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.

Contents 1 The branches of Eurasiatic 2 Relation to other language families 3 Reception by linguists 4 The Eurasiatic claim and Lehmann's claim about a possible ancestor of Proto-Indo-European 5 See also 6 References

[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

• Nostratic languages
• Indo-Uralic languages
• Uralo-Siberian languages
• Ural-Altaic languages

[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?"