Nostratic languages

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Nostratic, a hypothetical extinct language, purportedly served as the root language from which a large number of the language families of Europe, Asia, and Africa may have descended.

The Nostratic languages would thus constitute a linguistic super-family or high-order grouping of languages.

Proponents of the Nostratic theory have offered different opinions on which language families to include. However, general agreement exists that at a minimum these families include Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic. Supporters of the Nostratic theory have long included Afro-Asiatic in Nostratic proposals as well, though recent criticisms by Joseph Greenberg seem to suggest a reassessment of this position.

A fairly representative proposed grouping would include:

Joseph Greenberg proposed a similar or overlapping macrofamily which he called Eurasiatic, and which he linked to the Amerind languages of the Americas.

The American Nostraticist Allan R. Bomhard considers Eurasiatic a branch of Nostratic alongside other branches: Afro-Asiatic, Elamo-Dravidian, and Kartvelian.

1 Origin of the Nostratic theory
2 Background: From Indo-European to Nostratic
3 A sample Nostratic etymology
4 Criticisms of the Nostratic theory
5 Defense of the Nostratic theory
6 Prospects for the Nostratic theory
7 Nostratic Poetry
8 References
9 See also
10 External links

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Origin of the Nostratic theory

In 1903 the pioneering Danish linguist Holger Pedersen proposed "Nostratian," a proto-language for the proto-languages of the Indo-European, Uralic, Afro-Asiatic, and Eskimo-Aleut language-families. The name derives from the Latin word noster, meaning 'our'. While the hypothesis did not make much headway in the West, it became quite popular in the former Soviet Union. Under the slightly modified name "Nostratic" it expanded to include additional language families.

Vladislav Illich-Svitych (1934-66) elaborated the modern Nostratic theory and also published a comprehensive dictionary of the hypothetical language.

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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.

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.

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 in flat ground.)

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.

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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).

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-Afroasiatic *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

— 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'.

— 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:

'grain' of sand (= 'pebble, gravel, grit, etc.')
'grain' of salt (= small crystal of salt)
'grain' = 'seed' or 'fruit' of a cereal grass
overall term for plants producing 'grain'
'grain' of wood (= stratification of wood fibers)
'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'.

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Criticisms of the Nostratic theory

1. Almost all modern linguists express considerable skepticism of the data put forward to demonstrate interrelationships between the various language families under the Nostratic umbrella. The main criticism of Nostratic holds that the methodology used leads people to see patterns that actually result from coincidences. In reconstructing Nostratic, supporters do not use the techniques that linguists have established to prevent false positives, such as insisting on examining only regular sound shifts.

2. Most of the proposed phono-semantic sets appear much more speculative than those used to group languages into the accepted families — one technique used to support a similar super-family famously "demonstrated" in the 1960s that English belonged to a proposed Central-American language family.

3. The more recently introduced technique of comparing grammatical structures (as opposed to words) has suggested to some that the Nostratic candidates lack interrelatedness.

4. The proposed Nostratic language "super-family" hypothesis suggests links between many Eurasian language families. The precise nature of the links remains the subject of debate, however, as proponents have not agreed on the set of families to include.

5. Many mainstream linguists have dismissed claims (by Aharon Dolgopolsky, among others) that the words reconstructed for Proto-Nostratic point to a pre-agricultural society in the Middle East (as one might expect for a language pre-dating Proto-Indo-European). Critics see the notion as wishful thinking exacerbated by that very expectation shaping the results.

6. Some linguists also object to the assumption that languages must ultimately all stem from one reconstructable root. Linguists know that unrelated languages in close geographical proximity can trade vocabulary, syntax, and other features, and some suggest that the present-day "family" structure of languages may simply exemplify an aberration.

7. Certain linguists suggest that in the absence of rapid technological change (which did not occur prior to about the 8th millennium BC) the tendency for languages to trade features with each other would drown out the tendency of languages to evolve. In such circumstances, the axiom that languages change in a manner that can be reversed does not hold before a certain point in the past, and one thus cannot reconstruct older proto-languages (Nostratic or otherwise) using the techniques used to reconstruct the proto-languages of the accepted major language families (all of which, linguists believe, post-date the invention of agriculture).

8. Regardless, the concept of Nostratic languages still has some influence on the fringes of linguistics. Merrit Ruhlen and Joseph Greenberg have proposed a further level of the "language family tree", which weds Nostratic with all other language families into "Proto-World". Most of the objections raised to the Nostratic hypothesis apply equally to this idea, and the Proto-World concept has little currency among linguists.

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Defense of the Nostratic theory

Note: this section includes numbered replies to criticisms made above.

1. "Almost all modern linguists express considerable skepticism of the data put forward to demonstrate interrelationships between the various language families under the Nostratic umbrella. The main criticism of Nostratic holds that the methodology used leads people to see patterns that actually result from coincidences. In reconstructing Nostratic, supporters do not use the techniques that linguists have established to prevent false positives, such as insisting on examining only regular sound shifts."

The phrase "almost all modern linguists" mainly applies to American linguistics. In Russia, Nostratic theory has more adherents.

2. The demand that investigators admit "only regular sound shifts" ignores the fact that linguists typically identify sound laws long after the discipline has established relationships between languages through lexical and morphological correspondences. Had linguists followed this advice, they would not have succeeded in establishing the existence of Indo-European.

3. "The more recently introduced technique of comparing grammatical structures (as opposed to words) has suggested to some that the Nostratic candidates lack interrelatedness."

However, recent work by Joseph Greenberg (and Allan R. Bomhard, forthcoming) has done a lot to dispel doubts in this area.

One cannot claim "comparing grammatical structures, as opposed to words" as a "recently introduced technique". Compare Sir William Jones's famous remarks of 1786 (bold emphasis added):

"The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek; more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident."

Nor can one speak as if proponents of higher-order classification of languages relied on lexical as opposed to morphological data. For instance, much of Bomhard and Kerns (1994) attempts to reconstruct Nostratic morphology and syntax. Likewise, function-words and morphological elements form the subject matter of the first and longest volume of Joseph Greenberg's Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives (2000).

So, whatever valid arguments critics may launch against Nostratic, this is not one of them.

4. "The proposed Nostratic language "super-family" hypothesis suggests links between many Eurasian language families. The precise nature of the links remains the subject of debate, however, as proponents have not agreed on the set of families to include."

In some respects, however, the situation somewhat resembles that which occurred within Indo-European studies in the early stages of research. At first, researchers did not definitively identify the Celtic languages as part of the Indo-European language family, while they did not admit Armenian until the 1880s (until then, expert opinion regarded it as an aberrant dialect of Iranian. Lycian and Lydian did not gain definitive recognition as Indo-European languages until the middle of the twentieth century. Even today, uncertainties linger about the subgrouping of the Finno-Ugric languages, not to mention Afro-Asiatic.

5. "Many mainstream linguists have dismissed claims (by Aharon Dolgopolsky, among others) that the words reconstructed for Proto-Nostratic point to a pre-agricultural society in the Middle East (as one might expect for a language pre-dating Proto-Indo-European). Critics see the notion as wishful thinking exacerbated by that very expectation shaping the results."

However, one cannot lightly dismiss the possibility that Natufian and Zarzian Proto-Nostratic speakers helped spread the cultures involved in the post-glacial "broad spectrum revolution", using new bow-and-arrow hunting technologies and domesticating the dog.

6. "Some linguists also object to the assumption that languages must ultimately all stem from one reconstructable root. Linguists know that unrelated languages in close geographical proximity can trade vocabulary, syntax, and other features, and some suggest that the present-day "family" structure of languages may simply exemplify an aberration."

Advancing technology might allow one language to rapidly expand in geographic scope, as the people speaking it conquered their neighbours. This would then allow that one language to evolve into a family (in fact, some have argued that Indo-European languages have spread as far as they have because of the war-making advantages that the domestication of the horse gave to one small group of Proto-Indo-European speakers).

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Prospects for the Nostratic theory

As the foregoing arguments demonstrate, strongly-held opinions separate proponents and opponents of Nostratic studies. It seems unlikely the two sides will agree any time soon or even agree to disagree.

Against the Nostratic theory, note that consensus opinion among professional linguists strongly opposes it, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world. In favor of Nostratics, note that scientific innovations usually begin with a few individuals and that the academic establishment resists until the case for them proves overwhelming (this argument can generically "validate" all pseudo-science).

Again, one can point out the lack of intellectual credentials of some of the persons advocating the Nostratic hypothesis. Contrariwise, one could point out that some of the most distinguished linguists of the twentieth century (such as Holger Pedersen and Joseph Greenberg) favored Nostratic or similar theories, .

Only one comfort remains for those perplexed by the ongoing furor: that science has a way of eventually correcting itself. Time will tell whether the Nostratic theory resembles the grain of sand that produces the pearl, or just resembles a grain of sand.

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Nostratic Poetry

The late Vladislav Illich-Svitych, a notable Russian Nostraticist, decided to create a poem using his version of Proto-Nostratic. The famous poem is as follows:

Nostratic	Russian	Translation
K̥elHä wet̥ei Template:IPAaK̥un kähla	Язык - это брод через реку времени,	Language is a ford through the river of time,
k̥aλai palhA-k̥A na wetä	он ведёт нас к жилищу умерших;	it leads us to the dwelling of the dead;
śa da Template:IPAa-k̥A Template:IPAeja Template:IPAälä	но туда не сможет дойти тот,	but he cannot arrive there,
ja-k̥o pele t̥uba wet̥e	кто боится глубокой воды.	who fears deep water.

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References

Allan R. Bomhard and John C. Kerns, The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. ISBN 3110139006

Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjačeslav V. Ivanov, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, translated by Johanna Nichols, 2 volumes. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. ISBN 3110147289

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