates of a genetic relation between Indo-European and Uralic maintain that the borrowings can be filtered out by application of phonological and morphological analysis and that
2490-460: Is no upper bound to the number of languages a family can contain. Some families, such as the Austronesian languages , contain over 1000. Language families can be identified from shared characteristics amongst languages. Sound changes are one of the strongest pieces of evidence that can be used to identify a genetic relationship because of their predictable and consistent nature, and through
2573-637: Is not a measure of) a genetic relationship between the languages concerned. Linguistic interference can occur between languages that are genetically closely related, between languages that are distantly related (like English and French, which are distantly related Indo-European languages ) and between languages that have no genetic relationship. Some exceptions to the simple genetic relationship model of languages include language isolates and mixed , pidgin and creole languages . Mixed languages, pidgins and creole languages constitute special genetic types of languages. They do not descend linearly or directly from
Indo-Uralic languages - Misplaced Pages Continue
2656-451: Is not attested by written records and so is conjectured to have been spoken before the invention of writing. A common visual representation of a language family is given by a genetic language tree. The tree model is sometimes termed a dendrogram or phylogeny . The family tree shows the relationship of the languages within a family, much as a family tree of an individual shows their relationship with their relatives. There are criticisms to
2739-446: Is part of the larger Indo-European family, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia , all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European . A language family is usually said to contain at least two languages, although language isolates — languages that are not related to any other language — are occasionally referred to as families that contain one language. Inversely, there
2822-422: Is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method , a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher . This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families . For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European . Proto-Indo-European
2905-465: The North Germanic language family, including Danish , Swedish , Norwegian and Icelandic , which have shared descent from Ancient Norse . Latin and ancient Norse are both attested in written records, as are many intermediate stages between those ancestral languages and their modern descendants. In other cases, genetic relationships between languages are not directly attested. For instance,
2988-615: The Pit-Comb Ware culture to their north in the fifth millennium BCE (Carpelan & Parpola 2001:79). Another ancient borrowing is Finno-Ugric *porćas "piglet". This word corresponds closely in form to the Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as * porḱos , attested by such forms as Latin porcus "hog", Old English fearh (> English farrow "young pig"), Lithuanian par̃šas "piglet, castrated boar", and Saka pāsa (< *pārsa ) "pig". In
3071-674: The comparative method can be used to reconstruct proto-languages. However, languages can also change through language contact which can falsely suggest genetic relationships. For example, the Mongolic , Tungusic , and Turkic languages share a great deal of similarities that lead several scholars to believe they were related . These supposed relationships were later discovered to be derived through language contact and thus they are not truly related. Eventually though, high amounts of language contact and inconsistent changes will render it essentially impossible to derive any more relationships; even
3154-489: The comparative method of linguistic analysis. In order to test the hypothesis that two languages are related, the comparative method begins with the collection of pairs of words that are hypothesized to be cognates : i.e., words in related languages that are derived from the same word in the shared ancestral language. Pairs of words that have similar pronunciations and meanings in the two languages are often good candidates for hypothetical cognates. The researcher must rule out
3237-638: The daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related . The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages , including Spanish , French , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , Catalan , and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin . The Romance family itself
3320-418: The r and n stems, a small group of neuter nouns, from an archaic stratum of Indo-European, that alternate -er (or -or ) in the nominative and accusative with -en in the other cases. Some languages have leveled the paradigm to one or the other, e.g. English to the r , Old Norse to the n form. Indo-Europeanists are divided on whether to reconstruct this word as *nom(e)n- or as * H₁nom(e)n- , with
3403-690: The Hittite Inherited Lexicon , endorses the Indo-Uralic grouping (2008b). He argues that, when features differ between the Anatolian languages (including Hittite ) and the other Indo-European languages, comparisons with Uralic can help to establish which group has the more archaic forms (2008b: 88) and that, conversely, the success of such comparisons helps to establish the Indo-Uralic thesis (2008b: 94). For example, in Anatolian
Indo-Uralic languages - Misplaced Pages Continue
3486-544: The Indo-European word, * -os (> Finno-Ugric * -as ) is a masculine nominative singular ending, but it is quite meaningless in Uralic languages. This shows that the whole word was borrowed as a unit and is not part of the original Uralic vocabulary. One of the most famous borrowings is the Finnish word kuningas "king" (< Proto-Finnic *kuningas ), which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic * kuningaz . Finnish has been very conservative in retaining
3569-497: The Indo-Uralic hypothesis does not appear to have been written. It is clear from the statements of supporters such as Sweet that they were facing considerable opposition and that the general climate of opinion was against them, except perhaps in Scandinavia. Károly Rédei, editor of the etymological dictionary of the Uralic languages (1986a), rejected the idea of a genetic relationship between Uralic and Indo-European, arguing that
3652-406: The Indo-Uralic hypothesis, the resulting core of common vocabulary can only be explained by the hypothesis of common origin. It has been countered that nothing prevents this common vocabulary from having been borrowed from Proto-Indo-European into Proto-Uralic. For the old loans, as well as uncontroversial ones from Proto-Baltic and Proto-Germanic, it is more the rule than the exception that only
3735-568: The Romance languages and the North Germanic languages are also related to each other, being subfamilies of the Indo-European language family , since both Latin and Old Norse are believed to be descended from an even more ancient language, Proto-Indo-European ; however, no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European or its divergence into its descendant languages survives. In cases such as these, genetic relationships are established through use of
3818-504: The argument from lexical resemblances is flawed". According to them, "Uralic is distinctive in western Eurasia. A number of typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim". Previously proposed cognates can be largely explained via borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages . They concluded in regards to the Indo-Uralic hypothese that "of what we take to be
3901-741: The basic structure of the borrowed word, nearly preserving the nominative singular case marker reconstructed for Proto-Germanic masculine 'a'-stems. Furthermore, the Proto-Germanic * -az ending corresponds exactly to the * -os ending reconstructable for Proto-Indo-European masculine o -stems. Thus, * śata cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of its phonology , while * porćas and * kuningas cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of their morphology . Such words as those for "hundred", "pig", and "king" have something in common: they represent "cultural vocabulary" as opposed to "basic vocabulary". They are likely to have been acquired along with
3984-621: The city of Norrköping , where he became friends with Ture Nerman . After Gymnasia high school he moved to Gothenburg to study at the University . In Gothenburg, Hannes Sköld got to know Zeth Höglund and became active with him in the left wing of the workers’ movement. As a young bohemian , Hannes Sköld traveled around Europe and lived in Paris and Copenhagen while working as a correspondent for different Swedish newspapers. He published his first book of poetry in 1911. The same year, he
4067-496: The common ancestor of the Germanic subfamily, was itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European , the common ancestor of the Indo-European family. Within a large family, subfamilies can be identified through "shared innovations": members of a subfamily will share features that represent retentions from their more recent common ancestor, but were not present in the overall proto-language of the larger family. Some taxonomists restrict
4150-554: The common origin of Aryan and Ugrian, and if we assume that the Ugrians borrowed not only a great part of their vocabulary, but also many of their derivative syllables, together with at least the personal endings of their verbs from Aryan, then the whole fabric of comparative philology falls to the ground, and we are no longer justified in inferring from the similarity of the inflections in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit that these languages have
4233-431: The common vocabulary items claimed are false cognates – words whose resemblance is merely coincidental, like English bad and Persian بد ( bad ). Some researchers have interpreted Proto-Uralic *wete as a borrowing from Indo-European that may have replaced a native Proto-Uralic synonym *śäčä everywhere but in some of the northern fringes of the family (most prominently Proto-Samic *čācē ). This word belongs to
SECTION 50
#17327726537004316-419: The connection must lie so far back that the families developed their number systems independently and did not inherit them from their purported common ancestor. Although, the fact that Uralic languages themselves do not share the same numbers across all Uralic branches indicates that they would not with Indo-European languages in any case, even if they were in fact related. It is also objected that some or all of
4399-503: The existence of Indo-Uralic have thus used morphological arguments to support the Indo-Uralic thesis by, for example, arguing that Finnish verb conjugations and pronouns are much more closely related to Indo-European than they would be expected to be by chance; and since borrowing basic grammar is rare, that this would suggest a common origin with Indo-European. (Finnish is preferred for this argument over Saami or Hungarian because it seems to be more conservative, i.e. to have diverged less than
4482-563: The family tree model. Critics focus mainly on the claim that the internal structure of the trees is subject to variation based on the criteria of classification. Even among those who support the family tree model, there are debates over which languages should be included in a language family. For example, within the dubious Altaic language family , there are debates over whether the Japonic and Koreanic languages should be included or not. The wave model has been proposed as an alternative to
4565-415: The family. The largest five language families in terms of number of speakers (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Austronesian) make up five-sixths (almost 83.3%) of the world’s population. Two languages have a genetic relationship , and belong to the same language family, if both are descended from a common ancestor through the process of language change , or one is descended from
4648-415: The family. Thus, the term family is analogous to the biological term clade . Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, sometimes referred to as "branches" or "subfamilies" of the family; for instance, the Germanic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European family. Subfamilies share a more recent common ancestor than the common ancestor of the larger family; Proto-Germanic ,
4731-495: The following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,164 known languages in the world: Glottolog 5.0 (2024) lists the following as the largest families, of 7,788 languages (other than sign languages , pidgins , and unclassifiable languages ): Language counts can vary significantly depending on what is considered a dialect; for example Lyle Campbell counts only 27 Otomanguean languages, although he, Ethnologue and Glottolog also disagree as to which languages belong in
4814-468: The form of dialect continua in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no mutual intelligibility between them, as occurs in Arabic , the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as
4897-503: The global scale, the site Glottolog counts a total of 423 language families in the world, including 184 isolates. One controversial theory concerning the genetic relationships among languages is monogenesis , the idea that all known languages, with the exceptions of creoles , pidgins and sign languages , are descendant from a single ancestral language. If that is true, it would mean all languages (other than pidgins, creoles, and sign languages) are genetically related, but in many cases,
4980-542: The language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages ( Latin , Oscan , Umbrian , etc.) might well be " areal features ". However, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not
5063-444: The latter case, Basque and Aquitanian would form a small family together. Ancestors are not considered to be distinct members of a family. A proto-language can be thought of as a mother language (not to be confused with a mother tongue ) being the root from which all languages in the family stem. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it
SECTION 60
#17327726537005146-767: The lexical items shared by Uralic and Indo-European were due to borrowing from Indo-European into Proto-Uralic (1986b). Perhaps the best-known critique of recent times is that of Jorma Koivulehto , issued in a series of carefully formulated articles. Koivulehto's central contention, agreeing with Rédei's views, is that all of the lexical items claimed to be Indo-Uralic can be explained as loans from Indo-European into Uralic (see below for examples). The linguists Christian Carpelan, Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio suggest that early Indo-European and Uralic stand in early contact and suggest that any similarities between them are explained through early language contact and borrowings. According to Angela Marcantonio (2014) and Johan Schalin
5229-552: The nominative singular of the second person pronoun comes from * ti(H) , whereas in the non-Anatolian languages it comes from * tu(H) ; in Proto-Uralic it was * ti , which agrees with evidence from internal reconstruction that Anatolian has the more archaic form (2008b: 93). The most extensive attempt to establish sound correspondences between Indo-European and Uralic to date is that of the Slovenian linguist Bojan Čop . It
5312-428: The numbers in all Indo-European languages can be traced back to reconstructed Proto-Indo-European numbers, this cannot be done for the Uralic numbers, where only "two" and "five" are common to all of the family (roots for 3-6 are common to all subgroups other than Samoyedic, and slightly less widespread roots are known for 1 and 10). This would appear to show that if Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are to be related,
5395-423: The oldest demonstrable language family, Afroasiatic , is far younger than language itself. Estimates of the number of language families in the world may vary widely. According to Ethnologue there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. Lyle Campbell (2019) identifies a total of 406 independent language families, including isolates. Ethnologue 27 (2024) lists
5478-524: The other language. Hannes Sk%C3%B6ld Johannes ( Hannes ) Evelinus Sköld (20 September 1886 – 14 September 1930) was a Swedish socialist and anti-militarist . Sköld was also a linguist , a writer, poet, and songwriter. Johannes Sköld was born in Heby . Large parts of his childhood was spent in China , as his father was a missionary there. His family returned to Sweden in 1897 and settled in
5561-454: The other. The term and the process of language evolution are independent of, and not reliant on, the terminology, understanding, and theories related to genetics in the biological sense, so, to avoid confusion, some linguists prefer the term genealogical relationship . There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of
5644-520: The others have from Proto-Uralic . But even then, similar suspicious parallels have been noted between Hungarian and Armenian verb conjugation.) However, the strongly divergent sound systems of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are an aggravating factor both in the morphological and the lexical realm, making it additionally difficult to judge resemblances and interpret them as either borrowings, possible cognates or chance resemblances. A second type of evidence advanced in favor of an Indo-Uralic family
5727-470: The possibility that the two words are similar merely due to chance, or due to one having borrowed the words from the other (or from a language related to the other). Chance resemblance is ruled out by the existence of large collections of pairs of words between the two languages showing similar patterns of phonetic similarity. Once coincidental similarity and borrowing have been eliminated as possible explanations for similarities in sound and meaning of words,
5810-653: The purposes of interactions between two groups who speak different languages. Languages that arise in order for two groups to communicate with each other to engage in commercial trade or that appeared as a result of colonialism are called pidgin . Pidgins are an example of linguistic and cultural expansion caused by language contact. However, language contact can also lead to cultural divisions. In some cases, two different language speaking groups can feel territorial towards their language and do not want any changes to be made to it. This causes language boundaries and groups in contact are not willing to make any compromises to accommodate
5893-536: The putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (by spatial diffusion). In some cases, the shared derivation of a group of related languages from a common ancestor is directly attested in the historical record. For example, this is the case for the Romance language family , wherein Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , and French are all descended from Latin, as well as for
5976-613: The region north of the Pontic–Caspian steppes around 2100–1800 BC, the approximate floruit of Indo-Iranian (Anthony 2007:371–411). It provides linguistic evidence for the geographical location of these languages around that time, agreeing with archeological evidence that Indo-European speakers were present in the Pontic-Caspian steppes by around 4500 BCE (the Kurgan hypothesis ) and that Uralic speakers may have been established in
6059-413: The relationships may be too remote to be detectable. Alternative explanations for some basic observed commonalities between languages include developmental theories, related to the biological development of the capacity for language as the child grows from newborn. A language family is a monophyletic unit; all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are included in
6142-570: The remaining explanation is common origin: it is inferred that the similarities occurred due to descent from a common ancestor, and the words are actually cognates, implying the languages must be related. When languages are in contact with one another , either of them may influence the other through linguistic interference such as borrowing. For example, French has influenced English , Arabic has influenced Persian , Sanskrit has influenced Tamil , and Chinese has influenced Japanese in this way. However, such influence does not constitute (and
6225-719: The stem is borrowed, without any case-endings. Proto-Uralic *nimi- has been explained according to sound laws governing substitutions in borrowings (Koivulehto 1999), on the assumption that the original was a zero-grade oblique stem PIE * (H)nmen- as attested in later Balto-Slavic *inmen- and Proto-Celtic *anmen- . Proto-Uralic *weti- could be a loan from the PIE oblique e -grade form for 'water' or from an indirectly attested cognate root noun *wed- . Proto-Uralic *toHį- 'give' and PFU *wetä- 'lead' also make perfect phonologic sense as borrowings. The number systems of Indo-European and Uralic show no commonalities. Moreover, while
6308-426: The term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus on how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups , and groups into complexes . A top-level (i.e., the largest) family is often called a phylum or stock . The closer the branches are to each other, the more closely the languages will be related. This means if a branch of a proto-language is four branches down and there
6391-502: The tree model. The wave model uses isoglosses to group language varieties; unlike in the tree model, these groups can overlap. While the tree model implies a lack of contact between languages after derivation from an ancestral form, the wave model emphasizes the relationship between languages that remain in contact, which is more realistic. Historical glottometry is an application of the wave model, meant to identify and evaluate genetic relations in linguistic linkages . A sprachbund
6474-579: The two statistically soundest recent quantitative tests, Kessler and Lehtonen (2006), using a 100-item Swadesh-like wordlist, found no evidence for Indo-Uralic". The most common arguments in favour of a relationship between Indo-European and Uralic are based on seemingly common elements of morphology , such as the pronominal roots ( *m- for first person; *t- for second person; *i- for third person), case markings (accusative *-m ; ablative/partitive *-ta ), interrogative/relative pronouns ( *kʷ- "who?, which?"; *y- "who, which" to signal relative clauses) and
6557-511: The underlying second-person marker in Indo-European may be *t and that the *u found in forms such as *tu was originally an affixal particle or merely analogical. An Indo-European marginal locative *-en compares in function the most closely with the Uralic locative *-na , in form with the Uralic genitive *-n , which has inspired suggestions of a single Indo-Uralic *n -case with later development into multiple case forms in both families (Pedersen 1933) Similarities have long been noted between
6640-484: The verb conjugation systems of Uralic languages (e.g. that of Finnish ) and Indo-European languages (e.g. those of Latin , Russian , and Lithuanian ). Although it would not be uncommon for a language to borrow heavily from the vocabulary of another language (as in the cases of English from French , Persian from Arabic , and Korean from Chinese ), it would be extremely unusual for a language to borrow its basic system of verb conjugation from another. Supporters of
6723-480: Was published as a series of articles in various academic journals from 1970 to 1989 under the collective title Indouralica . The topics to be covered by each article were sketched out at the beginning of "Indouralica II". Of the projected 18 articles only 11 appeared. These articles have not been collected into a single volume and thereby remain difficult to access. In the 1980s, Russian linguist N. D. Andreev [ ru ] (Nikolai Dmitrievich Andreev) proposed
6806-405: Was that of Nikolai Anderson in 1879. However, Pedersen reports, the value of Anderson’s work was "impaired by its many errors" (337). The English phonetician Henry Sweet argued for kinship between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in his semi-popular book The History of Language in 1900 (see especially Sweet 1900:112-121). Sweet's treatment awakened "[g]reat interest" in the question, but "his space
6889-555: Was too limited to permit of actual proof" (Pedersen 1931:337). A somewhat longer study by K. B. Wiklund appeared in 1906 and another by Heikki Paasonen in 1908 (i.e. 1907) (ib.). Pedersen considered that these two studies sufficed to settle the question and that, after them, "it seems unnecessary to doubt the relationship further" (ib.). Sweet considered the relationship to be securely established, stating (1900:120; "Aryan" = Indo-European, "Ugrian" = Finno-Ugric): If all these and many other resemblances that might be adduced do not prove
#699300