Borean (also Boreal or Boralean)http://ehl.santafe.edu/EhlforWeb.pdf is a hypothetical linguistic

macrofamily In historical linguistics, a macrofamily, also called a superfamily or phylum, is a proposed genetic relationship grouping together language families (also isolates) in a larger scale classification. Campbell, Lyle and Mixco, Mauricio J. (2007), ...

that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with t ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.5 million as ...

, and the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between the ...

. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coi ...

in the millennia following the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...

. The name ''Borean'' is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families native to the

northern hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's North ...

. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...

Fleming's model

The concept is due to Harold C. Fleming (1987), who proposed such a "mega-super-phylum" for the languages of Eurasia, termed ''Borean'' or ''Boreal'' in Fleming (1991) and later publications. In Fleming's model, Borean includes ten different groups: Afrasian (his term for

Afroasiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

), Kartvelian, Dravidian, a group comprising Sumerian,

Elamitic Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...

, and some other extinct languages of the ancient

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

Eurasiatic Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's prop ...

(a proposal of

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

that includes

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

, Uralic,

Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...

, and several other language families), Macro-Caucasian (a proposal of

John Bengtson John D. Bengtson (born 1948) is an American historical and anthropological linguist. He is past president and currently vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and has served as editor (or co-editor) of the jour ...

that includes

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

and

Burushaski Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people in ...

Yeniseian The Yeniseian languages (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak;" Ostyak" is a concept of areal rather than genetic linguistics. In addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages Khanty and Selkup. occasionall ...

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

Na-Dene Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included, but is now considered ...

, and Amerind). Harold C. Fleming, in 2002, argued that there were not a two large super-phyla distinction between a

Nostratic Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and ...

and a Dené–Caucasian taxon among Borean languages, and that the language kinship between its branches is possibly more complex than a

versus a Dené–Caucasian super-phyla. However, in 2013, Harold C. Fleming had changed his view about this issue in a joint article with Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita - "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue (journal), issue XVIII, p. 143-188, 2013, where he argues that

and Dene-Caucasian as language phyla within Borean is a hypothesis that is well grounded and convincing. Fleming writes that his work on Borean is inspired by

's exploration of

, and is oriented towards the concept of "valid taxon". He rejects

, a proposed macrofamily somewhat broader than

, and withholds judgment on Dené–Caucasian, a proposal that would encompass

, and several other language families and isolates. Fleming calls Borean a "phyletic chain" rather than a super-phylum. He notes that his model of Borean is similar to

Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and ma ...

's Vasco-Dene proposal, although he also sees similarities between Vasco-Dene and Dené–Caucasian. He sees Borean as closely associated with the appearance of the

in the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

, Europe, and

western Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...

from 50 thousand to 45 thousand years ago, and observes that it is primarily associated with

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

populations of

Caucasoid The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...

and Northern Mongoloid physical appearance, the exceptions being southern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, southern China, southwestern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the no ...

, northern

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of G ...

, and the Chad Republic. The phylogenetic composition of Borean (noncommital about higher linkages within the whole) according to Fleming, Bengtson, Zegura, Harrod, and Keita (2013) Harold C. Fleming, Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita - "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue (journal), issue XVIII, p. 143-188, 2013 is as follows: * "Borean" (Phyletic Chain) **(1) *** Afrasian (Afroasiatic) **c) (2) (strongly different languages between themselves and aberrant in its relationship to the other Borean phyla and language families) *** Sumerian ***

Elamite Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...

***

Hurro-Urartian The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian. Origins It is often assumed that the Hurro-Urartian languages (or a pre-split Proto-Hurro-Urartian ...

*** Hattian **a) (3) *** Kartvelian **b) (4) *** Dravidian **d) (5) ***

**** Tyrsenian (including Etruscan) ****

**** Uralic ****

Yukaghir The Yukaghirs, or Yukagirs ( (), russian: юкаги́ры) are a Siberian ethnic group people in the Russian Far East, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. Geographic distribution The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region ...

****

Eskimo–Aleut The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

**** Chukotko-Kamchatkan ( Chukotian) ****

***** Turkic ***** Mongolic ***** Tungusic **** Koreanic ****

Japonic Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and ...

**** Gilyak ( Nivkh) ****

Ainu Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East * Ainu languages, a family of languages **Ainu language of Hokkaido **Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **Sakhalin Ainu l ...

(?) (tentative inclusion) **e) (6) *** Vasco-Caucasic ( Vasco-Caucasian) (based on a

proposal) **** North Caucasian *****

Northeast Caucasian The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as i ...

***** Northwest Caucasian ****

**f) (7) ***

***

**g) (8) ***

**h) (9) ***

**i) (10) *** Amerind (outlined by Joseph Greenberg) (a valid taxon with large contrasts among sub-taxa) *

Austric The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as the Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Southeast Asi ...

(not included in Borean) (Fleming et al. are not sure if it is or not more closely related to Borean, that is, if Borean and Austric have an Austric-Borean common ancestor or if Austric is not closer to Borean than to other major language super-phyla) **

Austro-Tai The Austro-Tai languages, sometimes also Austro-Thai languages, are a proposed language family that comprises the Austronesian languages and the Kra–Dai languages. Related proposals include Austric ( Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906) and Sino-Austron ...

*** Austronesian *** Kra-Dai ( Tai-Kadai, Daic) ** Hmong-Mien ( Miao-Yao) **

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

(?)

Starostin's model

As envisaged by

(2002), Borean is divided into two groups, Nostratic (''sensu lato'', consisting of

and

) and Dene–Daic, the latter consisting of the Dené–Caucasian and

macrofamilies. Starostin tentatively dates the Borean proto-language to the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 16 thousand years ago. Starostin's model of Borean would thus include most languages of

, as well as the Afroasiatic languages of North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the

and the Na-Dene languages of the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...

Ilia Peiros Ilia Peiros (full name: Ilia Iosifovich Peiros, Илья Иосифович Пейрос; born 1948) is a Russian linguist who specializes in the historical linguistics of East Asia. Peiros is a well-known scholar in the Moscow School of Comparat ...

, and

Georgiy Starostin Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin (russian: Гео́ргий Серге́евич Ста́ростин; born 4 July 1976) is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1953–2005), and his ...

maintain that the comparative method has provided strong evidence for some linguistic superfamilies ( Dené-Caucasian and

), but not so far for others (

and

). Their view is that since some of these families have not yet been reconstructed and others still require improvement, it is impossible to apply the strict comparative method to even older and larger groups. However, they consider this only a technical rather than a theoretical problem, and reject the idea that linguistic relationships further back in time than 10,000 years before the present cannot be reconstructed, since the "main objects of research in this case are not modern languages, but reconstructed proto-languages which turn out to be more similar to one another than their modern day descendants". They believe that good reconstructions of superfamilies such as Eurasiatic will eventually help in investigating still deeper linguistic relationships. While such 'ultra-deep' relationships can currently be discussed only on a speculative level, they maintain that the numerous morphemic similarities between language families of Eurasia, many of which Sergei Starostin compiled into a special database that he later supplemented by his own findings, are unlikely to be due to chance, making it possible to formulate a Borean super-superfamily hypothesis. They have also suggested possible links between 'Borean' and other families. In their view comparisons with 'Borean' data suggest that

Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in ...

cannot be included within it but that more distant connections on an even deeper level might be possible, that how the African superfamilies Niger–Congo,

East Sudanic In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania. N ...

Central Sudanic Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nigeria and ...

and Kordofanian are related to Borean remains to be investigated, that the situation with the native languages of the Americas remains unresolved, and that while there are some lexical similarities between Borean and the

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands ‒ corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia. Trans–New Guinea is the third-la ...

, these remain too scarce to establish a firm connection. They comment that while preliminary data indicates possible connections between Borean and some superfamilies from Africa, the Americas, and the Indo-Pacific region further research is needed to determine whether these additional superfamilies are related to Borean or unidentified branches of it.
Murray Gell-Mann et al. (2009) "Distant Language Relationship: The Current Perspective", ''Journal of Language Relationship·Вопросы языкового родства'' Gell-Mann ''et al.'' note that their proposed model of Borean differs significantly from that of Fleming. Sergei Starostin died prematurely in 2005 and his hypothesis remains in a preliminary form, with much of the material he collected available online. The phylogenetic composition of Borean according to Starostin is as follows: * "Borean" **

(speculative, Holger Pedersen (linguist), Holger Pedersen 1903) *** Indo-Uralic (speculative,

2000) ****

(widely recognized family) ****

(widely rejected;

Roy Andrew Miller Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altaic ...

1971,

Gustaf John Ramstedt Gustaf John Ramstedt (October 22, 1873 – November 25, 1950) was a Finnish diplomat, orientalist and linguist. He was also an early Finnish Esperantist, and chairman of the Esperanto-Association of Finland. Biography Ramstedt was born in Eken ...

1952,

Matthias Castrén Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castré ...

1844) *****

(widely recognized family) ***** Koreanic (widely recognized family) ***** Turkic (widely recognized family) ***** Tungusic (widely recognized family) ***** Mongolic (widely recognized family) ***** Nivkh (language isolate) *****

(language isolate) **** Uralic (widely recognized family) ****

(language isolate) ***

Paleosiberian Paleosiberian (or Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian (Paleo-Asiatic) (from , "ancient") are several linguistic isolates and small families of languages spoken in parts of northeastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. They are not known ...

(phylogenetic unity widely rejected) ****

(widely recognized family) **** Chukotko-Kamchatkan (widely recognized family) *** Sumerian (language isolate) ***

(language isolate) *** Kartvelian (widely recognized family) *** Dravidian (widely recognized family) ***

(widely recognized family) ** Dene–Daic (speculative, Starostin 2005) *** Dené–Caucasian (speculative, Nikolayev 1991; expanded by Bengtson 1997), cf. Dené–Yeniseian ( Edward Vajda 2008) ****

(widely recognized family) **** Na-Dené (widely recognized family) **** Iberian (language isolate) ****

(language isolate) **** Sino-Caucasian (speculative, Starostin 2006) *****

(widely recognized family) *****

(language isolate) ***** North Caucasian (widely recognized family) ***** Hattic (language isolate) *****

(widely recognized family) ***

(speculative, Wilhelm Schmidt 1906) ****

(speculative, Paul Benedict 1942) ***** Austronesian (widely recognized family) ***** Tai–Kadai (widely recognized family) **** Hmong–Mien (widely recognized family) ****

(widely recognized family)

Jäger (2015)

A computational phylogenetic analysis by Jäger (2015) did not support the Borean macrophylum in its entirety, but provided the following phylogeny of language families in Eurasia:

Other languages

Sumerian

Allan Bomhard argues that Sumerian did not descend from a daughter language of Proto-Nostratic but from a sister language of it. In other words, Sumerian descended from an older common ancestor language with Proto-Nostratic and did not descend directly from it; that is, Sumerian was closer to Nostratic but not a member of it.BOMHARD, Allan. (2018). ''A Comprehensive Introduction to Nostratic Comparative Linguistics'', p. 7

Kartvelian

Bomhard argues that Kartvelian is closer to

than to other language families within

and that the differences are due to the fact that Kartvelian became separated from

at a very early date.

Status of the hypothesis

Linguist Asya Pereltsvaig states in ''Languages of the World: An Introduction'' that both versions of the Borean hypothesis are "controversial and tentative".

Notes

References

*H. C. Fleming, 'A New Taxonomic Hypothesis: Borean or Boralean', ''

Mother Tongue A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

'' 14 (1991). *H. C. Fleming, 'Proto-Gongan Consonant Phonemes: Stage One', in Mukarovsky (ed.) ''FS Reinisch'' (1987), 141-159.

External links

The dictionary of reconstructions
{{Long-range comparative linguistics Proposed language families Upper Paleolithic