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44-523: The Nostratic hypothesis originates with Holger Pedersen in the early 20th century. The name "Nostratic" is due to Pedersen (1903), derived from the Latin nostrates "fellow countrymen". The hypothesis was significantly expanded in the 1960s by Soviet linguists, notably Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky . The hypothesis has fallen out of favour since the latter half of the 20th century and has limited degrees of acceptance, predominantly among

88-476: A certain threshold, resemblances in sound/meaning correspondences are highly improbable mathematically. Pedersen's original Nostratic proposal synthesized earlier macrofamilies, some of which, including Indo-Uralic , involved extensive comparison of inflections. It is true the Russian Nostraticists initially emphasized lexical comparisons. Critics argue that were one to collect all the words from

132-470: A detailed argument in favor of the kinship of Indo-European and Uralic in 1933. In effect, the three pillars of the Nostratic hypothesis are Indo-Uralic , Ural–Altaic , and Indo-Semitic . Pedersen produced works on two of these three, so the impression is incorrect that he neglected this subject in his subsequent career. His interest in the Nostratic idea remained constant amid his many other activities as

176-734: A linguist. English "Nostratic" is the normal equivalent of German nostratisch , the form used by Pedersen in 1903, and Danish nostratisk (compare French nostratique ). His 1931 American translator rendered nostratisk by "Nostratian," but this form did not catch on. In his 1924 book, Pedersen defined Nostratic as follows (1931:338): In his view, Indo-European was most clearly related to Uralic , with "similar, though fainter, resemblances" to Turkish , Mongolian , and Manchu ; to Yukaghir ; and to Eskimo (1931:338). He also considered Indo-European might be related to Semitic and that, if so, it must be related to Hamitic and possibly to Basque (ib.). In his abovementioned 1903 article he expressed

220-481: A major work by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov published in 1984 (English translation 1995), that the Indo-European b d g series had originally been a glottalized series, p' t' k'. Under this form, the theory has attracted wide interest; however, since the original claim of typological oddity has been falsified, no direct evidence for glottalized stops has been found, in the last few years publications in support of

264-412: A minority of Russian linguists. Linguists worldwide mostly reject Nostratic and many other macrofamily hypotheses with the exception of Dené–Yeniseian languages , which has been met with some degree of acceptance. In Russia , it is endorsed by a minority of linguists, such as Vladimir Dybo , but is not a generally accepted hypothesis. Some linguists take an agnostic view. Eurasiatic , a similar grouping,

308-468: A native IE word). Much of the IE agricultural lexicon is not shared among all branches and seems to have been borrowed, thus supporting the view that the expansion of IE languages was post-Neolithic rather than a Neolithic one as postulated by Renfrew's theory. ÷==External links== Holger Pedersen (linguist) Holger Pedersen ( Danish: [ˈhʌlˀkɐ ˈpʰe̝ðˀɐsn̩] ; 7 April 1867 – 25 October 1953)

352-492: A number of languages and the forms must be relatable by regular sound changes. In addition, many languages have restrictions on root structure , reducing the number of possible root-forms far below its mathematical maximum. These languages include, among others, Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic—all the core languages of the Nostratic hypothesis. For a highly critical assessment of the work of the Moscow School , especially

396-586: A reader in comparative grammar there. In 1902 he was offered a professorship at the University of Basel , which he declined, but was able at the same time to persuade the University of Copenhagen to establish an extraordinary professorship for him (Koerner 1983:xii). Pedersen also turned down the offer in 1908 of a professorship at the University of Strassburg (ib.). Following the retirement of Vilhelm Thomsen in 1912, Pedersen acceded to Thomsen's chair at

440-458: A systematic comparison of the sound systems of the languages concerned. The language families proposed for inclusion in Nostratic vary, but all Nostraticists agree on a common core of language families, with differences of opinion appearing over the inclusion of additional families. The three groups universally accepted among Nostraticists are Indo-European, Uralic , and Altaic . While the validity of Altaic itself generally rejected by linguists,

484-414: A tripartite overall grouping: he considers Afroasiatic, Nostratic and Elamite to be roughly equidistant and more closely related to each other than to anything else. Sergei Starostin's school has now re-included Afroasiatic in a broadly defined Nostratic, while reserving the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping which comprises the rest of the macrofamily. Recent proposals thus differ mainly on

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528-514: Is " fondé sur la présentation du tokharien par Holger Pedersen ," 'based on the presentation of Tocharian by Holger Pedersen'. It was Pedersen who formulated the ruki law, an important sound change in Indo-Iranian , Baltic , and Slavic . He is also known for the description of Pedersen's Law , a type of accentual shift occurring in Baltic and Slavic languages (1933a). Pedersen endorsed

572-651: Is often cited in Vladimir Orel 's Albanian Etymological Dictionary (1995). Among students of the Celtic languages Pedersen is best known for his Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen , 'Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages', which is still regarded as the principal reference work in Celtic historical linguistics . His Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen , 'Hittite and

616-676: Is taken for granted by Nostraticists. Nearly all also include the Kartvelian and Dravidian language families. Following Pedersen, Illich-Svitych, and Dolgopolsky, most advocates of the theory have included Afroasiatic , though criticisms by Joseph Greenberg and others from the late 1980s onward suggested a reassessment of this position. The Sumerian and Etruscan languages, regarded as language isolates by linguists, are thought by some to be Nostratic languages as well. Others, however, consider one or both to be members of another macrofamily called Dené–Caucasian . Another notional isolate,

660-488: The Elamite language , also figures in a number of Nostratic classifications. In 1987 Joseph Greenberg proposed a similar macrofamily which he called Eurasiatic . It included the same "Euraltaic" core (Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic), but excluded some of the above-listed families, most notably Afroasiatic. At about this time Russian Nostraticists, notably Sergei Starostin , constructed a revised version of Nostratic which

704-528: The University of Leipzig with Karl Brugmann , Eduard Sievers , Ernst Windisch , and August Leskien . In the fall of 1893, Pedersen enrolled at the University of Berlin, where he studied with Johannes Schmidt . The following year he studied Celtic languages and Sanskrit with Heinrich Zimmer at the University of Greifswald . In 1895 he spent several months in the Aran Islands in Ireland to study

748-450: The comparative method —previously used as a means of studying languages already known to be related and without any thought of classification—is the most effective means to establish genetic relationship, eventually hardening into the conviction that it is the only legitimate means to do so. This view was basic to the outlook of the new Nostraticists. Although Illich-Svitych adopted many of Trombetti's etymologies, he sought to validate them by

792-480: The laryngeal theory (1893:292) at a time when it "was regarded as an eccentric fancy of outsiders" (Szemerényi 1996:123). In his classic exposition of the theory, Émile Benveniste (1935:148) credits Pedersen as one of those who contributed most to its development, along with Ferdinand de Saussure , Hermann Möller , and Albert Cuny . Two of Pedersen's theories have been receiving considerable attention in recent times after decades of neglect, often known today under

836-497: The Amerind and Austric superfamilies. The term SCAN has been used for a group that would include Sino-Caucasian, Amerind, and Nostratic. None of these proposed links have found wider acceptance outside of Nostraticists. The following table summarizes the constituent language families of Nostratic, as described by Holger Pedersen , Vladislav Illich-Svitych , Sergei Starostin , and Aharon Dolgopolsky . According to Dolgopolsky ,

880-789: The Other Indo-European Languages', represented a significant step forward in Hittite studies, and is often relied on in Friedrich's Hethitisches Elementarbuch (2d ed. 1960), the standard handbook of Hittite . Also influential was his Tocharisch vom Gesichtspunkt der indoeuropäischen Sprachvergleichung , 'Tocharian from the Viewpoint of Indo-European Language Comparison'. For example, André Martinet (2005:179n) states that his discussion of sound changes in Tocharian

924-534: The Proto-Nostratic language had analytic structure , which he argues by diverging of post- and prepositions of auxiliary words in descendant languages. Dolgopolsky states three lexical categories to be in the Proto-Nostratic language: Word order was subject–object–verb when the subject was a noun, and object–verb–subject when it was a pronoun . Attributive (expressed by a lexical word) preceded its head. Pronominal attributive ('my', 'this') might follow

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968-466: The University of Copenhagen. He remained at the University of Copenhagen for the rest of his life. In 1893, Pedersen traveled to Corfu with Karl Brugmann to study Albanian in place. Subsequently, Pedersen published a volume of Albanian texts collected on this journey (1895). The publication was due to the recommendation of Brugmann and Leskien (Koerner 1983:x). He continued to publish work on Albanian for many years thereafter. Pedersen's work on Albanian

1012-595: The Vocalism, Consonantism, and Formation of Roots in "Nostratic", Ancestor of Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic') in 1943. Although Cuny enjoyed a high reputation as a linguist, the work was coldly received. While Pedersen's Nostratic hypothesis did not make much headway in the West, it became quite popular in the Soviet Union . Working independently at first, Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky elaborated

1056-507: The article he was writing, not the rest of his career. Although he defined the Nostratic family, he himself never produced the work of synthesis the concept seemed to call for. That would await the work of the Russian scholars Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky in the 1960s for its first iteration. Nevertheless, Pedersen did not abandon the subject. He produced a substantial (if overlooked) article on Indo-European and Semitic in 1908. He produced

1100-627: The concept (such as Greenberg and Ruhlen himself) have criticised the name as reflecting the ethnocentrism frequent among Europeans at the time. Martin Bernal has described the term as distasteful because it implies that speakers of other language families are excluded from academic discussion. However, some people like Pedersen's older contemporary Henry Sweet attributed some of the resistance by Indo-European specialists to hypotheses of wider genetic relationships as "prejudice against dethroning [Indo-European] from its proud isolation and affiliating it to

1144-465: The conservative form of Irish spoken there. Pedersen submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Copenhagen in 1896. It dealt with aspiration in Irish . It was accepted and published in 1897. The dissertation committee included Vilhelm Thomsen and Otto Jespersen . Also in 1897, Pedersen took a position as a lecturer on Celtic languages at the University of Copenhagen. In 1900 he became

1188-410: 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. Defenders of the Nostratic theory argue that were this to be true, it would remain that in classifying languages genetically, positives count for vastly more than negatives (Ruhlen 1994). The reason for this is that, above

1232-532: The door left open to the eventual inclusion of others. The name Nostratic derives from the Latin word nostrās , meaning 'our fellow-countryman' (plural: nostrates ) and has been defined, since Pedersen, as consisting of those language families that are related to Indo-European. Merritt Ruhlen notes that this definition is not properly taxonomic but amorphous, since there are broader and narrower degrees of relatedness, and moreover, some linguists who broadly accept

1276-488: The first version of the contemporary form of the hypothesis during the 1960s. They expanded it to include additional language families. Illich-Svitych also prepared the first dictionary of the hypothetical language. Dolgopolsky's most recent Nostratic Dictionary was published in 2008, and is considered the most up-to-date attempt at a Nostratic lexicon. A principal source for the items in Illich-Svitych's dictionary

1320-611: The languages listed did not exhaust the possibilities for Nostratic (ib.): Alfredo Trombetti Alfredo Trombetti (16 January 1866 in Bologna – 5 July 1929 in Venice ) was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century. Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna . He was a member of the Italian Academy . He is best known as an advocate of the doctrine of monogenesis , according to which all of

1364-614: The languages of yellow races". Proposed alternative names such as Mitian , formed from the characteristic Nostratic first- and second-person pronouns mi 'I' and ti 'you' (more accurately ' thee '), have not attained the same currency. An early supporter was the French linguist Albert Cuny —better known for his role in the development of the laryngeal theory —who published his Recherches sur le vocalisme, le consonantisme et la formation des racines en « nostratique », ancêtre de l'indo-européen et du chamito-sémitique ('Researches on

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1408-636: The names of the glottalic theory and the Nostratic theory. In a work published in 1951, Pedersen pointed out that the frequency of b in Indo-European is abnormally low. Comparison of languages, however, shows that it would be normal if it had once been the equivalent voiceless stop p , which is infrequent or absent in many languages. He also posited that the Indo-European voiced aspirates, bh dh gh , could be better understood as voiceless aspirates, ph th kh . Pedersen therefore proposed that

1452-553: The noun. Auxiliary words are considered to be postpositions . The Nostratic hypothesis is not endorsed by the mainstream of comparative linguistics . Nostraticists tend to refuse to include in their schema language families for which no proto-language has yet been reconstructed. This approach was criticized by Joseph Greenberg on the ground that genetic classification is necessarily prior to linguistic reconstruction, but this criticism has so far had no effect on Nostraticist theory and practice. Certain critiques have pointed out that

1496-530: The precise placement of Kartvelian and Dravidian. According to Greenberg, Eurasiatic and Amerind form a genetic node, being more closely related to each other than either is to "the other families of the Old World". There are a number of hypotheses incorporating Nostratic into an even broader linguistic 'mega-phylum', sometimes called Borean , which would also include at least the Dené–Caucasian and perhaps

1540-416: The second stop occurs after a sonorant. In summary, Campbell and Poser reject the Nostratic hypothesis and, as a parting shot, state that they "seriously doubt that further research will result in any significant support for this hypothesized macro-family." Proto-Indo-European *b[h]ars- seems to be a cultural loanword from Semitic (though several reputable Indo-Europeanists dispute this and consider it to be

1584-423: The so-called glottalic model have been steadily declining, and "the traditional paradigm remains absolutely in place". Pedersen seems to have first used the term "Nostratic" in an article on Turkish phonology published in 1903. The kernel of Pedersen's argument for Nostratic in that article was as follows (1903:560-561; "Indo-Germanic" = Indo-European): Pedersen's last sentence should be understood as referring to

1628-475: The three stop series of Indo-European, p t k , bh dh gh , and b d g , had at an earlier time been b d g , ph th kh , and (p) t k , with the voiceless and voiced non-aspirates reversed. This theory attracted relatively little attention until the American linguist Paul Hopper (1973) and the two Soviet scholars Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov proposed, in a series of articles culminating in

1672-428: The various known Indo-European languages and dialects which have at least one of any 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). Nostraticists respond that they do not compare isolated lexical items but reconstructed proto-languages. To include a word for a proto-language it must be found in

1716-570: The view that the "Semitic-Hamitic" languages were "indubitably" included in Nostratic (1903:560). In modern terms, we would say he was positing genetic relationship between Indo-European and the Uralic , Altaic , Yukaghir, Eskimo, and Afro-Asiatic language families. (The existence of the Altaic family is controversial, and few would now assign Basque to Afro-Asiatic.) However, in Pedersen's view

1760-399: The work of Illich-Svitych, cf. Campbell and Poser 2008:243-264. Campbell and Poser argue that Nostratic, as reconstructed by Illich-Svitych and others, is "typologically flawed". For instance, they point out that, surprisingly, very few Nostratic roots contain two voiceless stops, which are less marked and should therefore occur more frequently, and where such roots do occur, in almost all cases

1804-520: Was a Danish linguist who made significant contributions to language science and wrote about 30 authoritative works concerning several languages. He was born in Gelballe, Denmark, and died in Hellerup , next to Copenhagen . (Principal source: Koerner 1983) Pedersen studied at the University of Copenhagen with Karl Verner , Vilhelm Thomsen , and Hermann Möller . He subsequently studied at

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1848-525: Was proposed by Joseph Greenberg (2000) and endorsed by Merritt Ruhlen . The last quarter of the 19th century saw various linguists putting forward proposals linking the Indo-European languages to other language families, such as Finno-Ugric and Altaic . These proposals were taken much further in 1903 when Holger Pedersen proposed "Nostratic", a common ancestor for the Indo-European , Finno-Ugric , Samoyed , Turkish , Mongolian , Manchu , Yukaghir , Eskimo , Semitic , and Hamitic languages, with

1892-431: Was slightly broader than Greenberg's grouping but which similarly left out Afroasiatic. Beginning in the early 2000s, a consensus emerged among proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis. Greenberg basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern 'tier' (his Eurasiatic) and a southern 'tier' (principally Afroasiatic and Dravidian). Georgiy Starostin (2002) arrives at

1936-418: Was the earlier work of Alfredo Trombetti (1866–1929), an Italian linguist who had developed a classification scheme for all the world's languages, widely reviled at the time and subsequently ignored by almost all linguists. In Trombetti's time, a widely held view on classifying languages was that similarity in inflections is the surest proof of genetic relationship . In the interim, the view had taken hold that

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