Eurasiatic languages
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Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America.
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[edit] The branches of Eurasiatic
As laid out by Greenberg (2000:279-81), the branches of Eurasiatic are:
- Etruscan
- Indo-European
- Uralic-Yukaghir
- Altaic
- Korean-Japanese-Ainu
- Nivkh (Gilyak)
- Chukotian
- Eskimo-Aleut
These groupings, except for the first two, are the native languages in various parts of northeast Asia. Eskimo-Aleut is moreover spoken across the subArctic region from northeast Asia to Greenland, and the Uralic languages are also spoken westward as far as into Scandinavia and Hungary.
[edit] Relation to other language families
Greenberg concluded that the language family that Eurasiatic is most closely connected to is Amerind. He speculated that "[t]he Eurasiatic-Amerind family represents a relatively recent expansion (circa 15,000 BP) into territory opened up by the melting of the Arctic ice cap" (2002:2).
[edit] Reception by linguists
The Eurasiatic hypothesis is dismissed by many linguists, often on the ground that Greenberg relies in his research on mass comparison, a method he developed in the 1950s that remains extremely controversial. Others, citing what is said to be the wide acceptance of his classification of African languages, are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude. Greenberg also has his supporters, among them the American linguists Merritt Ruhlen and Allan Bomhard.
One of the basic difficulties to proving a genetic relationship between two languages is that contact between populations often results in exchange of words, so that similarities in vocabulary and even in grammatical structure do not necessarily indicate a common origin.
[edit] The Eurasiatic claim and Lehmann's claim about a possible ancestor of Proto-Indo-European
Winfred P. Lehmann and others have recently argued that Proto-Indo-European descended from a language characterized by active-stativeness, Subject-Object-Verb word order, use of agglutination, and absence of grammatical gender. These characteristics are very common among languages identified by Greenberg as Eurasiatic.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1, Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 2, Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Lehmann, Winfred P. 2002. Pre-Indo-European. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
- Jolkesky, M. 2004. "Uralisches Substrat im Deutsch – oder gibt es eigentlich die indo-uralische Sprachfamilie?"
