Paleosiberian languages

Paleosiberian
(geographic)
Geographic
distribution		 North Asia, East Asia
Linguistic classification Not a single family
Subdivisions
Glottolog None

Paleosiberian (Palaeosiberian, Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian languages (Palaeo-Asiatic) (from Greek palaios, "ancient") is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of linguistic isolates as well as a few small families of languages spoken in parts both of northeastern Siberia and of the Russian Far East. They are not known to have any linguistic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic (at least in Siberia) and especially Tungusic, have been displaced in their turn by Russian.

The total number of speakers of the Paleo-Siberian languages is approximately 23,000 people.[1]

Classifications

Four small language families and isolates comprise the Paleo-Siberian languages:

  1. The Chukotko-Kamchatkan family, sometimes known as Luoravetlan, includes Chukchi and its close relatives, Koryak, Alutor and Kerek. Itelmen, also known as Kamchadal, is also distantly related. Chukchi, Koryak and Alutor are spoken in easternmost Siberia by communities numbering in the thousands. Kerek is extinct, and Itelmen is now spoken by fewer than 100 people, mostly elderly, on the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
  2. Yukaghir is spoken in two mutually unintelligible varieties in the lower Kolyma and Indigirka valleys. Other languages, including Chuvantsy, spoken further inland and further east, are now extinct. Yukaghir is held by some to be related to the Uralic languages.
  3. Nivkh is spoken in the lower Amur basin and on the northern half of Sakhalin island. It has a recent modern literature.
  4. Ainu is sometimes added to this group though it is not, strictly speaking, a language of Siberia. It barely survives in southern Sakhalin where it was the main native language. It was also spoken in the Kuril Islands and on Hokkaidō, where a strong interest in its revival is taking place. Attempts have been made to relate it to many other language families, including Altaic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Nihali, and the putative Indo-Pacific stock.

Together with Japanese and Korean, which are major modern languages, these "poor relations" resist any easy or obvious linguistic classification, either with other groups or with each other. Languages within the Paleo-Siberian group are thought by some to be related to the Eskimo–Aleut family, which survive in slightly larger numbers in Alaska and northern Canada. This would back the majority consensus that North America's aboriginal peoples migrated from present-day Siberia and other regions of Asia when the two continents were joined during the last ice age.

Ket, or more precisely Yeniseian as a whole, has been linked in a generally well-received proposal to the Na-Dené languages of North America.[2] Dené–Yeniseian has been called "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics".[3] In the past, attempts have been made to relate it to Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, and Burushaski.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Number of Speakers of the Major Language Families of the World (Note—numbers given for the Niger-Congo languages on the chart are about 50 years out of date as of 2011, and for some of the other languages families, the numbers are 15-20 years out of date as of 2011)
  2. ↑ "The Dene–Yeniseian Connection". Alaska Native Language Center. 2010.
  3. ↑ Bernard Comrie (2008) "Why the Dene-Yeniseic Hypothesis is Exciting". Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska: Dene-Yeniseic Symposium.

Further reading

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