The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
This paper by Tropylium (thanks for posting the link on the Great PIE Thread!) makes me think again about possible sound correspondences between IE and Uralic (which of course can only be established by the drudgework of the comparative method, but speculations like this may tell us where to look). My idea is that both the *T set and the *Dh set of PIE stops correspond to Uralic stops, with the difference between the two due to a lexically specified (no influence from ablaut!) prosodic feature within Pre-PIE (maybe a continuation of a pre-GVC distinction in vowels?), while the *D set corresponds to the Uralic spirants (if that's what they were, I mean the *ð *ð' *x set). Which happens to lack the labial member (perhaps merged with *w in Pre-PIU, which may explain why some PIE words have *w where one would expect a stop) which may or may not have been missing from the PIE *D set as well.
Alas, as I said above, this needs to be explored by means of the comparative method.
Alas, as I said above, this needs to be explored by means of the comparative method.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
-
- Posts: 1630
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 3:29 am
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
I wouldn't expect breathy voice to become creaky voice or vice versa like that -- unless you had interchange between a glottal stop and a glottal fricative in pre-PIE.
Duaj teibohnggoe kyoe' quaqtoeq lucj lhaj k'yoejdej noeyn tucj.
K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
As Howl has pointed out in the Great PIE Thread, one problem with my idea is that Uralic doesn't allow *ð and *x in initial position, so one would have to assume that these consonants were lost, either by changing into something else or by dropping (vowel-initial words seem to be very common in PU, so the missing initial spirants may hide there). As I said, this needs to be examined by means of the comparative method.
@Nortaneous: I don't understand why you bring "creaky voice" to the discussion of this (I didn't even understand that your post was a reply on mine - perhaps it isn't after all?). Neither the IE *D set nor the Uralic *ð/ð'/x set is creaky voiced in the standard reconstructions, so I see no reason why this should stand in the way of my idea.
But after all, this is just a spontaneous idea, and I don't know how good it is yet. It may turn out to be utter bullfrogs.
@Nortaneous: I don't understand why you bring "creaky voice" to the discussion of this (I didn't even understand that your post was a reply on mine - perhaps it isn't after all?). Neither the IE *D set nor the Uralic *ð/ð'/x set is creaky voiced in the standard reconstructions, so I see no reason why this should stand in the way of my idea.
But after all, this is just a spontaneous idea, and I don't know how good it is yet. It may turn out to be utter bullfrogs.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
As I think I mentioned last thread already, Uralic *d just has very few IE correspondences at all, and some semantically good-looking cases don't offer any regularity: #śedäm ~ *ḱerd- 'heart', *edə- ~ *h₂ant- 'front' (well, both have an *RT cluster in IE, but *nt ~ *nt would seem more expected).
Sounds possible, but yes, I would like to have examples around. Initially I can only think of comparisons like *deh₃- ~ *amta- 'to give' where dealing with the medial consonants would requre a lot of assumptions.WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 10:09 amone problem with my idea is that Uralic doesn't allow *ð and *x in initial position, so one would have to assume that these consonants were lost, either by changing into something else or by dropping (vowel-initial words seem to be very common in PU, so the missing initial spirants may hide there).
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
I admit that my idea is adventurous and probably misguided; it was just an idea I had which I wanted to share with you. Actually, I'd rather guess that the PIE *D set is, somewhat like the Itelmen ejectives, the result of cluster developments - or all words with such stops are borrowed from a (Caucasian?) language with ejectives, and there is no native phonological pathway to these sounds at all (somewhat like the clicks in southern Bantu languages). I have been hypothesizing for quite some time (and I am not the first; C. C. Uhlenbeck did so in the 1930s already) that PIE emerged from a language related to Uralic on a Caucasian-like substratum. The Uralic-like language could have been that of the Khvalynsk culture and the Caucasian-like one that of the Dniepr-Donets culture. When the Khvalynsk took over Dniepr-Donets, resulting in the Sredny Stog culture, their language turned into (Early) PIE.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
A bit more of a crackpot idea here perhaps, but this sparked in mind after seeing that many Turkic languages have the same change *b > m / _...N as hypothesised for Basque, and then noticing how similar the pronouns for the Mitian languages and the "Altaic" languages are under this light and so tried comparing them and a few other words. If anything, this might at least be a indicator just to show the extent of an older Sprachbund between them all, predating the newer common features of stuff like vowel harmony and agglutinativity:
Code: Select all
{1SG}
PIE *éǵ, (e)me- PB *ene- << **ebene PU *(e)mi-n- PT *(e)pen PM *pi PTN *pi
> Hit. ʔuk, ammu-, amm- > en-, ene- {1SG} > Mansi am, ānəm-; Hung. én > Chuv. eb(ě), man- > Mong. pi, na-, min-; Sant. pi > Manc. pi, min-; Sib. pi, min-
> Sans. ahám, ma- > mB enne- {1SG.OBL} > En. mod'i; Ngan. mənə > Turk. ben, ban-, -im; Crim. men, mań- > Mogh. bi, min-; Dag. bī, na-, min- > Evn. bi, min-; Udeg. bi, men-
> Anc.Gr. egṓ, (e)mo-, (e)me > B en- {VRB 1SG.OBL}, ni {1SG.ABS} > Fin. minu- > Coll.Fin. mä~mie, mu- > Uygh. men, mën-, -im; Yak. min
> Lat. egō, me- > Sami mon, mu-
{2SG}
PIE *tī́, t(w)(e)- < **tī, tw- PB *tʰi, tʰo PU *ti-n-, ?tu-n- PT *(e)sen PM *tʃʰi PTN *si < **tʰi
> Hit. tsīk, tu-, twē- > B hi {2SGFAM}, to {2SGFAM.M.VOC}, > Hung. te > Chuv. es(ě), san- > Mong. tʃʰi, tʃʰin- {2SGFAM}; Sant. tʂʰi, tʂʰin- > Manc. si, sin-
> Sans. tvám, tú-, t(a)v- ho-re {2SGFAM-GEN}, txo(txo) {boy.VOC} > En. toďi, Ngan. tənə > Turk. sen, san-, -in; Crim. sen, sań- > Mogh. tʃi, tʃin-; Dag. ʃī, ʃa-, ʃin- > Evn. si, sin-
> Anc.Gr. sý, so-, se > Fin. sinu- > Coll.Fin. sä~sie, su- > Uygh. sen, sën-, -iŋ; Yak. en
> Lat. tū, tu-, te- > Sami don, du-
{1PL(EXCL)}
PIE *wey, n̥s- (< **m̥-s-) PB N/A PU *me PT *pī-ŕ/z PM *pi-t PTN *pi-t
> Hit. wēs, ants- > Hung. mi > Chuv. ebir, bir- > Mong. pit; Sant. pit > Manc. pe, men-
> Sans. váyam, asma- > Ngan. mɨŋ > Turk. biz, -imiz; Crim. biz > Mogh. bid; Dag. bʲed > Evn. mit
> Lat. nōs‚ nes-/nos- > Fin. me(i)- > Uygh. biz, -imiz; Yak. bih-igi
> Germ. wīz, uns- > Sami mi(i)-
{1PL(INCL)}
PIE ? PB *gu?? PU ? PT ? PM *pa PTN *pu
{2PL}
PIE *yuH, us- (< **tw-s-?) PB *s-tʰu? PU *te PT *sī-ŕ/z PM *tʰa PTN *su
> Sans. yūyám, yuʂm- > AB zu {2PL} > Hung. te > Chuv. esir, sir- > Mong. tʰa, tʰan- {2SGPOL;2PL}; Sant. tʰa, tʰan- > Manc. suwe, suwen-
> Lat. wōs, wes-/wos- > B zu {2SGPOL}, zu-ek {2PL} > Ngan. tɨŋ > Turk. siz, -iniz; Crim. siz > Mogh. to(d), ton-; Dag. tā, tān- > Evn. su, sun-
> Germ. yūz, us- > Fin. te(i) > Uygh. siz, -ingiz; Yak. ih-igi
> Balt.-Slav. yūs, yu- > Sami di(i)-
{2}
PIE *dwóh₁, dwi- PB *bi PU *ka~k-ta? PT *tvi >> ki PM *tʃy-r PTN *tʃö-r
> Toch.A. wu, we > B bi, > Mansi kit; Hung. ket > O.Bulg. tvi-rem {second} > Khit. tʃyren > Manc. tʃuwe; Sib. tʃu
> Sans. dvá bigarren {second}, hamabi {12}, > Nen. sidja, Komi kɨk > Chuv. i-kě > Evn. dʲūr; Udeg. dʒū
> Anc.Gr. dýo biki {twin}, biri {lung}, bihotz {heart} > Fin. kaksi > Turk. i-ki; Crim. e-ki
> Lat. duo > Sami guokte > Uygh. i-kki; Yak. i-kki
> Arm. er-ku
{DEMDIST}
PIE *so, to- PB ? *tʰa-r?, *tʰo? PU *tä, to PT *-ti- PM *tʰe-r PTN *tʰe-r
> Sans. sa, ta- > CB *har {DEMDIST} > B -a {DEF}, etc., > Hung. túl {too}, tegnap {yesterday} > *em-ti {now} > Chuv. ěntě, > Mong. tʰer, tʰȳ; Sant. tʰere > Manc. tʰere, tʰe-
> Anc.Gr. ho, to- hartara {so}, -tara {MODDEM} > Nen. tā, tʲei {yesterday} Turk. ʃ-imdi, Crim. indi, > Evn. tar, ta-
> Lat. sī {if}, tam {so}, iste {DEMH}, etc. > to {2SGFAM.M.VOC} > Fin. tuo {DEMDIST}, tämä {DEMPRX} > Coll.Fin. tää Uzb. endi
> Germ. sa, θa- > Sami duot {DEMDIST}, dāt {DEMPRX}
{WH}
PIE *kʷi-, kʷo- PB *s-kʰe-r?? PU *ku, ke PT *kʰe-m PM *kʰe-n PTN *kʷʰe-n
> Hitt. kʷis, kʷi- > B zer {what?,how?} > Hung. ki, hol {where?}, hoɟ {how?} > Chuv. kam > Mong. xen; Sant. kʰiən > Manc. we
> Sans. ka, kim {what?,how?} > Nen. ʃā, ku- > Turk. kim; Bash. kem > Mog. ken; Dag. xən > Evn. e-ku-n
> Anc.Gr. tis, ti- > Fin. kuka, ke(n)-, ku- > Uzb. kim
> Lat. quis, qui-, quo-, cu- > Sami kie
> Germ. hwis/hwos, hwi-/hwo-
{WHorNEG}
PIE *ne, meh₁ PB *na, no-r PU *ne, mi PT *ne, -ma PM ? PTN ?
> Toch. mā {NEG} > B non {where?}, nor {who?}, > Hung. nem {NEG}, mi {what?;how,so} > Chuv. měn {what?}
> Sans. na {NEG}, mā {PROH} noiz {when?} > Udm. ma {what?} > Turk. ne {what?}, -ma {NEG}; Crim. ni {what?}
> Anc.Gr. mē {PROH} > inon {no/somewhere}, inor {no/someone} > Fin. mi-kä, mi- {what?} > Uygh. nëme {what?}
> Lat. ne {NEG}
{out,beyond > NEG}
PIE *eǵʰ-s PB *e(s)gi < **egi-s PU *e- PT ? PM ? PTN ?
> Anc.Gr. eks, ek {out of,from,by} > B -egi {EXCS}, ez- {extra-}, > Fin. ei {NEGVRB}, Sami ii {NEGVRB}
> Lat. eks {out of;throughout;PRIV} ez {NEG}
> O.Ir. a {out of,from}
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
People here might be interested to hear that Alexis Manaster Ramen has recently been uploading several backcatalog (mostly 90s) review/method papers on Nostratic and Altaic on academia.edu. I'd recommend as a starting point the following two:
On Illich-Svitych's Nostratic Theory
Glass Houses: Greenberg, Ringe, and the Mathematics of Comparative Linguistics
A selection of others:
Nostratic from a Typological Point of View
The use of reconstructed forms in Nostratic studies
On the Nostratic inclusive/exclusive
On Indo-European Triune Velars and Nostratic Front Rounded Vowels
Clusters or affricates in Kartvelian or Nostratic
On "Some Thoughts on Indo-European–Kartvelian Relations"
Body Part Terms as Evidence in Favor of the Altaic Theory
The Altaic Debate and the Question of Cognate Numerals
On Illich-Svitych's Nostratic Theory
Glass Houses: Greenberg, Ringe, and the Mathematics of Comparative Linguistics
A selection of others:
Nostratic from a Typological Point of View
The use of reconstructed forms in Nostratic studies
On the Nostratic inclusive/exclusive
On Indo-European Triune Velars and Nostratic Front Rounded Vowels
Clusters or affricates in Kartvelian or Nostratic
On "Some Thoughts on Indo-European–Kartvelian Relations"
Body Part Terms as Evidence in Favor of the Altaic Theory
The Altaic Debate and the Question of Cognate Numerals
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Thank you, these look interesting!
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
On the other hand, if you like me prefer an incrementalist approach to Altaics you might be interested in Alexander Francis-Ratte's 2016 dissertation which presents reasons to reject Vovin's radical skepticism about the question of Korean-Japonic common origin and builds atop prior work by the likes of Samuel Martin and John Whitman to reconstruct a common ancestor. The author informs me that he intends to publish a "more edited version" of the dissertation in the future.
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Yes, this is IMHO a healthier business than the Nostratic (or large macrofamilies in general) thing where a large family tree is set up on flimsy evidence, and then languages from maximally distant branches are compared to get down to the root. I call that the "top-down" approach, and as I have said here several earlier times, I prefer the "bottom-up" approach which starts at closer relationships such as Indo-Uralic or Korean-Japanese in order to get more and more parts of the tree reconstructed. Of course, with the bottom-up approach, there is the problem of finding out just which languages form such nodes, but I don't think this is unsurmountable.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Nor strictly necessary, PIE was reconstructed well enough without resolving the branching order. The large-scale branching order of Afroasiatic seems to be irrecoverable,WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:40 pm Of course, with the bottom-up approach, there is the problem of finding out just which languages form such nodes, but I don't think this is unsurmountable.
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Irrecoverable from casual inspection, perhaps less so once we have some reliable reconstructions.
I would think the merits of top-down versus bottom-up depends a lot on what we're doing. Reconstructing a family top-down is generally a good idea since, for language families that don't have an established reconstruction yet, "subgroups" are quite often casually eyeballed typological-geographical areas that cannot be relied on to be always real genetic units. (Re Afrasian, Cushitic and Chadic still have this problem.)
The establishment of new relationships by contrast kind of needs to be bottom-up: even if you compared Wolof directly to Zulu with extensive effort (or, perhaps, a bit more widely, Atlantic with Bantu) and manage to find them related, this proves nothing whatsoever about the five hundred intervening languages in Nigeria & Cameroon if you haven't even examined them in any detail. And sometimes a closer look will turn up cases like hey, Chuvash is actually an outlier of Turkic that just happens to look typologically a bit Finno-Ugricized.
I would think the merits of top-down versus bottom-up depends a lot on what we're doing. Reconstructing a family top-down is generally a good idea since, for language families that don't have an established reconstruction yet, "subgroups" are quite often casually eyeballed typological-geographical areas that cannot be relied on to be always real genetic units. (Re Afrasian, Cushitic and Chadic still have this problem.)
The establishment of new relationships by contrast kind of needs to be bottom-up: even if you compared Wolof directly to Zulu with extensive effort (or, perhaps, a bit more widely, Atlantic with Bantu) and manage to find them related, this proves nothing whatsoever about the five hundred intervening languages in Nigeria & Cameroon if you haven't even examined them in any detail. And sometimes a closer look will turn up cases like hey, Chuvash is actually an outlier of Turkic that just happens to look typologically a bit Finno-Ugricized.
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
It tells a lot that exactly in the best-studied language family of all, namely Indo-European, there is no consensus on subgrouping above such entities as Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranian. How then can people be sure about subgroups in families about which they know less? This has been puzzling me for quite a while. It seems to me as if many subgrouping schemes are based on lexical statistics, which is rather easy to do, but has turned out to be not too reliable; the Indo-Europeanists, in contrast, try to rely on shared phonological and morphological innovations for subgrouping - and run into a wall because the isoglosses intersect in so complex ways that no uncontroversial family tree can be drawn. With most other families, we don't know enough about the phonological and morphological developments in the individual languages to even try this, so everyone still works with lexical statistics, with all its shortcomings. One family where the shared innovation approach has become fairly recently viable is Uralic - and the traditional classification based on lexical statistics has been challenged.Tropylium wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2019 7:25 am Irrecoverable from casual inspection, perhaps less so once we have some reliable reconstructions.
I would think the merits of top-down versus bottom-up depends a lot on what we're doing. Reconstructing a family top-down is generally a good idea since, for language families that don't have an established reconstruction yet, "subgroups" are quite often casually eyeballed typological-geographical areas that cannot be relied on to be always real genetic units. (Re Afrasian, Cushitic and Chadic still have this problem.)
Yep.The establishment of new relationships by contrast kind of needs to be bottom-up: even if you compared Wolof directly to Zulu with extensive effort (or, perhaps, a bit more widely, Atlantic with Bantu) and manage to find them related, this proves nothing whatsoever about the five hundred intervening languages in Nigeria & Cameroon if you haven't even examined them in any detail. And sometimes a closer look will turn up cases like hey, Chuvash is actually an outlier of Turkic that just happens to look typologically a bit Finno-Ugricized.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Isn't that exactly what one should expect from a dialect continuum? Wasn't there a similar mess with 'Western' Romance (sensu lato, i.e. including Sicilian) and modern continental West Germanic a hundred years ago?WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:31 am It tells a lot that exactly in the best-studied language family of all, namely Indo-European, there is no consensus on subgrouping above such entities as Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranian. <snip>... the Indo-Europeanists, in contrast, try to rely on shared phonological and morphological innovations for subgrouping - and run into a wall because the isoglosses intersect in so complex ways that no uncontroversial family tree can be drawn.
- WeepingElf
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm
- Location: Braunschweig, Germany
- Contact:
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Exactly that. Core IE evidently was a dialect continuum for quite some time, perhaps as late as 2000 BC. So at that time, you could travel from the Rhine to the Indus without ever crossing a language boundary separating mutually incomprehensible languages, though an Indo-European from the Rhine probably couldn't understand one from the Indus.Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2019 3:51 pmIsn't that exactly what one should expect from a dialect continuum? Wasn't there a similar mess with 'Western' Romance (sensu lato, i.e. including Sicilian) and modern continental West Germanic a hundred years ago?WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:31 am It tells a lot that exactly in the best-studied language family of all, namely Indo-European, there is no consensus on subgrouping above such entities as Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranian. <snip>... the Indo-Europeanists, in contrast, try to rely on shared phonological and morphological innovations for subgrouping - and run into a wall because the isoglosses intersect in so complex ways that no uncontroversial family tree can be drawn.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
My conlang pages
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Which could also explain why innovations could spread in patterns that can't be explained if the language development followed a strict tree model.WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:49 amExactly that. Core IE evidently was a dialect continuum for quite some time, perhaps as late as 2000 BC. So at that time, you could travel from the Rhine to the Indus without ever crossing a language boundary separating mutually incomprehensible languages, though an Indo-European from the Rhine probably couldn't understand one from the Indus.
JAL
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
There's a couple of ways in which the IE analogy is special pleading, though...
- it's easy to say that we can't know any groupings above the level of the primary branches. But that's a circular definition. In particular, we talk about Indo-Iranian as a 'primary branch', but that's only because we can reconstruct it - it's a grouping of three different branches, and it's dated to thousands of years before some of the other 'primary branches'. Being able to reconstruct the Indo-Iranian branch - which, let's not forget, includes 2 out of 3 surviving Indo-European languages and about 1 in every 2 Indo-European speakers - is a massive accomplishment, too easily fobbed off.
- most Indo-European branches no longer exist, and many were never attested, largely due to the secondary expansions of Celtic, Slavic and Iranian (as well as the intrusion of Uralic and Turkic languages).
- we have pretty much worked out the phylogeny of IE. It's obviously a strawman to expect very early dialects of a massively-and-rapidy-expanding language to follow a pure tree structure, but that doesn't prevent us having a very good idea of the relationships:
- Anatolian split off first
- then Tocharian, which went east while everything else was going west
- next probably Greek and Armenian split off, going south, or remaining south, occupying the western steppe (or maybe even early pannonia?) while everyone else formed the corded ware culture up north
- the corded ware culture more or less split into two dialect groups (or possibly full languages), which we can call western and central-eastern
- western split into a northern branch and a southern branch
- the southern branch split into Italic and Celtic
- the northern branch, which remained more closely connected to its baltic neighbours to its east, eventually yielded germanic
- the central-eastern branch re-invaded the steppe (the Sintashta culture), coming back in contact with the southeastern languages (Greek, Armenian, their extinct relatives), sharing some grammatical and phonological innovations with them
- the Sintashta languages broke into Indo-Aryans, moving south rapidly, and Iranians, staying north for longer, and the Nuristani languages (it's not clear what they did)
- meanwhile, the remaining central group continued to expand to the south (or had done so already), yielding eventually Albanian. Unfortunately, this area has all been secondarily bulldozed, so where exactly Albanian, Illyrian, Dacian, Thraco-Cimmerian and Phrygian fit in is unclear, only one language surviving.
- the remaing core languages are Balto-Slavic, Slavic just happening to be a language that exploded many centuries later.
- it's easy to say that we can't know any groupings above the level of the primary branches. But that's a circular definition. In particular, we talk about Indo-Iranian as a 'primary branch', but that's only because we can reconstruct it - it's a grouping of three different branches, and it's dated to thousands of years before some of the other 'primary branches'. Being able to reconstruct the Indo-Iranian branch - which, let's not forget, includes 2 out of 3 surviving Indo-European languages and about 1 in every 2 Indo-European speakers - is a massive accomplishment, too easily fobbed off.
- most Indo-European branches no longer exist, and many were never attested, largely due to the secondary expansions of Celtic, Slavic and Iranian (as well as the intrusion of Uralic and Turkic languages).
- we have pretty much worked out the phylogeny of IE. It's obviously a strawman to expect very early dialects of a massively-and-rapidy-expanding language to follow a pure tree structure, but that doesn't prevent us having a very good idea of the relationships:
- Anatolian split off first
- then Tocharian, which went east while everything else was going west
- next probably Greek and Armenian split off, going south, or remaining south, occupying the western steppe (or maybe even early pannonia?) while everyone else formed the corded ware culture up north
- the corded ware culture more or less split into two dialect groups (or possibly full languages), which we can call western and central-eastern
- western split into a northern branch and a southern branch
- the southern branch split into Italic and Celtic
- the northern branch, which remained more closely connected to its baltic neighbours to its east, eventually yielded germanic
- the central-eastern branch re-invaded the steppe (the Sintashta culture), coming back in contact with the southeastern languages (Greek, Armenian, their extinct relatives), sharing some grammatical and phonological innovations with them
- the Sintashta languages broke into Indo-Aryans, moving south rapidly, and Iranians, staying north for longer, and the Nuristani languages (it's not clear what they did)
- meanwhile, the remaining central group continued to expand to the south (or had done so already), yielding eventually Albanian. Unfortunately, this area has all been secondarily bulldozed, so where exactly Albanian, Illyrian, Dacian, Thraco-Cimmerian and Phrygian fit in is unclear, only one language surviving.
- the remaing core languages are Balto-Slavic, Slavic just happening to be a language that exploded many centuries later.
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
I think that much of what you wrote on branching is disputable and people are still far from a consensus there.
I think there is pretty good evidence that Thracian, Dacian and Slavic are subbranches of Baltic. I also think that Italo-Celtic is not a proper clade but a sprachbund that probably included several para-Italic and para-Celtic languages like Ligurian and Lusitanian.
I think there is pretty good evidence that Thracian, Dacian and Slavic are subbranches of Baltic. I also think that Italo-Celtic is not a proper clade but a sprachbund that probably included several para-Italic and para-Celtic languages like Ligurian and Lusitanian.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť
kårroť
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
Where do "the remaining core languages" come from? The "remaining central group" also springs from nowhere.
I don't believe there is consensus on the existence of 'Italo-Celtic' as a reasonable node.
I don't believe there is consensus on the existence of 'Italo-Celtic' as a reasonable node.
-
- Posts: 1746
- Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:12 am
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
All of this is also subject to the same skepticism that we just dumped on Salmoneus.mèþru wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 11:15 amI think there is pretty good evidence that Thracian, Dacian and Slavic are subbranches of Baltic. I also think that Italo-Celtic is not a proper clade but a sprachbund that probably included several para-Italic and para-Celtic languages like Ligurian and Lusitanian.
Thracian shares some sound changes with Baltic (d and dh collapse, satem, partial merger of a and o), but these are all common changes found in multiple "branches." And let's not forget: Dacian doesn't exist. Anyone who presents you with a list of Dacian words is a charlatan.
As for Italic, the Italic languages do share a few sound changes, but not many. And as with Baltic and Thracian, they could be a coincidence ("Oh, you don't like pronouncing voiced aspirates either, huh? Small world!"). But "sprachbund?" How would we measure that? If this sprachbund also explains the small number of sound changes and grammatical features that the Italic languages share, then it quickly becomes a circular argument.
I did it. I made the world's worst book review blog.