Nostratic languages
Nostratic is a hypothetical extinct language from which a large number of the language families of Europe, Asia, and Africa are purported to descend.
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, there is general agreement that at a minimum these families include Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic. Afro-Asiatic has long been included in Nostratic proposals as well, though recent criticisms by Joseph Greenberg seem to be leading to a reassessment of this position.
A fairly representative proposed grouping is:
- Indo-European, Dravidian (or Elamo-Dravidian), South Caucasian (Kartvelian), Altaic, Sumerian, and Afro-Asiatic
Joseph Greenberg proposed a similar or overlapping macrofamily that he called Eurasiatic, which he linked to the Amerind languages of the Americas. The American Nostraticist Allan R. Bomhard considers Eurasiatic to be a branch of Nostratic, other branches being Afro-Asiatic, Elamo-Dravidian, and South Caucasian (Kartvelian).
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 was expanded to include additional language families.
The modern Nostratic theory was elaborated by Vladislav Illich-Svitych (1934-66), who also published a comprehensive dictionary of the hypothetical language.
Background: From Indo-European to Nostratic
The concept of the Nostratic languages is best understood 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, he backed up his idea with a systematic examination of what might be termed "phono-semantic sets" — words which, in different languages, had both similar sounds and meanings. Jones essentially argued that there were too many of these sets for their existence to be mere coincidence, 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.
The second major concept to keep in mind is that, starting with Jacob Grimm, it was argued 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. This has been done, and parts of the hypothetical language, named Proto-Indo-European, have been produced.
The third concept is 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 be named essentially randomly 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 is rich in words related to agriculture, animal husbandry, and plains-like landscape. From this, it has been plausibly argued that Proto-Indo-European was a living language some time from 6000 BC to 4000 BC, in the plains to the north of the Black Sea. (A measure of the difficulty of this task is indicated by the fact that some argue the reconstructed vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European, together with other known information about migrations, indicates a northern Anatolian landscape, although this is notably lacking in flat ground.)
Altogether, the Indo-European hypothesis has been 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.
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 The Nostratic Macrofamily by Allan R. Bomhard and John C. Kerns, p. 219).
Proto-Nostratic *bar-/*ber- 'seed, grain':
- Proto-Indo-European *bhars- 'grain': Latin far 'spelt, grain'; Old Icelandic barr 'barley'; Old English bere 'barley'; Old Church Slavonic brasheno '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 *bhar(s)-.
- Proto-Afroasiatic *bar-/*ber- 'grain, cereal':
- Proto-Semitic *barr-/*burr 'grain, cereal' > Hebrew bar 'grain'; Arabic burr 'wheat'; Akkadian burru 'a cereal'; Sabaean brr 'wheat'; Harsusi berr 'corn, maize, wheat'; Mehri ber 'corn, maize, wheat'.
- Cushitic: Somali bur 'wheat'. (?) Proto-Southern Cushitic *bar-/*bal- 'grain (generic) > Iraqw balang 'grain'; Burunge baru 'grain'; Alagwa balu 'grain' K'wadza balayiko 'grain'. Ehret 1980:338.
- Dravidian: Tamil paral 'pebble, seed, stone of fruit'; Malyalam paral 'grit, coarse grain, gravel, cowry shell'; Kota parl 'pebble, one grain (of any grain)'; Kannada paral, paral 'pebble, stone' Kodagu para 'pebble'; Tulu parelu 'grain of sand, grit, gravel, grain of corn, etc.; castor seed'; Kolami Parca 'gravel'.
- Sumerian bar 'seed'.
Comments
— This is an example of 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'.
Criticisms of the Nostratic theory
1. Almost all modern linguists are, at best, highly skeptical of the facts put forward to show that the language families under the Nostratic umbrella are, in fact, related. The main criticism of Nostratic is that the methodology used leads people to see patterns that are the result of coincidence. 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 are much more speculative than those used to group languages into the accepted families — one technique used to support a similar super-family was famously used in the 1960s to "demonstrate" that English was a member of a proposed Central American language family.
3. Another blow against Nostratic is that the more recent technique of comparing grammatical structures, as opposed to words, has suggested to some that the Nostratic candidates are not related.
4. Nostratic is a controversial language "super-family" that suggests links between many Eurasian language families. The precise nature of the links has been the subject of debate, however, as proponents have not agreed on the set of families to include.
5. 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) have been dismissed by many mainstream linguists 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. It is known that unrelated languages in close geographical proximity can trade vocabulary, syntax, and other features, and it is suggested that the present-day "family" structure of languages may be 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, it has been 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).
7. It is suggested, that in the absence of rapid technological change, as was the case prior to about the 8th millennium BC, the tendency of languages to evolve would be drowned out by the tendency for languages to trade features between each other. If this were so, the axiom that languages change in a manner that can be reversed is not true before a certain point in the past, and it will not be possible to 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 are believed to post-date the invention of agriculture).
8. Regardless, the concept of Nostratic languages still has some influence on the fringes of linguistics. A further level of the "language family tree", which weds Nostratic with all other language families into what is called Proto-World, has been proposed. Most of the objections raised to the Nostratic hypothesis apply equally to this idea, and the Proto-World concept has little currency among linguists.
Defense of the Nostratic theory
Note: Replies to criticisms made above are included in this section.
3. "Another blow against Nostratic is that the more recent technique of comparing grammatical structures, as opposed to words, has suggested to some that the Nostratic candidates are not related."
However, recent work by Joseph Greenberg (and Allan R. Bomhard, forthcoming) has done a lot to dispel doubts in this area.
4. "Nostratic is a controversial language 'super-family' that suggests links between many Eurasian language families. The precise nature of the links has been the subject of debate, however, as proponents have not agreed on the set of families to include."
In some respects, however, the situation is not too dissimilar to what occurred within Indo-European studies in the early stages of research. At first, the Celtic languages were not definitely identified as part of the Indo-European language family, while Armenian was not added until the 1880s (until then, it had been thought to be an aberrant dialect of Iranian), and Lycian and Lydian were not definitively recognized as Indo-European languages until the middle of the twentieth century. Even today, there are uncertainties about the subgrouping of the Finno-Ugric languages, not to mention Afro-Asiatic.
5. "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) have been dismissed by many mainstream linguists as wishful thinking exacerbated by that very expectation shaping the results."
However, 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, cannot be lightly dismissed.
7. "It is suggested, that in the absence of rapid technological change, as was the case prior to about the 8th millennium BC, the tendency of languages to evolve would be drowned out by the tendency for languages to trade features between each other. If this were so, the axiom that languages change in a manner that can be reversed is not true before a certain point in the past, and it will not be possible to 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 are believed to post-date the invention of agriculture)."
On the other hand, the comparative method has been successfully applied to Australian Aboriginal languages. Even though Australia has been inhabited for about 50,000 years, and no significant technological changes occurred, aborigines living on seven-eighths of Australia use languages belonging to the relatively recent Pama-Nyungan language family (estimated to be about 5000 years old).
Prospects for the Nostratic theory
As can be seen from the foregoing, strongly held opinions separate proponents and opponents of Nostratic studies. It is unlikely the two sides will agree any time soon or even agree to disagree.
Against the Nostratic theory, it can be urged that consensus opinion among professional linguists is strongly against it, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world. In favor of it, it can be urged that scientific innovations usually begin with a few individuals and are resisted by the academic establishment until the case for them proves overwhelming.
Again, it is possible to point out the absence 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 favored it or similar theories, such as Holger Pedersen and Joseph Greenberg.
The only comfort for those perplexed by the ongoing furor is that science has a way of eventually correcting itself. Time will tell whether the Nostratic theory is the grain of sand that produces the pearl, or just a grain of sand.
See also
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.
External links
- Mother Tongue, issue 31 - contains a table of various linguists' versions of Nostratic. (Warning: image files.)