The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics

1
H Hellas Vuosaly
THE UNTAUGHT
Latest Horizon in LONG-RANGE
HISTORICAL COMPARATIVE
LINGUISTICS

2
Hellas Vuosaly
Professor of Historical Comparative Linguistics
Latest Horizon
in
Long-range
Historical-Comparative Linguistics
A Short Historical Survey
Workshop-Seminar
ICKPT
2016
New York

3
Internal Bulletin, ICKPT, No. 34
All rights reserved for the International Committee of Koinoetymology and Post-Metaphysical Thinking.
Any kind of cultural use of this book with clear reference to the work is free.
First Edition 2016 New York
Back Cover Photo - One Million Documents Burning, Moscow, January 29, 2015.

4
Contents
Note 5
Foreword 7
Classification of Long-Range Historical Comparative Linguistics 9
I. Briefing on Human Language and Genetic Evidence 11
Briefing on the Science of Language in the Long-range Perspective 15
Italian School 18
Monogenesis of Language 21
II. Post-Trombetti Long-range Historical Comparative Linguistics 28
1. USSR SCHOOL
Illich-Svitych 29
After Illich-Svitych
G. B. Dzhaukian 35
A. B. Dolgopolsky 40
S. A. Starostin 43
K. E. Koskinen 49
H. P. A. Hakola 52
2. USA SCHOOL
J. H. Greenberg 55
M. Ruhlen 65
J. D. Bengtson 70
A. R. Bomhard 73
Monogenesis of Language on the Horizon of the Post-Metaphyics Hodos 78
3. Iran SCHOOL
H. Assadian 80

6
Note about the Workshop-Seminar:
At the request of students and others interested in Long-range Historical Comparative Linguistics, a
seminar was organised by the ICKPT. The lecture “Latest Horizon in Long-range Historical-
Comparative Linguistics, A Short Historical Survey” was delivered at the ICKPT Workshop-Seminar,
New York, during July-August of 2015. The lecture notes are presented in extended form to be at hand
for students and researchers.
Addressing the difficulty of access to the works of Prof. Gevork Dzhjaukian (Jaukian), from
Armenia, Prof. Kalevi E. Koskinen and Prof. Panu Hakola, from Finland, and Prof. Hodjjat Assadian,
from Iran, a brief introduction to the work of the former two is offered along with a more expanded
introduction to that of latter. Here due is expression of appreciation for the agreement to publication
of the list of phonogenes and part of the summary of the book “Ge-mein-wesentliche Archeo-Genetic
Grammar” (i.e., Universal Grammar of the World).
HELLAS VUOSALY
New York 2016

8
FOREWORD
The foundation of Linguistics as a science in history, especially after the Junggrammatikers, began
with narrow study of the Indo-European super-family and eventually reached long-range matriarchal
communal human clan language research. The cultural findings of this research have been directly
corroborated by the latest findings of human migration molecular biology in genetics, and the path of
human migration out of Africa to the rest of the world’s continents has been demonstrated through
analysis of the distribution of genes in human DNA across the world, and the distribution of
phonogenes (cells of meaning in language) across all world languages.
Previous to the appearance of genetics, avant-garde scientific linguists explored the fields of
palæoarcheology, anthropology, geology, drawing on mythology, rock paintings, runes and markings,
mathematics, musicology, …., to strengthen analysis of linguistics findings. The addition to the
above of genetic data is clearing the way for the research on the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens
language based on all the existing extinct and living languages of the world. In this way, the avant-
garde research of scientific linguistics on Homo sapiens sapiens language which began from the
Primogenio at the beginning of the 20th
century today has reached the Phonogene.

11
Classification of Long-Range Historical Comparative Linguistics
H. Vuosaly, Prof. of Historical Comparative Linguistics, USA, 2013
TROMBETTI
1- Based on the comparative method and mass comparison
2- With emphasis on reconstruction of the Primogenio and classification
3- Demonstration and proof of Monogenesis of language
ILLICH-SVITYCH J. GREENBERG H. ASSADIAN
1- Based on
the dialectical comparative hodos mass multilateral comparison dialectical hermeneutic
historical comparative hodos
2- With emphasis on
Proto-Nostratic reconstruction classification reconstruction based on AMH molecular
biology and proto-phonogenes
3- Orientation
demonstration, proof and quantative probabilistic demonstration and proof of
foundation of Nostratic linguistics Homo sapiens sapiens phonogenes

12
I. Briefing on Human Language and Genetic Evidence
Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) evolved in Africa roughly 200,000 - 140,000 years ago.
The spread of AMH along a route following the Continental Shelf of South India eventually extended
throughout the world:
Approximately it can be said Anatomically Modern Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) populated
South India 70,000 years ago,
Australia 50,000 years ago,
Europe 45,000 years ago,
Siberia and Japan 30,000 years ago,
Americas 30,000-10,000 years ago,
Micronesia and Polynesia 4,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens sapiens mtDNA Phyla Tree
The scientific tracing of human migrations has been accomplished in the field of genetics and
corresponds with findings of historical-comparative linguists. In order to determine the genetic
relationships of all groups of human populations in the world, genetics has studied the

13
- Non-Recombining portion of the Y chromosome (= NRY) in men - patrilineage.
- Mitochondrial DNA (=mtDNA) in both men and women, but which descends only
through the female - matrilineage.
Both kinds of studies settled the question of the origin of AMH and demonstrated that all humans
on the face of the earth today are descendants of humans once living in Africa.
Based on studies of the Non-Recombining portion of the Y chromosome (=NRY) we can say the
following:
Early humans lived as one clan in Africa.
Around 45,000 years ago, there was a split of the clan into other clans (clades in genetics) called
C, D, E, and F. Clan E stayed in Africa while the others moved out.
The first migration was to the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East. Clan C then migrated via
India to Australia, New Guinea and Islands of Indonesia. Clan D managed to move to East Asia and
especially to South-East Asia.
Based on studies of the mitochondrial DNA (=mtDNA) we can say the following:
About 150,000 (perhaps 200,000) years ago a woman was born in southern or eastern Africa to
whom we can trace all existing mtDNA.
In Africa six macroclans developed, called L0, L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5.
About 60,000 years ago the clan L3 migrated outside Africa so that the mtDNA of all people
living outside Africa can be traced back to this macroclan. L3 then first split into macroclans M and
N which both in turn split about 50,000 years ago into:
M < clans Z, C, D, M, M1, E, G and Q
N < clans A, I, W, X, Y, N, & R < split later into clans B, F, H, pre-HV, V, R, P, T, J, U & K
Today in brief we can say that clans L0, L1, L2 and L3 are common in Africa, clan M in India,
clan H in Europe, North-Africa and the Near East, clan U in Northern Scandinavia, East Europe and
the Near East. All clans in Europe stem from macroclans N and R, clans of Asia, Australia and
America originate from macroclan M, but indigenous Americans include offsprings from clans N and
R also. The aboriginal peoples of Australia and New Guinea belong to macroclans M, N and R
meaning they bear the same mutations as people of Europe, Asia and America.
[Quoted from Appendix C: Lexical Affinities between Tamil and Finnish, H. P. Hakola, 2009. The consensus can be
found in palaeoanthropological, genetic and other studies such as: Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), Christianson (2003),
Dixon (1997), Dolgopolsky (1998), Flemming (2004), Gamble (1995), Greenberg (2000), Hegedeus (1997), Levin (2005),
Levitt (2007), Masica (2001), Mallory (1996), Noble (1996), Oppenheimer (2003), Sahoo (2006), Steve-Jones (1992),
Sykes (1999), Vacek (2006), Zvelebil (1990 and 1991), Wiik (2002, 2004, 2007, 2008)…]

14
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1922- )
According to the lifework of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (focusing on genes, culture and human
evolution), there are no significant genetic differences between humans, so the word “race” has no
useful biological significance. Cavalli-Sforza has determined that the ancestry of Europeans is about
two thirds Asian and one third African.
PROTO-SAPIENS
NON-AFRICAN
AFRICAN
SOUTH-EAST ASIA / EURASIA/ AMERICAS
PACIFIC
KHOISAN CONGO-SAHARAN PACIFIC AUSTRIC EURASIA / AMERICAS
NORTH AFRICA/
INDO-PACIFIC EURASIA NORTH ASIA
NIGER- NILO-SAHARAN AUSTRALIAN AMERICAS
KORDOFANIAN AFRO-ASIATIC DRAVIDIAN ESKIMO-
INDO-EUROPEAN ALEUT AMERIND
URALIC CHUKCHI- NA-DENE
KAMCHATKAN
ALTAIC
The genetic structure of the human population after Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1988).

15
Y-chromosomal clans are named with different letters as seen below:
Comparison of genetic tree and linguistic phyla.
Tree constructed by average linkage
analysis of Nei’s genetic distances calculated based on 120 allele frequencies
(Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, et al., 1988 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 85, p. 6003.)

16
Briefing on the Science of Language in the Long-range Perspective
I Foundations
When in 1902 Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929) presented the proofs derived from all the languages
of the world founding the doctrine of common origin of all world languages (monogenesis of
language), he did this on the basis of Jung-Grammatiker scientific linguistics with the works of
Schleicher, Rask, Bopp, Brugmann and others.
Already many comparative studies had been conducted in the 1711’s such as those of Commenius,
Tröster, Stiernhielm, and then Leibniz. One of the first surveys of languages leading away from the
prejudices of Europe’s Middle Ages was Leibniz’s “Collecteana Etymologica”, which presented the
work of von Eckhart and appeared in 1717, wherein the presentation of Khoisan (Hottentot) words
from South Africa with many other samples from previously unknown languages were examined for
the first time in Europe. This series contained the Von Eckhart studies who for the first time
demonstrated the existence of the group of Uralic languages. That Semitic languages formed a group
had already been accepted during the Islamic Middle Ages by linguists such as Siuti, etc…. Towards
the end of the 12th
century, Giraldus Cambrensis had made clear that the Welsh language and those of
Cornwall and Breton all came from a more ancient language which he called Brittanic, and that these
are also related with Greek and Latin.
Other early works mentionable include:
1717 Rudbeck, Specimen usus linguae Gothicae… adita analogia linguae Gothicae cum Sinica,
nec non Finnicae cum Hungarica.
1730 von Strahlenberg, Gentium boreo-orientalium harmonia linguarum (demonstrating Finnic,
Hungarian, Vogul and Ostyak to be cognate).
1770 Sajnovics, Affinitas .
1799 Gyarmathi, Demonstratio .
After very extended studies, Gyarmathi wrote the comparative grammar of the Uralic languages
based on the work of Sajnovics, and demonstrated the homogeneity of the Finno-Ugric branch of
languages. Other very progressive studies were carried through by Hungarian and Finnish scholars:
Budenz, Szinnyei, Donner, Setälä, Paasonen.
In 1764, Francois Coeurdoux with attendance to the similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin
proclaimed that they are left over from a more ancient language which exists no longer. Considering
Coeurdoux’s theory, William Jones restated it in conference with no reference to Coeurdoux’s
original statement that they go back to a more ancient no longer existent language, mentioning in his

17
famous Calcutta Lecture in 1786, only that Gothic, Celtic and Persian had evolved out of an original
language which probably has disappeared.
Research and studies in this field were achieved by the Danish Rask (1814) and the German Bopp
(1816) and finally led to the laying out of the principles and bases of scientific comparative Indo-
European language studies. The method of Rask and Bopp throughout the 19th
and 20th
centuries was
finalised and completed, and used for the study of other language groups as well. This method is
founded on phonological studies and proposition of reconstructed structures, words and grammatical
morphemes. The comparison of the forms deduced out of the daughter languages enables
reconstruction of the mother language.
The long-range studies in two branches of languages were to follow, as the Afro-Asiatic
(Semito-Hamitic) language clan and Indo-European language clan comparisons, from 1836 with
Lepsius, Wüllner (1838), Raumer (1863), Ascoli (1864), Delitzsch (1873), McCurdy (1881), and Abel
(1884), and in the twentieth century they were continued by Møller (1906), Pedersen (1908), Cuny
(1914) , Fardid (1950), Brunner (1969), Levin (1971), Bomhard (1977), Fellman 1978, Garbini
(1981), Petrachek 1982, Hodge (1983, 1991) etc.; up to present the work continues.
American Indian-Semitic: Leesberg (1903) / Basque-American Indian: Vinson (1875) / Basque-
Berber: d’Abbadie & Chaho (1836) / Basque-Afroasiatic: Mukarovsky (1981) / Indo-European &
Austronesian: Bopp (1841, 1842), Petrov (1967) / Amerind-Polynesian: Hale (1890[1888]), Key
(1984) / Austric (Austro-Asiatic+Austronesian): Keane (1880), Schmidt (1906), Benedict (1975)
Diffloth (1990, 1994), Schiller (1987), Shorto (1976), Reid (1994), Ross (1995) / Indo-European-
Ural-Altaic: Menges (1945) / Indo-Uralic (Indo-European and Uralic): Wedgwood (1856), Anderson
(1879), Paasonen (1907), Pedersen (1933), Collinder (1934, 1943, 1954, 1965, 1967, 1970, 1974),
Ariste (1971), Claude (1973), Čop (1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1987, 1989), Holmer (1960);
Schindler (1964), Rosenkranz (1966), Pisani (1967), Kerns (1967), Skalicka (1969), Schröpfer (1969),
Uesson (1970), Joki (1973, 1980), Shimomiya (1973), Kiparsky (1975), Décsy (1980); Girardot
(1980, 1982), Kudzinowski (1983), ), Janhunen (1983), Kortlandt (1989), Dezsö (1990); Gulya
(1990), Ringe (1998).
The scientific studies and research in polybranch language clans before Alfredo Trombetti
include preliminary groundwork which began as a thesis published in 1851 by William (Wilhelm)
Immanuel Guilelmus Bleek on comparison of the African, Australian, Coptic and Semitic languages
called “De Nominum Generibus Linguarum Africae Australis Copticae Semiticarum Aliarumque
Sexualium”.

18
William Bleek Leibniz’s Collecteana Etymologicum
More than 113 years ago the publication of his doctrine led to Trombetti’s uncontended
appointment as University of Bologna Professor, and his name ranged alongside that of Marconi,
inventor of the radio, as the “discoverer of language”. With intense raging, the opposition to the
doctrine of monogenesis of language sought to cast aside and block the research; however, the
impatient protests were based only on personal prejudices and purely unscientific hypotheses without
any demonstrations or precise original proofs. The doctrine that all the languages of the world are
cognate was rapidly developed, and led to the presention of the latest Sprachwissenschaftlich
(scientific linguistic) matters in history.

19
150 years ago on January 13 the founder of monogenesis was born
ITALIAN SCHOOL
Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929)
Trombetti noted that the concentration of studies was directed nearly completely towards Indo-
European and Semitic languages, presumably languages of progressed peoples having determined the
course of history, and out of this no exact vision of the nature, origin and evolution of language could
have evolved. That is, “the fundamental question posed by Bopp, that of the origin of grammatical
categories, could not be resolved by attention solely to Indo-European languages. It was necessary to
vastly extend the comparisons and inquire into the processes undergone by the most archaic
languages” (Trombetti, Elementi, p. 3). This remained an unattended point of which Illich-Svitych
was again forced to remind those attacking his studies over 40 years later. The resistence to an
extension of studies is a conservative movement existing to this day. To extend the studies beyond a

21
group or two groups of languages serves among other things to clarify also the inner relations among
the languages within the group(s).
The classifications previous to those of Trombetti were either psychological (Steinthal,
Charakteristik der hauptsächlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues, Berlin, 1860; Finck, Die Klassifikation
der Sprachen, Marburg, 1901), or morphological like that of A. Schleicher, which is popular and still
found in language manuals and generally referred to also in geographic scholastic texts: that of the
isolating, agglutinating and inflective. Trombetti relegates, “These divisions only refer to mere
transitory states of aggregations often coexistent and intertwined among the various languages, which
do not realise the essence, they have no more value than the contraposition between water vapour,
water and ice” (Elementi, p. 9).
Then there are many other distinctions made in the morphological systems. Trombetti
demonstrates that many agglutinating languages are at the same time polysynthetic. An example is the
word sev-mek “to love” in Turkish with a reciprico-causative-passive-impossibilitative-negative form:
sev-iš-dir-il-e-me-mek, which however is unlikely to occur in common usage even though it is
theoretically possible. The polysynthetism of many languages of the American continent is often
confused with another characteristic existing in these same languages, i.e. that of incorporation, which
exists in many languages, and consists in the tendency to concentrate an entire sentence in not only
intransitive (as is common in the prime example of an incorporating European language, ie. Basque:
n-a-bil-ki-o “I go to him”), but also in transitive verbs along with the pronominal (Aztec: ni-k-
mačtia “I teach you”) and sometimes nominal object (Aztec: ni-naka-kwa “I eat meat”). Often it is
a question of a difference found between the written language and what might be really said or
pronounced (in this case in Aztec: ni-k-kwa in naka-tl “I eat it the meat” would be more common).
These processes always are recurrent in many languages.
In Greenlandese (Kalaallisuuani) some word-sentences may be more apparent unities than real
ones. Cf: Greenlandese: a-ner-quwaa-tit “he begs you to go out”, Italian: egli d' úscir prégavi.
The morphological distinction between analytic and synthetic languages “is also here just a
difference of degree”. The more important criterion of morphological classification involves the
position of the formative element in the word (prefix or suffix). Indo-European, Ural-Altaic and
Dravidian exclusively use prefixation, or nearly always. In the other groups both suffixation and
prefixation can be found. There are no exclusively suffixing languages (Elementi, p. 10).
All these systems have “fundamentally vague and non-applicable” criteria. They have not
contributed to the advance of human knowledge. This defect leads to the necessity of resorting to
other criteria. “The only truly scientific classification of languages, with an applicable base and
founded with coherence and without limit, independently of whatever extrinsic criterion, is the
genealogical classification, which has always been fecund yielding important results not only for the

21
internal history of language in its nature, origin and evolution, but also for the external history of
language in the lives of people, and for many disciplines which are in strict rapport with Glottologia”
(Elementi, p. 11).
Trombetti exposed the weaknesses of the many existing systems of classification, then lay the
foundations for Glottologia through his teaching. He instilled precise and rigourous thinking in his
lectures and written works. Writings of his students reveal the respect and enthusiasm Trombetti’s
presentations inspired. Many of his students resolutely pursued the revolutionary scientific studies
shouldering the difficulties this involved in Italy during that historical period. Trombetti prepared the
way making firm the bases for the accomplishment of scientific glottological studies.
Trombetti studied the historical process of language as a concrete whole. “In glottologia we can
speak as much as we like about distinct linguistic groups, but never about independent groups.
Because coal and diamonds appear to us to be so diverse, should we say they have nothing in
common?” (L’Unità d’Origine del Linguaggio, Preface).
Trombetti’s studies were ever geared towards scientific achievement and never towards being a
polyglot. He made evident the work he had shouldered in his introduction to L’Unità:
“At the end of 1902 I had finished the major part of a work entitled ‘Connections between the
Languages of the Ancient World ʼ which was to include the analytic examination of each of the
principal groups in which it is possible to distribute the languages of Africa, of Eurasia and of
Oceania, and a synthetic study of grammatical and lexical comparison of those groups among each
other. Starting from the point up to which others had conducted the glottological research and
rendering the analyses more profound so far as it was possible for me to do in order to uncover the
most ancient elements of language, I proposed to attempt a vast synthesis on the basis of the facts
which were put under accurate analyses.”
Trombetti studied relations between over 2000 languages, working continuously for over 50 years.
At the University of Bologna, he taught “Semitic Philology” (1904-1905), then “Comparative History
of the Classical Languages and Neo-Latin” (1905-1906). During one academic year, 1925-1926, he
taught “Indo-European Philology”. Otherwise, from 1907-1912 Trombetti taught the course “Science
of Language” (from “Sprachwissenschaft”) which from 1912 on he called “Glottologia generale
comparata”. His teachings and studies continued up until his untimely death by drowning in 1929,
just after he had publicly announced he was ready to present the sum total of his career’s findings.

22
MONOGENESIS OF LANGUAGE
Trombetti emphasized the fact that he did not set out to prove any theories but only uncovered the
evidence of monogenesis through long years of comparative study.
Trombetti established the existence of only 11 primary linguistic groups, all interconnected with
each other in the resolute sense of monogenesis. His book “L’Unità d’Origine del Linguaggio” (The
Unity of Origin of Language, 1905) lays down the doctrine of monogenesis which, he repeated many
times to the massive journalist onslaughts and the criticism of professors who seldom knew more than
one language, is a doctrine and no longer a hypothesis.
Trombetti indicated the case of Indo-European, which did not need to have all the proto-languages
or early forms of words worked out in order to be accepted by the scientific community as a basis for
the comparative works to follow.
In fact, as Bengtson and Ruhlen have pointed out, no comparison would be made without the
feasibility of such a hypothesis, and it is only after mass comparisons have been made that the proto-
languages can be reconstructed.
Trombetti also compared insistence that before monogenesis could be accepted all the details had
to be worked out to saying that before the existence of the sky can be conceded all the details of what
is on earth must first be worked out.
The works of Trombetti make apparent that “all the linguistic groups are genetically connected
between each other and presuppose a common origin” (Elementi, p. 189). Trombetti presented his

23
findings of the extensive parallels in lexicon, morphology and grammatical features across all world
languages. In the literary journal Il Piemonte (year I, no. 14) 26 September, 1903, the article “La
monogenesi del linguaggio” introduced the doctrine of the monogenesis of language. The first words
which for Trombetti lit up the possibility of bringing together a proof of monogenesis were in
themselves the flickering of the proof:
Numeral Africa Munda-Khmer
1 mue, mo, moina, mosi mue, moi, moin, mos
2 bari bar, bare-a
4 unguàn unpuan
5 tano, sano, šan thsan, san
10 kumi, šumi šom
The book The Unity of Origin of Language (1905) established the doctrine of monogenesis. In
Saggi (1913), Trombetti presented the comparison and concordance of all the numbers.
“From that comparison and from many other lexical and grammatical concordances, one deduces
that the African languages are closely related to the Oceanic, which as we know form a group of
higher order and arise out of southern Asia” (Elementi, p. 194).
After having made many more comparisons, Trombetti determined that Dravido-Australian
languages (especially Dravidian) are closer to the South African than to the Bantu languages.
In 1909 (Die Sprachstämme des Erdkreises, Leipzig) Finck represented almost the same number
of linguistic families based on the anthropological divisions of Keane, dividing humans however into
four races, Ethiopic, Mongolian, American and Caucasian. Besides, Trombetti points out (Elementi p.
16), he left all names of colleagues which had definitely contributed to genealogical classification
unmentioned: eg. Hervas, G. di Humboldt, J. Grimm, Gallatin, Buschmann, Bopp, Bleek, Donner,
Bastian, Caldwell, Lepsius, F. Müller, Powell, W. Schmidt, H. Möller and Trombetti.
[For another example of researchers remaining deprived by depravity of brilliant studies for a spell, control this (as the
Jamaicans say):
The pioneer Robert Caldwell, in 1856, solidly presented grammatical and glossarial affinities between Dravidian, Indo-
European, Scythian (now Ural-Altaic), Elamite, Australian Aboriginal languages, and Semitic, emphasizing that Dravidian
was a key for shedding light on the original oneness of the said language families. Even though Caldwell had broken
ground indicating a way for long-range research to bloom, as Burrow mentions, P. Hunfalvys's miscriticism of Caldwell's
hypothesis in the Second International Congress of Orientalists in 1874 in London stymied discussion on this subject, until

24
1925 when F. O. Schrader revived it through a paper which was still subjected to ridicule by E. Lewy in 1928. Schrader
in turn rebutted Lewy in BSOAS VIII (1935-37). Furthermore Schrader was strongly supported by Burrow in 1943-46
(Hakola 2009, p. 19). Yet things did slow down.]
In Elementi di Glottologia (1923, p. 189) Trombetti outlines that “the question of the unity or
plurality of origin of language has passed through three stages or periods. At first the unity was
generally accepted either by religious tradition, or through vague intuition, or based on insufficient if
not false proofs. This is the period of prescientific dogmatism, within which the unique origin of man
was simply admitted.
In the second half of the last century (19th
) Pott, Schleicher and F. Müller introduced the opposing
dogma of the polygenesis of language into science. Given the great authority of these masters of
glottology it is not surprising that their thesis, even if undemonstrated and impossible to demonstrate,
was followed by the majority without examination. Therefore honest attempts at connecting one
primary group to another were judged to be antiscientific and condemned a priori whereupon many
withdrew from fecund research, to the grave damage of science…..It is appropriate to limited minds
to want to limit the field of research…”
The beginning of the 20th
century the third period began well with all prejudice put aside, and as
Finck expressed in Sprachstämme, 6 and Haupttypen, 155, “It is extremely probable that the mother
tongues of the primary groups all derive from a unique mother tongue in the absolute sense.”
1905 Trombetti Classification of Languages of the World
Africa 1. Bantu to the south, 2. Hamito-Semitic to the north.
Eurasia 3. Caucasian, 4. Indo-European, 5. Ural-Altaic,
6. Dravidian, 7. Indochinese, 8. Mon-Khmer.
Oceania 9. Malayo-Polynesian, 10. Andamanese-Papua-Australiano.
America 11. American group (of very high order).
The first 9 groups had been distinguished by others for quite some time before. The connection
between groups 8 and 9 (Mon-Khmer with Khasi, Munda, etc.) was recognised simultaneously by
Trombetti and W. Schmidt (1906). Group 10 was first determined by Trombetti himself and then
confirmed by Gatti. It was Trombetti who first presented few but secure elements as evidence for the
American languages being a single group.

25
1918 Classification from: LA LINGUA ITALIANA E I DIALETTI
§ 1. — All the languages of the globe (circa 2000) have been distributed by affinity or genetic
relation into nine groups:
1° Bantu-Sudanese
2° Hamitosemitic
3° Caucasic
4° Indoeuropean
5° Uraloaltaic
6° Dravidico-Australiano (languages of the Dravidians of southern India, of the Andaman Islands, of
the Papúa of New Guinea, of Australia and Tasmania).
7° Munda Polinesiaco (languages of the Munda of India and of some populations of Indochina, and
Malayo-Polynesian languages, that is, of Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia e Micronesia).
8° Indochinese (Tibetan, Birmanese, Siamese, Chinese, ecc.).
9° Languages of the American Indigenous peoples
Trombetti further clarified the existence of two branches of languages in the world, the Austral
and the Boreal in his work Elementi di Glottologia (Elements of Glottology), first published in two
volumes in 1923 in Bologna.
The Austral Branch (Africa and Oceania)
By Austral branch, Trombetti meant the languages of Africa, including the Bantu-Sudanese group,
and Hamito-Semitic group, the languages of Oceania, the Dravido-Australian and the Munda-
Polynesian groups.
Some of the correspondences he presents include a series of perfect correspondences between
Dravidico-Australian (especially Dravidian) and the Nilotic personal pronouns, as follows (Elementi,
1923, p. 194):
Nil. ān, ana, ane, Dinka γēn, Shiluk janè-n “I”:
Drav. ān, anā, āne, yēn, yān Austr. ān, yan- “I”
Bari nan, Masai nanu “I”: Drav. nān, nānu Austr. nan- “I”
Nuba ar “we”: Kauralaig ri “we”
Nil. (y)īn, īni, ēne “thou (subj.)” :
Drav. īn, ini “thou (obj.)”, Austr. in, yin-, ene “thou (subj.)”

26
Kulfan on “thou (subj.)”: Tamil un- , Austr. un-, unni “thou (subj.) ”
Nuba ir “thou (subj.), you (pl.) ”: Dravidian īr, Austr. yura “you (pl.) ”
Nuba tar “he”: Kui tārā reflexive pronoun
Nuba tan-, ten- “he”:
Drav. tan-, Brahui ten- reflexive, Austr. tana “that, they”
For the first time in history Trombetti was able to bring certainty into Sprachwissenschaft on the
subject of the (genealogical) relation between groups of languages previously regarded as being
completely separate. For example, by demonstrating the relation between Bantu-Sudanese and
Hamitic-Semitic, the 28 groups of F. Müller were unified. Trombetti precisely reviewed the works of
Bleek, Norris, Logan, Christaller, De Gregorio, Krause, Lepsius, Torrend, Finck, W. Schmidt, L.
Homburger, and Reinisch regarding the collegation of Bantu with Sudanese. Trombetti indicated
several weaknesses in Westermann's work on Sudanese, stating that his work represented a
retrogression with respect to these other works (Trombetti, Elementi, 1923, p. 24).
Trombetti was also first to hold that Sandawe belongs to a Khoisan family of languages. On page
43 of Elementi he presents 12 main points of correspondence between Sandawe and Nama and states
that this connection appears fully confirmed.
The Boreal Branch (Eurasia and America)
“All the primary groups established by us are interconnected. Though usually grouped according to
geographic distribution, profound separation cannot be noted even among the farthest groupings”
(Elementi di Glottologia, 1923, p. 102).
During his early studies, Trombetti attempted a historical tracing throughout the languages of
Eurasia : from Hamito-Semitic to Caucasian, then Indo-European and Ural-Altaic. However, after
study of the Dravidico-Australiano languages, they turned out to be too much separated from the
Hamito-Semitic languages but near enough to the Munda-Polynesian and Indochinese. He proposed
that then came Indo-European and Ural-Altaic, to close the circle in the Caucasian languages, though
he knew he had to end up with the American languages; so then he attempted to view the migrational
voyage setting off from the Caucasian languages. He tried again and again to divulge the pathways of
the migrations of the past through the clues he found in languages. He estimated (Elementi, 1923)
that Indo-European and Ural-Altaic lack vital prefixes and in many respects are less archaic than the
other groups.

27
In general by Boreal Trombetti intended the Eurasiatic languages (Hamito-Semitic, Caucasian,
Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, Dravidico-Australiano, Munda-Polynesian and Indochinese) and the
American languages.
Sergey Starostin used Borean to mean the Eurasiatic, Afroasiatic, Dene-Caucasian, Austric, (&
Amerind) languages.
In the classification of Hodjjat Assadian, proto-language and languages of the world based on the
molecular biology and genetics of Homo sapiens sapiens divide into Proto-African (including:
Congo-Saharan + Khoisan) and the classification of Borean by Sergey Starostin:
1. mtDNA haplogroup L0, L1, L2 and NRY M91, M60 for Proto-African,
2. mtDNA haplogroup L3, NRY M168 for Proto-Borean.
Trombetti, more than 50 years previous to the final work of Morris Swadesh, wrote the following
about the monogenesis of language:
“So as not to be misunderstood (as has happened at other times) I would say that for me all
known languages are propagations of a unique stock, continuations of one unique primogenetic
(primogenio) language. The right to affirm this is that same by which it is affirmed that the Indo-
European languages are continuations or phases of one unique language. And until the infinite proofs
presented have not been refuted one by one and all together, my doctrine (neither theory nor
hypothesis!) must be considered as demonstrated. For the rest, apart from my work, Glottology has
proceeded for the past twenty years in the direction by me indicated.”
(Trombetti, Elementi di Glottologia, 1923, Preface, p. iii)

28
Bibliography – some of Trombetti’s Works:
1897 Indogermanische und semitische Forschungen. Bologna: Libreria Fratelli Treves.
1902 Nessi genealogici fra le lingue del mondo antîco, 4 volumes, unpublished. Italian Academy Royal Prize.
1902-3 "Delle relazioni dell lingue caucasiche con le lingue camitosemitiche e con altri gruppi linguistichi". Lettera al
professore H. Schuchardt. In Giornale della Società asiatica italiana, Firenze.
1905 L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
1907 Come si fa la critica di un libro. Con nuovi contributi alla dottrina della monogenesi del linguaggio e alla
glottologia generale comparata. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
1908 Saggi di glottologia generale comparata I. I pronomi personali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna.
Classe de scienze morali. Bologna.
1909 Sulla parentela della lingua etrusca. (article)
1910 La lingua degli Ottentotti e la lingua dei Wa-Sandawi. nota preliminare - Academie delle scienze: classe di
scienze morali. Gamberini & Parmoggiani. Bologna (Italy).
1911 Sull' origine delle consonanti enfatiche nel semitico.
1912 Manuale dell'arabo parlato a Tripoli. Grammatica, letture e vocabolario.
1913 Saggi di glottologia generale comparata II. I numerali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe
di scienze morali. Bologna.
1913 Sulla parentela della lingua etrusca (article).
1914 Ottent. tiri-goe = Begia dir-kan. Bollettino dell'Accademia (short article).
1917 Grammatica Latina ad uso delle scuole.
1918 Grammatica Italiana ad uso delle scuole. [Grammars and Exercises for French, English, German, Spanish, Greek
for use in schools (unpublished)].
1920 Saggi di glottologia generale comparata III. Comparazioni lessicali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di
Bologna. Classe de scienze morali. Bologna.
1922-3 Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Zanichelli.
1925 Le origini della lingua basca. Bologna: Azzoguidi.
1925 Die probleme der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft, « Caucasica », 2.
1926 "Origine asiatica delle lingue e popolazioni americane." In Atti del 22 congresso internazionale degli
americanisti, Roma, Settembre 1926, T. 1, pp. 169-246. Roma: Istituto Cristopho Colombo.
1927 "La lingua etrusca e le lingue preindoeuropee del Meditarraneo." Studi etruschi, T.1. Firenze.
1928 La lingua etrusca. Firenze: Rinascimento del libro.
1929 Il nostro dialetto bolognese. Bologna: Zanichelli.

29
II. Post-Trombetti Long-Range Historical Comparative Linguistics
Following Alfredo Trombetti, with the discovery and reconstruction of the protos of the various
branches of the languages of the world, the research on the cognates of all the world languages finally
led to the appearance of three pathways / Feldwege (methods!) in the history of scientific linguistics
through the perseverant diligence of three founders of Schools:
1- USSR School - Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (1934-1966)
2- USA School – Joseph H. Greenberg (1915-2001)
3- Iran (-Europe) School – Hodjjat Assadian (1958- )
While scientifically supporting each other, each of these three linguistic schools directed their
work along a distinct pathway against the metaphysical Holzwege presented as meth-od (μεθʼ-οδος)
in mainstream historical comparative linguistics:
1- USSR School and its development up to present, based on the comparative dialectical pathway
with emphasis on the reconstruction of the protos and the demonstration of Nostratic and its
extension as Borean.
2- USA School, based on multilateral mass comparisons, with emphasis on the classification of
languages in the direction of probability.
3- Iran (-Europe) School, based on hermeneutical dialectics of the historical-comparative hodos
(pathway), with emphasis on the reconstruction and classification based on linguistics and
mtDNA and NRY molecular biology of Homo sapiens sapiens, directed towards the discovery
and demonstration of Koinoetymology and the Proto-Phonogenes in the 140,000-200,000 year
depth of history of humans.
I will present a brief history of the first two Schools and will then dwell further on the third.

31
1. USSR SCHOOL
Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (1934-1966)
ВЛАДИСЛАВ МАРКОВИЧ ИЛЛИЧ-СВИТЫЧ
1- The precise development of the linguistic work of Trombetti appeared in 1965 with the research of
Illich-Svitych in the Moscow School under the name of Nostratic Linguistics.
In the Moscow School, the reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic based on six large linguistic branches
of the world languages was achieved by Illich-Svitych:
1- Proto-Indo-European
2- Proto-Asiatic (Afroasian / Semito-Hamitic)
3- Proto-Altaic
4- Proto-Uralic
5- Proto-Kartvelian
6- Proto-Dravidian.

31
At the age of 31 in 1965, Illich-Svitych published his work in a pathbreaking article in the
linguistics journal “ЭТИМОЛОГИЯ / ETYMOLOGIA”: “Materials for a Comparative Dictionary of
Nostratic”.
Illich-Svitych planned to add the rest of the protos of the languages of the world to this collection.
His tragic death prevented this from being carried out by his own hand; it was on August 22, 1966, by
car hit in Zagorianskaia (Moscow Oblast).
If Illich-Svitych started with a view to continue Indo-European and Semitic comparisons, after he
published “The Most Ancient Indo-European-Semitic Connections” in 1964, he decided to gear the
comparison instead with Afro-Asiatic. Thereafter his work horizon extended and he attended to all
Afro-Asiatic languages. His near 50 pages of bibliographies attest to works in hand (including
Trombetti). He was able to prepare “Essay of Comparison of Nostratic Languages” in which he
proves the relationship of the Nostratic languages, and then “Preliminary Resources for the
Comparison of Nostratic Languages” (manuscript). In this manuscript he presented the 600 completed
etymologies as Proto-Nostratic, along with the reconstructed Protos of the sub-languages (printed in
Etymologija, 1965), of which 378 were destined to become the Comparative Dictionary of the
Nostratic Languages finally published by V. A. Dybo in three volumes, beginning in 1971 up until
1984.
Nostratic work was assiduously followed through by Sergey Starostin and others.
Illich-Svitych made a detailed case using nearly 1000 references (through the mid-1960s)
substantiating the existence of the Nostratic macro-family, and therefore the genetic relatedness
between the Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic, Dravidian and Altaic language groups,
that is, the language groups available to him at that early date. He thus offered a detailed
reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic. In the view of Illich-Svitych, the term Nostratic [from Latin nostras
“ours”, introduced by Pedersen] refers to all languages of the world, although his short life cut his
work off at six branches.
Illich-Svitych was able to base his work on the comparison of reconstucted proto-languages. What
this means is that he was able to systematically identify the phonological correspondences among the
various proto-languages. He produced phonological tables maintaining their scientific validity up to
present. By working on comparative phonetics he was able to compile the comparative dictionary of
more than 600 common roots in Nostratic.
He was also able to find the common roots (cognates) by comparing in parallel all of the six
proto-languages at the same time, thus proving the common origin of the cognates found.
So to clarify Illich-Svitych's accomplishment, we reiterate after Vladimir Dybo, that the primary
goal of Nostratics is not the determination of the genetic relationship between the six major language
families of the Old World. Illich-Svitych already managed this through his four early publications:

32
1. Towards a Comparative Dictionary of the Nostratic Languages
2. Correspondences of Stops in Nostratic Languages
3. The Origin of the Indo-European Guttural Series in the Light of External Comparitive Data
4. The Reconstruction of Uralic Vocalism in the Light of External Comparative Data
The first works devoted specifically to proving the distant genetic relation of the families in
question inspired Illich-Svitych to continue study of the comparative historical grammars of these
language families.
The task before him was precisely non-Kantian and non-positivist science of language, i.e., the
comparative historical Nostratic science of language as Sprachwissenschaft in the revolutionary
dialectical thinking after Hegel. This involves the study of comparative historical phonology,
morphology and word formation in the Nostratic languages and proto-Nostratic reconstruction.
The establishment of genetic relationship in Illich-Svitych's view is a by-product of the main task.
The necessity for external comparison of languages arises out of the task of comparative linguistics
itself. In his own words,
“In the more advanced areas of comparative lingusitics .... there has recently emerged a certain
tendency to overestimate the possibilities of internal reconstruction, whose application without the
strict control of external comparison can lead to the construction of a multitude of equally probable
and equally arbitrary proto-systems. Such a situation requires that we go beyond the limits of any
single language family. Only external comparison guarantees the appropriate verification and enables
us to select the single variant out of numerous possible historical reconstructions which most closely
approaches reality. The very existence of “Nostratic linguistics” can be justified by the fact that it
not only utilizes the achievements of Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and other branches of comparative
linguistics, but is itself intended to significantly further the development of these areas, just as, e.g.,
Indo-European aids in the development of Germanic, Slavic, and Iranian studies” (Опыт Сравнения
Ностратических Языков, vol. 1, p. 2).
From this statement it is clear that Illich-Svitych founded Nostratic linguistics as upper level work
with the general view toward the advance of all branches of comparative linguistics.
Illich-Svitych carried out the rigourous examination of the data he used for comparison, with
verification of the precision and reliability of the established reconstructions in each of the compared
language families, as Vladimir Dybo attests is evident through his own experience using Illich-
Svitych's work as a reference. This thorough-going work was just as necessary in reviewing Indo-
European linguistics and etymologies as in the other fields.
“As I have attempted to show, Illich-Svitych's research was not based on a comparison of
reconstructed protoforms taken from etymological dictionaries and certainly not on the comparison of
individual lexemes selected from dictionaries, as his critics have sometimes claimed. His worked was

33
distinguished by an exceptional attention to the entire corpus of the comparative evidence from
individual languages, as well as by a methodological rigour which is often lacking in the work of
many of his critics.” (Vladimir Dybo, Illich-Svitych and the Development of Uralic and Dravidian
Linguistics, a Preliminary Report.)
Alongside extreme systematic rigour and precision, for Illich-Svitych comprehensiveness of
scope is an essential element for successful investigation of remote genetic relationships among the
world's languages.
Illich-Svitych's work makes up the ground and the basis of the USSR school. Vladislav
Markonovich Illich-Svytich’s work has been actively and conscientiously pursued by his co-thinkers
and co-workers Vladimir Dybo, Sergey Starostin, and others and now the Moscow school is the basis
of research in Nostratic, Borean, Global Etyma, Nilal, DURALJAN and Koinoetyma.
Illich-Svitych did something thought to be astonishing by the occident (Oxford =Abendland) as
we see by the following comment made in 1971 by Gerard Clauson:
“I have two reasons for writing this paper. The first is that, while I have occasionally heard the
word Nostratic, I have never had a clear idea what it meant, and I suspect that most readers of this
Journal are in a similar position. The second is that I have recently received from a colleague in
Moscow a book just published there entitled “An attempt to compare the Nostratic languages” (Opyt
sravneniya nostraticheskikh yazykov) which defines the term, gives a history of the origin and
development of the Nostratic theory, and marshals a great deal of evidence in support of it. The
author, V. M. Illich-Svitych, died in 1966, and the first part of his book, which was perhaps never
finished, has now been published, with an introduction, notes, and some supplementary matter, by his
friend and colleague, V. A. Dybo. This was Illich-Svitych's only major work, but the bibliography (p.
74; this and similar references are to pages in the book) lists also six articles by him in various
learned journals. The first feeling of any reader of the book must be utter astonishment at the amount
of sheer hard detailed work which he packed into a short life of no more than 32 years.”

35
The Nostratic Superclan (Illich-Svitych, 1965)
Bibliography – some of Illich-Svitych’s Works:
1964 "Drevnejshije indojevropejsko-semitskije jazykovyje kontakty". PIEJ : 3-12.
1965 "Материаль к Сравнительному Словарю Ностратических Языков (индоевропейский, алтайкий,
уральский, дравидский, картвельский, семитохамитский)", Этимология, [Materials for a
Comparative Dictionary of the Nostratic Languages (Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic, Dravidian,
Kartvelian, Hamito-Semitic) , ( timologija) 321-73. (& 1967) USSR.
1966 Manuscript notes for a Nostratic dictionary. M.
1966 "Соомвемсмвия смычных в носмрамических языках" [Correspondences of Stops in the Nostratic
Languages], Этимология ( timologija) 314-355 and 401-404 (additions and corrections). (1968)
1968 "Rodstvo jazykov nostraticheskoj sem'i (verojatnostnaja ocenka ssledujemyx sxodstv) ". SlJD : 4O7-25.
1971 Ličnyje mestoimenija mi 'ja' i mi 'my' v nostratičeskom. IN: Issledovanija po slavjanskomu
jazykoznaniju. Moskva 1971. Pp. 396-403.
1971- 84 Опыт Сравнения Ностратических Языков (семитохамитский, артвельский, индоевропейский,
уральский, дравидский, алтайкий) Наука, Москва [An Attempt at a Comparison of the Nostratic
Languages (Hamito-Semitic, Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic, Dravidian, Altaic)], 3 vols., Nauka,
Moscow, USSR.
1989 Early Reconstructions of Nostratic. [Translation of Illič-Svityč 1967 ] IN: SHEVOROSHKIN 1989: 125-176.
1989 The Relationship of the Nostratic Family Languages: A Probabilistic Evaluation of the Similarities in
Question. IN: SHEVOROSHKIN (ed.), Bochum: Brockmeyer. Pp. 111-113.
1990 Nostratic Reconstructions (translated and arranged by M. Kaiser). SHEVOROSHKIN. Bochum: Brockmeyer.

36
After Illich-Svitych
G. B. Dzhaukian (Jaukian) (1920-2005)
Գևորգ Բեգլարի Ջահուկյան
Геворк Бегларович Джаукян
G. B. Dzhaukian, after finishing studies at the Erevan State University in 1941, worked there
between 1945-9, then served as docent there until 1958 when he became professor. He was head of
the Foreign Languages department from 1948 through 1957. He received many prizes for his
excellent work (1970, 1976, 1985, 1986, 1988).
Dzhaukian had precisely studied and demonstrated the distant genetic relation between Hurro-
Urartian (Caucasian) and Indo-European in the USSR before Illich-Svitych's work. Finally in 1963
Professor Dzhaukian was able to publish his Hurro-Urartian and Indo-European studies. Up until
today this aspect of Nostratic has not been much dwelt upon. In explaining his work on the second
page of the summary of The Urartian and Indo-European Languages (1963, p. 149), Dzhaukian
informs:
"At first, the author of this work was in agreement with the latter theory which endeavoured to
explain "the Indo-European elements" in Urartian as having been influenced by the Indo-European
languages (Armenian included). However, further study into the Urartian languages brought to light

37
so many "Indo-European elements" and of such quality as to make it impossible to consider them all
as simply borrowings or substratum."
Urartian Indo-European Phonetic Correspondences
Dzhaukian (1963)
Proto-Indo-European Urartian Proto-Indo-European Urartian
voiced aspirates voiceless consonants
*bh b *g k
*dh d *p p
*gh g *t t
*k k (q, )
voiced consonants
*b p
*d ṭ (t )
Proto-Indo-European Urartian
*ā , *a a
*ē , *e e , i or a
*ō, *o u (*ō sometimes to a)

38
Dzhaukian presented pages of evidence of coinciding grammatical structures and vocabulary of
the Urartian language with Indo-European, including specifically the existence of the Ergative or
Active case surviving in the Urartian language, and various vocabulary including:
1. nouns 2. adjectives 3. numerals 4. pronouns 5. verbs 6. adverbs.
After comparing these observations with the coincidences between Urartian with Hurrian,
Hayasa and Armenian, he is led to the following conclusions (1963):
1) With the coincidence of the fundamental stratum of the grammatical structures and
vocabulary, it may be said that Urartian must have been in definite cognate relations with the Indo-
European languages. However, as Urartian did not have any close ties with any of the other Indo-
European language groups, and since it retained archaic traits older than perhaps any other Indo-
European language, and some particular features (the ergative construction) are not derivable from
Indo-European, Urartian should be considered as a "collateral relative" having separated and lost
contact with Indo-European languages at a time that it still had this ergative construction. That is,
Urartian can be considered a related kin to the Indo-European language, existing alongside it.
2) Since relations with Indo-European were not completely severed, these languages mutually
influenced each other (as can be seen in place names, which have resulted from the influence of
Greek, Old Anatolian and other Indo-European languages).
3) Urartian held an intermediate position in relation to the Indo-European dialects and Hurrian
languages, alongside plausibly other languages and dialects which have disappeared through history.
4) If truly Hayasa is a close relative to Old Anatolian and an Indo-European language, the
Hayasa language must have been a transmitting link between Old Anatolian and Urartian.
5) There is work to be done in separating the Urartian-Indo-European coincidences which
explain Armenian-Urartian parallels from those resulting under mutual influence.
6) The effect of Urartian on the Caucasian languages, and specially Georgian is not to be
doubted, and can explain the elements in Georgian vocabulary and place names, which appear to be
Indo-European.

39
CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES KARTVELIAN LANGUAGES
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
In continuing his research, Prof. Dzhaukian developed the material which resulted in his
presentation of long-range comparisons (a term he notes in the first chapter to have been introduced
by M. Swadesh): Interrelations of the Hurro - Urartian, Indo - European, and Caucasian (including
Kartvelian, Abkhazo - Adygian & Nakho - Daghestanian ) Languages, printed in 1967.
Therefore, Dzhaukian presented concrete lexical and grammatical correspondences which
support and clarify the genetic relationship existing between the Indo-European, Hurro-Urartian,
Caucasian and Kartvelian languages, giving him reason to consider them to be Nostratic or North-
Eurasiatic languages.
Today, if as Vyacheslav V. Ivanov mentions, only the possibility of borrowing as the uniting
factor between Hurro-Urartian and Indo-European has been widely accepted, it is still true that this
thesis remains unestablished by proof and yet is treated as a given by a mystery source as a law to be
disproven. The documentation provided by I. M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin has proven Hurro-

41
Urartian to be one of the branches of Caucasian, and therefore Hurro-Urartian through Caucasian and
from there Dene-Caucasian exists as a cognate language to Indo-European within the Borean
linguistic system. [See 2008, H. Assadian, Urartian-Sumerian-Basque (Caucasian) and Avestic (Indo-
European) Koinoetymological Dictionary.]
Some of Dzhaukian (Jaukian)’s Works:
1963 Урартский и индоевропейские языки, Ереван, ИАНА ССР.
1963 Хайасский язык и его отношение к и.-е. Языкам, Ереван.
1965 Новые урартско-индоевропейские параллели, ИАН, Арм ССР, 3, СТР45-55.
1967 Взаимоотношение индоевропейских хурритско-урартских и кавказских языков,
Ереван, ИАНА ССР.

41
Aharon B. Dolgopolsky (1930-2012)
А. Б. ДОЛГОПОЛЬСКИЙ
When Illich-Svitych began to publish regarding Nostratic, Aharon Dolgopolsky independently
developed а theory linking Indo-European with Afroasiatic, Kartvelian and а series of languages in
Northern Asia that includes Uralic, Altaic and Eskimo-Aleut (Dolgopolsky 1964, 1965). .....In а later
work оn personal pronouns (1984), he included Gilyak and Chukotian along with Elamite and
Dravidian. After meeting, Dolgopolsky and Illich-Svitych coordinated work. While Illich-Svitych
handled the Chadic languages, Dolgopolsky took up the Cushitic.
Dolgopolsky continued developing the brilliant work of Illich-Svitych after their collaboration was
cut short. This took the form of a first attempt to reconstruct the Chukcho-Koryak proto-language on
the basis of regular sound correspondences [Golovastikov & Dolgopoĺskij, 1972]. Then they
formulated the preliminary phonetic correspondences between Chukcho-Koryak and Itelmen.
Aharon Dolgopolsky referred to his learning the long-range comparative research basic
methodology from Illich-Svitych. It was Illich-Svitych who discovered the main sound
correspondences between Nostratic languages and the phonetic laws that underlie these
correspondences. This Dolgopolsky relates in the foreword to his Nostratic Dictionary published in
2008 and dedicated to the memory of his dear friends and great scholars Vladislav Illich-Svitych and

42
Sergey Starostin. He included nearly all of Illich-Svitych’s 611 Nostratic etymologies in his
dictionary.
Nostratic Dictionary is now the greatest gathering of substantial Nostratic documentation and data,
with 2805 Proto-Nostratic roots. Although ready in 2002, it took years to prepare for publication. It
was published in 2008 by an institute for archaeological research. Nostratic Dictionary lies in support
of the rapprochement between fields, archaeology and language in particular.
According to Dolgopolsky, Eskimo-Aleut, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Etruscan, and Elamite belong to
Nostratic as do Afroasiatic, Kartvelian (South Caucasian languages), Dravidian (Greenberg differs in
opinion on these three) along with Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Gilyak (which Greenberg does
include in his Eurasiatic, his name for Nostratic).
Dolgopolsky’s discusses that Greenberg’s exclusion of Hamitic-Semitic from Nostratic (or
Eurasiatic) is definitely wrong. He points out that almost all “Eurasiatic” morphemes are shared by
Hamitic-Semitic and/or Kartvelian and partially by Elamo-Dravidian.
Bibliography – some of Dolgopolsky’s Works:
1964 ‘Metody rekonstrukciji obščeindoevropejskogo jazyka i vneindoevropejskije sopostavlenija.’
[Methods in the reconstruction of PIE and external comparison]. Pp. 27-30.
1964 ‘Gipoteza drevnejšego rodstva jazykovyh semej Severnoj Evraziji s verojatnostnoj točki zrenija.
[The hypothesis of the ancient relationship of the language families in Northern Eurasia from a
probabilistic point of view]. 1964/2: 53-63.
1965 "Методы реконструкции общиндоевропейского яазыка и сибиро- европейская гипотеза"
[Methods in the Reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and the Sibero-European Hypothesis],
Этимология (Etimologija) 1965:259-270.
1966 Nostratičeskije osnovy s sočetanijem dvuh šumnyh soglasnyh. [Nostratic roots with a cluster
of two sibilants] IN: Moskva, 1966.Pp. 48-50.
1967 ‘Ot Sahary do Kamčatki jazyki iščut rodstvennikov.’ [From the Sahara to the Kamchatka languages look
for relatives] 42: 43- 46.
1967 V poiskah dalekogo rodstva.’ [In search of distant relationship č 1967/6: 95-103.
1967 ‘Problemy semito-hamitskogo kornja v sravnitel'noistoričeskom osveščeniji.’ [Problems of the Semito-
Hamitic root in the light of historical-comparative studies] IN: Moskva: Nauka. Pp. 278-282.
1967 (69) "Nostraticheskije osnovy s sochetanijem shumnyx soglasnyx". Etymologia : 296-313.
1967 "Ot Saxary do Kamchatki jazyki ishchut rodstvennikov" [Nostratic Roots with Sibilant Clusters], ZS,

43
No. 1:43-6; Этимология (Etimologija), 296-313.
1968 ‘Drevnije korni i drevnije ljudi.’ [Ancient roots and ancient people č 1968/2: 96-108.
1968(71) "Nostraticheskije etimologii i proisxozhdenije glagol'nyx formantov" [Nostratic Etymologies Origin of
Verb Formatives], Etymologia : 237-42.
197O(72) "Nostraticheskije korni s sochetanijem lateral'nogo i zvonkogo laringala" [Nostratic Roots with a Cluster
of Lateral and Voiced Laryngeals], Etymologia: 356-69.
1971 Nostratičeskije etimologiji i proishoždenije glagol'nyh formantov. [Nostratic etymologies and the origin
of verb formatives] . Moskva, 1971. Pp. 237-242.
1972 (74) "O nostraticheskoj sisteme affrikat i sibiljantov" [On the System of Nostratic Affricates and Sibilants:
Roots with the Phoneme *ʒ], Etymologia: 163-175.
1972 ‘Opyt rekonstrukciji obšče-nostratičeskoj grammatičeskoj sistemy. A. Sistema enklitik i mestoimenij. B.
Nostratičeskij sintaksis.’ [Experimental reconstruction of the Common Nostratic grammatical system.
A. The system of enclitics and pronouns. B. Nostratic syntax]. Moskva. Pp. 32-34.
1975 Nostratičeskije jazyki. [Nostratic languages 12: 272.
1975 ‘Paleontologija lingvističeskaja.’ [Linguistic paleontology IN: 19:113. Moskva.
1975 ‘Jazyki i problema prarodiny’ [Languages and the problem of homeland] 6: 15-19.
1984 "On Personal Pronouns in the Nostratic Languages" in: Otto Schwantler,Károly Rédei, and
Hermann Reichert (eds.), Linguistica et Philologica. Gedenkenschaft für Björn Collinder (1894-1983).
1986 A probabilistic hypothesis concerning the oldest relationships among the language families of northern
Eurasia // Typology, Relationship, and Time: a Collection of Papers on Language Change and
Relationship by Soviet Linguists. Karoma, pp. 27–50.
1987 "Cultural contacts of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Iranian with neighbouring languages". FLH
VIII/1-2 : 1-36.
1988 "The Indo-European Homeland and Lexical Contacts of Proto-Indo-European with Other
Languages", Mediterranean Language Review 3:7-31
1989 "Problems of Nostratic Comparative Phonology" in: Vitaly Sheveroshkin (ed.), Reconstructing
Languages and Cultures. Bochum: Brockmeyer, pp. 9O-98.
1990 "Language relationship and the history of mankind". Abstract.
1992 "The Nostratic Vowels in Indo-European" in: Vitaly Sheveroshkin (ed.), Nostratic, Dene-Caucasian,
Austric and Amerind. Bochum: Brockmeyer, pp. 298-331.
1992 "Nostratic etymologies and the origin of verbal formatives". NDCAA : 29O-7 [transl. of NEPGF].
1992 "Language relationship and the history of mankind". Ms. Paper presented at ZIF Conference on Biological
and Cultural Aspects of Language Development, Jan. 2O-22, 1992
1994 "Nostratic" in: R.E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press,
vol. 5, p. 2838.
1997 "The Indo-European stops in the light of the long range relationship of Indo- European with Afroasiatic
and some language families of northern and eastern Asia". JDV 4 II: 1O9-112.
1998 "The Nostratic Macrofamily. A Short Introduction". SNM (1998). S.p.1998 : The Nostratic Hypothesis and
Linguistic Palaeontology. Cambridge: The McDonald Inst. for Archaeological Research.
1999 "The Nostratic macrofamily: a short introduction". NELM (1999): 19-44.
2008 (2012) Nostratic Dictionary, 4 vols., University of Cambridge.

44
Sergey A. Starostin (1953-2005)
С. А. Старостин
Sergey Anatol’evich Starostin was born in Moscow in 1953. He grew up alongside a linguist
father, but he was already on his own winning the Moscow Linguistic Olympics at an early age.
When he attended the Nostratic comparative linguistics university course of studies led by
Dogolposky after the accidental death of V. M. Illich-Svitych (1966), he was still in his teens. He
was well versed in ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, classical Chinese, classical Japanese),
English, German, Polish, French, modern Chinese, and modern Japanese, etc.
With Sergey Starostin, the Moscow School reached the zenith of linguistic authority in the history
of scientific linguistics in the world. Sergey A. Starostin is founder of Borean linguistics. (The Greek
word β ας means "northern").
The Eskimo-Aleut, Chukchi-Kamchatkam, and Gilyak (Nivkh) languages were added to the
Nostratic of Illich-Svitych by Dolgopolsky, and through Sergey Starostin, Proto-Dene-Caucasian,
Proto-Austric (and Proto-Amerind) were added to the total Moscow School Nostratic work.
In the dimension of scientific historical-comparative linguistics, Sergey Starostin demonstrated all
the languages of the continents of Asia, Europe and America, Oceania and North Africa to be
cognate, and called the stem of all the protos of all these languages Proto-Borean. All the Borean
languages genetically belong to mtDNA Haplogroup L3 and NRY M 168.

45
Classification of Borean Languages
Sergey Starostin

46
Sergey Starostin used Borean to include the following macro-phyla: the Eurasiatic and
Afroasiatic (= Nostratic as Illich-Svitych envisioned it), Dene-Caucasian, Austric, (& Amerind)
languages. In fact, S. Starostin separates the Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo and Khoisan languages from
Borean.
Sergey A. Starostin of the Moscow School advanced possibilities for work in Nostratics as
founded by Illich-Svitych. As student of Dybo and Dolgopolsky, he came through with many
creative discoveries and was energetic co-worker in a vast number of group endeavors all reaching
their destinations in print. His first scientific study dates back to 1971.
In the early 1981’s the work of the Moscow School was made known again by Sergey A.
Starostin through published papers. He set the deep genetic relationship of the Caucasian family with
the Sino-Tibetan and Yeniseian families on firmer ground. In 1982 Starostin presented the first model
of the reconstruction of the Yeniseian languages, which he later defined with more precision (1995).
He was able to verify that Yenisseian was cognate with North Caucasian and Sino-Tibetan languages.
This was a possibility suggested earlier by G.J. Ramstedt, A. Trombetti, K. Bouda and others. It was
Sergey Starostin, however, who formulated the regular phonetic laws. This family was presented as
“Sino-Causasian” by Sergey Starostin, and his colleague Sergey L. Nikolayev extended the family,
which now includes the Na-Dene family of North America.
If the number of Sergey Starostin’s works are less than 70, they each involve terrific efforts. His
work on Old Chinese is one notable instance. Starostin produced a reconstruction of Old Chinese
which included the same six vowel system arrived at independently by the Chinese scholar
Zhengzhang Shangfang (鄭張尚芳). One further example of his diligence is A North Caucasian
Etymological Dictionary (Moscow 1994), consisting of more than 1400 pages.
In 1991 Sergey Starostin wrote a volume demonstrating the relation of Japanese with Altaic
languages. Illich-Svytich already had indicated the relation Korean and Japanese to Altaic. This
relation has been accepted by all those accepting Nostratic except for Bomhard.
Sergey Starostin reconstructed Proto-Borean, and this became possible with view on his
reconstruction of the Altaic languages (including Korean and Japanese), and his introduction of the
Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. The Dené-Caucasian hypothesis proposes the genetic relationship
between Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, Basque, Burushaski and
Na-Dené, and Starostin has demonstrated this relation in his work.
With I. M. Diakonoff, S. Starostin presented documentation connecting Hurru-Urartian to the
Northern Caucasian languages. Actually, Sergey Starostin rallied with colleagues towards the
reconstruction of: Proto-Kiranti, Proto-Yenesseian, Proto-Birmano-Tibetan, Proto-North Caucasian,
and Proto-Altaic.

47
Dene-Caucasian Language Clan

48
Sergey Starostin divided Borean into the Nostratic and the Dene-Daic groups, the Dene-Daic
group being equivalent to the Dené-Caucasian and Austric macrofamilies. Starostin's dating on
Borean is in approximation 16 thousand years ago, which makes Borean an Upper Paleolithic proto-
language.
Dravidian (Elamite) (probably the earliest split-off of Nostratic) separated from Eurasiatic, and
then the more closely related families separated off: Indo-European, Uralic (+ Yukaghir), Altaic
(including Korean and Japanese), Kartvelian.
Starostin readily accepted Eskimo-Aleut and Chukchee-Kamchatkan as being included in
Nostratic.
Starostin did not deny the possibility of Sumerian as Sino-Caucasian in Trombetti's doctrine,
presented by Bengtson, Blažek, Boisson and Assadian.
Sergey launched Starling software and site from 1985. This was a collaboration with Murray
Gell-Mann (Nobel in Physics). The site is a boon for determining the most probable phonetic
correspondences between related languages, creating tree-diagrams, and calculating their absolute
dates of divergence to mention only the most obvious possibilities it creates.
Sergey Starostin worked at the Humanitas Russian State University, Santa Fe Institute and
sometimes taught at Leiden, Holland where he received an honorary doctorate in 2005.
He then died, it has been printed, of heart-attack.
Sergey Starostin's contribution must be at least on the level of comparative-historical linguists
Karl Brugmann, Ferdinand de Saussure, Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste.
Bibliography – some of Sergey Starostin’s Works:
1982 Праенисейская реконструкция и внешние связи енисейских языков o-Yeniseian Reconstruction and the
External Relations of Yeniseian Languages) Studia Ketica, vol. 3. Leningrad: “Nauka” publishers; 144- 237.
1984 Гипотеза о генетических связях сино-тибетских языков с енисейскими и севернокавказскими языками
(A Hypothesis about the Genetic Connections between Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, and North Caucasian
Languages) Лингвистическая ре-конструкция и древнейшая история Востока. М.: ИВ АН СССР
(Linguistic Reconstruction and the Prehistory of the East. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies); pp. 19-38.
1986 Indoevropejsko-severnokavkazskije leksi…eskije izoglosy. IN: Balkany v kontekste Sredizemnemorja.
Moskva. Pp. 162-163.
1988 “Indoevropejsko-severokavkazskie izoglossy [Indo-European and North Caucasian Isoglosses .” Drevnij
Vostok: Etno-kul’turny svjazi. Vol. 80. Ed. G. M. Bongard-Levin and V. G. Ardzinba. Moscow. 112-163.

49
1989 "Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian", in Vitaly Shevoroshkin, ed. Bochum, Germany, 42-66.
1989 "Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian". LRDIV-89 I: 1O6-24.
1989 "Sravnitel'no-istoricheskoje jazykoznnije i leksikostatistika". LRDIV I: 3-39.
1989 Rekonstrukcija drevnekitajskoj fonologičeskoj sistemy [Reconstruction of the phonological system of Old
Chinese]. Moscow, Nauka Publishers.
1990 "A statistic evaluation of the time-depth and subgrouping of the Nostratic macrofamily". EMC: 33.
1991 "On the Hypothesis of a Genetic Connection Between the Sino-Tibetan Languages and the Yeniseian and
North-Caucasian Languages", in Vitaly Shevoroshkin, 1991: 12-41.
1991 Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian, in: Vitaly Sheveroshkin, ed., Explorations in Language Macrofamilies,
Bochum, Germany, 42-66.
1991 Алтайская проблема и происхождение японского языка [The Altaic problem and the Origins of the
Japanese Language], Moscow.
1991 "O japono-korejskix akcentnyx sootvetstvijax". SIJSE: 44-7.
1992 "Methodology of long-range comparison". NDCAA: 75-9.
1998 "Comments on A. Dolgopolsky’s Nostratic Macrofamily and Linguistic Palaeontology". SNM. S. p.
1998 “Hurro-Caucasica.” V. N. Toporov Festschrift. Moscow.
1999 "Subgrouping in Nostratic: comments on Aharon Dolgopolsky’s The Nostratic Macrofamily and
Linguistic Palaeontology". NELM: 137-56.
2000 "Ob odnom novom tipe sootvetstvij shumnyx smychnyx v nostraticheskix jazykax". PID: 174-7.
2000 Comparative-Historical Linguistics and Lexicostatistics / Time Depth in Historical Linguistics / Ed. by
Renfrew, McMahon & Trask. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge; pp. 223-259.
2002 "Nostratic stops revisited". FsAD: 3-6.
2003 Statistical Evaluation of the Lexical Proximity between the Main Linguistic Families of the Old World /
Orientalia et Classica III Studia Semitica. Moscow, RSUH Publishers, pp. 464–484.
2007 Definition of the stability of the basic lexicon. Works on Linguistics (in Russian). (Определение
устойчивости базисной ксики), Moscow: Languages of Slavic Cultures; pp. 827-839.
2007 Indo-European among other language families: problems of dating, contacts and genetic relationships / S.
STAROSTIN. Trudy po jazykoznaniju [Works in Linguistics . Moscow, Jazyki slav’anskix kul’tur, 806-820.
Joint Works
1986 D’iakonov, I. M. and S. A. Starostin. Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian language. München.
1989 Starostin, S. A. Rekonstrukcija drevnekitajskoj fonologičeskoj sistemy [The reconstruction of the Old
Chinese phonological system]. Moskva: "Nauka”.
1991 Starostin, S. A. Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka [The Altaic problem and the
origin of the Japanese language]. Moskva: “Nauka”.
1994 Starostin, S. A. & S. L. Nikolayev, A North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary. Moscow.
1996 Peiros, Ilia, and S. A. Starostin. A comparative vocabulary of five Sino-Tibetan languages. 5 vols.
Parkville, VIC: Univ. of Melbourne, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.
2003 Starostin, Dybo, Mudrak, Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages. 3 v. Leiden: Brill.

51
Kalevi E. Koskinen
In Finland Prof. Kalevi Koskinen was the Finnish Slavist who was able to continue the way
Illich-Svitych had initiated.
In 1980, Kalevi E. Koskinen published NILAL – Über die Urverwandtschaft des hamito-
semitischen, indogermanischen, uralischen, und altischen in Tampere, Finland. He called his
classification of Hamito-Semitic (=Afroasiatic), Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic the NILAL
languages, from fusion of the names Nil (indicating the Hamito-Semitic language branch), Ural and
Altai.
Semantics plays a foremost role in this research on more than 500 word correspondences, suffixes
and phonology.
In his comparisons of Dravidian with the Nostratic phyla, Koskinen found more correspondences
to exist between Indo-European and Dravidian with respect to the other phyla, and also by
correspondence of the vowels Dravidian is nearer to Indo-Euraopean than to Uralic and Altaic. His
research showed there were sound laws to describe the correspondences of Dravidian with Nostratic.
With Proto-Dravidian having no sibilant, he ascertained that Dravidian c - , - c - correspond to
Indo-Euraopean, Altaic s - , - s- and to Uralic and Hamito-Semitic sibilants.
He found regular correspondence between Dravidian - r - (- t -) and Indo-Euraopean – d - /- dh -,
while Indo-Euraopean - t - corresponds to Dravidian - t - /- ṭ - . This combined with the fact of the
exact correspondence of Indo-Euraopean - d - / - dh - and Altaic - d - (?- -) with Uralic - δ - /- δʹ -
for him point against the glottalization theory to Indo-Euraopean (-)d- having been a voiced stop, not
a glottalized (-) tʼ - .
Koskinen concluded that on the basis of his presented phonological correspondences (the sound
laws) Dravidian probably goes back to the same linguistic community as Indo-European, Uralic,
Altaic and Hamito-Semitic (Dravidian in the Light of Nostratic, p. 95).
Basic Works:
1980 NILAL - Über die Urverwandtschaft des hamito-semitischen, indogermanischen,
uralischen, und altischen, J. F. Ólan OY, Tampere, Finland.
1996 Dravidian in the Light of Nostratic, Tampere, Finland.

51
NILAL Phonological Laws, Koskinen, 1979
Afroasiatic (Ham.-Sem.) Indo-European Uralic Altaic NILAL
k-/ q- k- k- k- *k
k-/ q- g(h)- k- k- *k
ḥ-/ ḫ- k k- k- *k
- -) g(h)- k- g *g-
Semitic: ḥ- gh- g *g
g(h)- (k-) g- *g
ḥ-/ ḫ g- k- k-
g(h)- k
(Ham.), Sem. ḥ- k
Sem. ḫ- k-
ḥ-/ḫ g-/gh-
s-/ š- (z-/ ṣ-) s-/ (st-) s-/ ś-/ š- s- *s-
t- (ṭ-) t- t- (č-/ ć-) t- (č-) *t-
(Sem. ṯ- -) t- t- (č-/ć-) t- (č-) *t-
d- (ḏ-) d(h)- t- (č-/ć-) d-/dž- *d-
-) d(h)- t- (č-/ć-) d-/dž- *d-
p- (Ham. auch f-) p- p- p- *p-
(specially Sem.) b- p- p- p- *p-
b- b(h)- p- b- *b-
m- m- m- m- *m-
n- n- n- n- *n-
l- l- l- n- *l-
r- r- r- nicht belegt; ?n- *r-
w- - -) w- ü-/u-(ū-)/
u-/ō-/?o- j- vor u-, o-, ö-( )/ *w-
ō- (?ü-) haltigen ?o-/j-
Vokal; ü-/u-/?o- vor einem
Vokal
-k- *-k-
-g(h)- -g-/ ŋ *-k-
(NILAL: *-g-) (in Alt. *-k-/ *-g-)
-dh-/ (-d-) -d- *-t-
-t- ?-t-/-č- *-t-
-d-(-δ-)/ -dh- -δ-/ -δ'- d- *-d-
?-t- ?-δ-/?-δ'- ?-t- *-d-
Semitic: -b- -p-/?(*-b->-w-) *-m- *-b- - - -)
-r- -l- -l- *-l- *-l-

52
NILAL LANGUAGES SUPERCLAN
URALIC LANGUAGES ALTAIC LANGUAGES
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES
AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES

53
Panu Hakola (1932- )
In 1989, Hakola demonstrated that lexical similarities of basal vocabulary in representatives of
five major („agglutinative“) language families, Dravidian, Uralic, Altaic, Japanese-Korean and
Andean are much higher than can be explained by chance. Hakola began his data collection
independently only to find his work lies in complete agreement with the Nostratic of Illich-Svitych
and the Moscow School and nearly with that Bomhard of the USA School. In addition it is precisely
corroborated by the genetics research of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza.
H. P. A. Hakola followed up with the presentation of his DURALJAN Hypothesis in “1000
DURALJAN Etyma”, in the year 2000, published by the University of Kuopio, Finland.
DURALJAN is an acronym (D – Dravidian, Ur – Uralic, Al – Altaic, J – Japanese-Korean, An –
Andean) with which Hakola proposed a hypothetical superfamily. Along with a presentation of 1000
sets of cognates and re-constructions of words of Proto-DURALJAN, Hakola provided sound
correspondences, surveys of the morphology of the DURALJAN languages, of the comparative
linguistic studies in these families and the Nostratic macro-family, including studies in archaeology,
genetics and some humanities such as musicology. Hakola considered DURALJAN as an
intermediate branch within the linguistic pedigree, situated at a level between the Nostratic or
Eurasiatic macrofamilies and the individual families. The time indicated through several meanings in
the cognate sets lies between the Upper Palaeolithic and the Chalcolithic era.
The studies of Hakola on DURALJAN languages represent a continuation of the Moscow School
Nostratic studies towards Amerind. Hakola encourages long-range linguists:

54
„Forge yourself from steel of theory tools, not fetters! “ (1111 DURALJAN Etyma, p. 11)
In 2003 the co-work of Hodjjat Assadian and Panu Hakola led to the addition of Sumerian to the
Proto-DURALJAN lexicon, coining the SUDURALJAN hypothesis, and the publication of the
evidence.
The Schematic Tree of the DURALJAN Superfamily
Dravidian Uralic Altaic Japanese-Korean Andean-Equatorial
Panu Hakola discovered the rare genetic Nasu-Hakola Disease. He is inventor of Carbamazepine
in Schizophrenia. For over 40 years Prof. Hakola has been following through on Soviet and American
Nostratic studies in relation to his Proto-DURALJAN hypothesis in linguistics.
Bibliography - Some of Hakola’s Works:
1984 Are the Agglutinative Languages Genetically Related? Lang. Sc. 4/11: 367-394.
1997 DURALJAN Vocabulary. Lexical Similarities in the Major Agglutinative Languages. Kuopio University.
2000 1000 DURALJAN Etyma. An Extended Study in Lexical Similarities in the Major Agglutinative Languages.
Kuopio University.
2003 (with H. Assadian), Sumerian and Proto-DURALJAN, A Lexical Comparison Concerning the
SUDURALJAN Hypothesis. Kuopio University.
2006 DURALJAN Hypothesis, Towards the Mother Tongue of Man, University of Kuopio.
2009 Lexical Affinities between Tamil and Finnish, A Contribution to Nostratic Studies from the Angle of Close
Genetic Affinities between the Dravidian and Uralic Language Families. University of Kuopio.
2011 Lexical Affinities between Tamil and Finnish, a Supplement, University of Eastern Finland, (Kuopio).

55
DURALJAN LANGUAGES SUPERCLAN
URALIC LANGUAGES ALTAIC LANGUAGES
DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES AMERIND LANGUAGES
NOSTRATIC LANGUAGES

56
2- USA SCHOOL
Joseph H. Greenberg (1915 – 2001)
In the Unites States of America, Morris Swadesh founded work which was precisely carried
forward by Joseph Greenberg, and which finally led to the appearance of the Proto-Eurasiatic
doctrine.
One of the pioneers in the development of the USA school of comparative linguistics, Joseph
Greenberg's work in the early stages focused on statistics, numbers and quantities. He managed the
long trek concentrating on discovering language universals through mass multilateral comparisons,
meeting with sharp but not obliterating opposition.
Joseph Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1915. He obtained elementary Hebrew
education at an early age, but his interest drove him to continue its study on his own. He studied
Latin and German in High School while on his own he studied the parallel-text editions of Sophocles
plays and the Oxford dictionary etymologies in order to learn Classical Greek.
Greenberg got used to teaching himself, studying Classical Arabic while he took Latin and
Greek at Columbia University beginning in 1932. He signed up for Akkadian, and various Slavic
languages, finally launching into comparative linguistics in his junior year and anthropology in his
senior year. He audited a class on American Indian languages taught by Franz Boas after which he
immersed himself in the grammars in this professor’s Handbook of American Indian Languages
(Boas, 1911, 1922).

57
Greenberg followed his anthropology professor's suggestion and went for his Ph.D. at
Northwestern University. After learning Hausa doing fieldwork in Nigeria, he completed his
dissertation on the influence of Islam on one of the few remaining Hausa groups not converted to
Islam.
Herskovits, Greenberg's professor and Africanist at Northwestern University, had encouraged his
protegé Greenberg to continue at Yale University. During 1937-1938 he studied there under
anthropologists Leslie Spier and Robert Lowie, and linguists Edgar Sturtevant and Franklin Edgerton.
Edward Sapir was his favorite, but he never met him before he died in 1940.
At this time comparative linguistics in the USA was limited to Indo-European language studies.
Yale was also where Greenberg came into touch with American structuralism, auditing courses
with Bernard Bloch, George L. Trager and Benjamin Lee Whorf (all structuralists).
Greenberg also met one who was considered in many places (except for Yale) to be the founder of
American structuralist linguistics, Leonard Bloomfield, who introduced Greenberg to logical
positivism through his suggestion of reading Rudolf Carnap.
Greenberg was drafted into the Army in 1940, taking with him Alfred North Whitehead and
Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica. Greenberg published axiomatisations of kinship systems
and phonology. Here we see Greenberg weathering through the mathematical influence.
His Army work involved being code breaker, deciphering German and Italian codes during WWII,
first in Casablanca, later in Italy, where he learned Italian by the end of the war.
In 1946 Greenberg found work at the University of Minnesota and in 1948 he transferred to the
Columbia anthropology department.
The Linguistic Circle of New York had been founded by newly arrived from Europe structuralists,
Roman Jakobson and André Martinet. Therefore Greenberg knew of the structuralism of the Prague
School and then also of Nicolas Trubetzkoy's work on markedness.
In 1948 Greenberg first published his genetic classification of the languages of Africa in American
Anthropologist, following up with the complete classification serialized and published in the
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology in 1949-1950. Instead of the five families of Newman (1995),
ie., Semitic, Hamitic, Sudanic, Bantu and Bushman, Greenberg made his classification into 16
families based on two principles.
The principle of exclusion of typological features from genetic classification arose for him
because formal properties (phonological or grammatical patterns) or semantic patterns of meaning are
likely to diffuse, are too small in number, and may very probably result from independent
convergence, so they cannot act as indicators of genetic descent. Rather it is the arbitrary coincidence
of form and meaning in morphology and lexicon that provides the best evidence for genetic
classification. Later on in his career Greenberg focused on typology.

58
The second principle for Greenberg was the exclusion of nonlinguistic evidence from the
establishment of linguistic genetic families. All the previously accepted classifications of African
languages, or at least those known in the United States at that time, involved typo-logical features
(such as the presence or absence of gender) or nonlinguistic factors, especially what was still called
“race”.
As Greenberg's classifications were published, the British and German Africanists defended their
typological and non-linguistic classifications, and in order to explain their non-acceptance of
Greenberg's work, the Americanists and Indo-Europeanists relied on the argument that only
reconstruction of the protolanguage would "suffice" to prove a genetic classification of languages.
In 1950 Greenberg published the article "The Patterning of Root Morphemes in Semitic" in which
he examined 3775 Arabic triliteral roots along with roots in other Semitic languages. He came up
with a number of constraints on the occurrence of phonemes and phonological features running across
Semitic root consonants.
From 1950 to 1954 he became coeditor of Word, the Linguistic Circle of New York journal. It
was during these years of co-work with Morris Swadesh that he began writing on American
Indigenous languages; evidence is the article "Jicaque as a Hokan Language" [published in the
International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol_19, No_3 (Jul_, 1953), authors: Joseph H.
Greenberg and Morris Swadesh. Here in the p. 220 footnote we have the reference to the article by
Morris Swadesh on Lexico-Statistic Dating of Prehistoric Ethnic Contacts, APS-P 96.452-63 (1952)].
Morris Swadesh (1909-1967) Vitaly Shevoroshkin (1932-)

59
TANGENT
Prof. Morris Swadesh was born in Massachusetts and died in Mexico. He was one of the many
pressured to leave their teaching posts in the United States during the era of McCarthyism while his
work, then refuted and boycotted by neo-Kantian linguistic bands, finally reemerged after his death
through the efforts of Prof. Vitaly Shevoroshkin and Prof. Joseph Greenberg. He was one of the
founders of the International Association of Linguistics.
His book The Origin and Diversification of Language was published in 1971. Swadesh’s final
pronouncement based on the view he had gained through his lifelong work was in support of the
monogenesis of language. In Swadesh’s view, “all the languages of the world have a common
origin, they are genetically related and have come to form a connected network which extends
throughout Europe and also from Africa until Oceania and America”.
Vitaly Shevoroshkin (1932- ) was born in Georgia. He was already publishing linguistic articles
in the early 1961’s. He reached the United States from the USSR during the 1971’s. Illich-Svitych’s
Nostratic scientific linguistics was made known to the Occident by efforts of Shevoroshkin. In the
1981’s, he organized the First International Interdisciplinary Symposium on Language and Prehistory
at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he is still professor. This event brought together 46
scholars from all over the world and intensified international cooperation in research. In addition to
his own writings, Sheveroshkin edited the symposium materials, some of which were published from
1989 on, such as: Reconstructing Languages and Cultures, Explorations in Language Macrofamilies,
Proto-Languages and Proto-Cultures, Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages, Nostratic, Dene-Caucasian,
Austric and Amerind. Prof. Shevoroshkin is a leader in the study of paleolinguistics (Proto-World).
END OF TANGENT
At this time in the USA, linguistics was just beginning to develop as an independent field, so
Greenberg actively broke the ground for the establishment of scientific linguistics; those working on
historical linguistics were philologists, and then there were those linguists who worked on exotic
languages because of the needs of studies in anthropology.
When first turning towards the languages of the Americas, Greenberg grouped the South
American languages into seven families. In Australia he identified one widespread family equivalent
to Pama-Nyungan which he called General Australian, alongside many small families of languages.
Some of the results of his studies were published in an article in 1953, “Historical Linguistics and
Unwritten Languages ”.

61
It was in response to criticisms at this point that he managed the formulation of his third and final
principle of genetic classification, that of mass comparison, which he later called multilateral
comparison. This consists in the simultaneous comparison of the full range of languages and their
forms for the area under study.
In 1955 Greenberg reprinted his African classification to include this time only 12 rather than 16
families.
According to his own description of his advancing steps, the idea of looking at all 12 families of
Africa together occurred to him in early 1959 as he was walking to Columbia University. Thereafter
his classification of African languages was to include just four families, Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-
Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan (1963).
Joe Greenberg’s main questioning directed towards the structuralists was on their lack of attention
to meaning in language, use of language, and their complete separation of that which is synchronic
from the diachronic.
1953 was the year of the interdisciplinary seminar on linguistics and psychology, organized by the
Social Science Research Council. Here Greenberg’s task was to present the state of the art of
linguistics, ie., the very scientific methodology of American structuralism which was causing him all
the questioning! Charles Osgood, a psychologist, mentioned to him that if something true of all
languages were presented, that would be interesting to psychologists. He said later that "this remark
brought home to me the realization that all of contemporary American linguistics consisted of
elaborate but essentially descriptive precedures". He thereafter turned to work on universals in
language. However, this was to yield a publication only 4 years down the line.
Up to that point, work on universals had focused on differences rather than similarities. His next
publication in 1954 involved synchronic theory and the refinement and quantification of Sapir's
typology. Only in 1957 did he publish his first paper on language universals (Essays in Linguistics).
In the last essay in this collection, he established the basic principle that universals must represent
generalizations over historically independent cases of the phenomenon to be studied. He also made
the link between language universals and typological classification. He noted here that the focus of
the search for universals must be on the distribution of types found in languages. Universals that are
interesting are to be found in constraints on crosslinguistic variation rather than in crosslinguistic
uniformity. As such they require an account of the functional, social and psychological factors
underlying all language behavior (1957, p. 86). Here with this statement of a functionalist approach
to language, Greenberg was invited to Stanford's Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences by the psychologist Osgood the following year, where Thomas Kuhn was busy writing The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Q. E. Quine, Word and Object.

61
In 1961 Greenberg presented “Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order
of meaningful elements” first at the Dobbs Ferry conference, and then in 1962, he presented the same
paper at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists at MIT. [Noam Chomsky also presented his
ideas at this conference for the first time for an international audience.] It is in this paper that
universals are presented as implicational universals and biconditional universals. He established here
the basic methodology which became known as the typological approach to grammar.
The drama on the American linguistics scene was played by Chomsky on one hand arguing for
focus on syntax as opposed to just phonology and morphology, while at the same time arguing that
there indeed are significant language universals to be discovered, however that they lie in the “deep
structure” and its transformations into surface structure.
This means that at nearly the same time, Chomsky and Greenberg presented opposing theories on
universals of grammar – on what they are, whether or not to focus on syntax, and how they are to be
discovered and explained. These later came to be known as the Chomskyan and the Greenbergian
approaches to language universals, and more broadly categorized as the formalist and the functionalist
approaches to language, although the functionalist approach actually embraces a broader range of
theories.
In 1962 Greenberg moved to Stanford University which only had a committee on linguistics at
that time. This meant that he had very few graduate students. It was up to him to establish a
department of linguistics at Stanford and this he did in 1973. He received a grant for research on
language universals. The grant did lead to a series of 20 Working Papers in Language Universals and
the Universals of Human Language (Greenberg et al., 1978). Greenberg continuously researched and
realized that the constraints found in synchronic typology should be reanalyzed as diachronic
typology. He demonstrated this in “Some Methods of Dynamic Comparison in Linguistics” (1969)
and more generally in “Rethinking Linguistics Diachronically” (1979).
Ever after Greenberg argued that the prerequisite for synchronic and diachronic typological
research is that genetic classification of languages be established.
Therefore, although Greenberg worked on universals through the 71’s, his interest in mass
comparison hadn’t waned, and he proceeded to publish on Indo-Pacific languages (the New Guinea
Papuan, languages of the Andaman Islands and Tasmania excluding the Australian Aboriginal
languages).
“The Indo-Pacific Hypothesis” (1971, I) was Greenberg's first new work on the classification of
languages outside Africa. The material he gathered between 1960 and 1970 included all the material
published on the Indo-Pacific languages up to then and some unpublished material also. He arranged
the data into 12 notebooks, each including 60-80 languages with up to 350 lexical entries for each
language. Grammatical comparisons filled three other notebooks. He also prepared similar

62
vocabularies for 50 Austronesian languages to check for borrowings. Here he divided the 14
previously found subgroups from 1958 into smaller sub-subgroups, proposed internal groupings of the
14 subgroups, and that the Austronesian languages resulted from a more recent migration.
This endeavor was at the time largely ignored. He then worked on through the Amerind, Na-Dene
and Eskimo-Aleut language groups, published in 1987 as Language in the Americas, one year after
retiring from Stanford. Here he presented lexical and grammatical evidence for 11 subgroups of
Amerind and for Amerind itself. Eskimo-Aleut had already been accepted, so for the Na-Dene family
that Sapir had worked on, he presented a response to an attack. In this response he defends his
method, scrutinises the comparative method, and suggests that all languages of the world may form a
valid genetic unit.
The work met with ongoing critiques. He replied, (1) demonstration of an empirical scientific
hypothesis requires a quantitative probabilistic argument (2) his method and a demonstrated probable
classification necessarily precedes reconstruction (3) his method of linguistic genetic classification
was the same in the Americas as what he had accomplished on Africa (4) other hypotheses were not
supported by other sciences.
Greenberg contributed to the linguistic debates, responding, commenting and reviewing, all the
while consistently maintaining his position on his genetic classifications, repeating patiently that a
quantitative probabilistic argument is what is required in a proof of a scientific hypothesis.
His method necessarily precedes reconstruction he pointed out. [The thorough discussion of his
method can be found in several papers directly preceding his last book (Greenberg 1996, 2000b).]
In order to again have an idea of proceedings for the book Language in the Americas, over 30
years Greenberg had collected data assembled in 23 notebooks covering around 80 languages in
each, with up to 400 lexical entries for each language. Then there were 6 notebooks full of
grammatical comparisons.
Greenberg’s Amerind hypothesis gained the support of physical anthropology and genetics
findings, as the studies of Stephen Zegura and Christy Turner which independently led to
hypothesizing a three-migration pattern into the Americas based on dentition and genetic evidence
(three papers published together 1986).
In 1988 Greenberg's findings were corroborated by the genetic findings of Luigi Luca Cavalli-
Sforza (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1988), who claimed his findings on genetic groupings of humans largely
follow the lines of Greenberg's classification of languages.
Greenberg continually insisted that linguistic classification be established on linguistic evidence
alone. Multilateral comparisons necessarily mark the way by which one gathering masses of data
can look at the array and note how the genetic groupings are likely to fall. Then the languages

The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics

The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Semelhante a The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics

Semelhante a The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics (20)

Último

Último (20)

The Untaught Latest Horizon in Historical Comparative Linguistics