Indo-Uralic languages
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Indo-Uralic is a controversial linguistic
hypothesis A hypothesis (: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess o ...
proposing a genealogical family consisting of
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
and Uralic. The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist
Vilhelm Thomsen Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Denmark, Danish linguistics, linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintse ...
in 1869 (Pedersen 1931:336), though an even earlier version was proposed by Finnish linguist Daniel Europaeus in 1853 and 1863. Both were received with little enthusiasm. Since then, the predominant opinion in the linguistic community has remained that the evidence for such a relationship is insufficient to confirm a genetic relationship versus similarity due to
language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...
. However, quite a few prominent linguists have always taken the contrary view (e.g.
Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...
, Holger Pedersen, Björn Collinder,
Warren Cowgill Warren Crawford Cowgill ( ; December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics. Two separate Indo-Europea ...
, Jochem Schindler, Eugene Helimski, Frederik Kortlandt and Alwin Kloekhorst). The Indo-Uralic hypothesis has been questioned by recent linguistic data, contradicting previous argued
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...
s, finding no support for a genealogical relationship between Uralic and Indo-European.


Geography of the proposed Indo-Uralic family

The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the
Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...
, and the
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the
Northwest Caucasian languages The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian ...
, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...
where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in ''Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis'' (1996). Alternatively, the common protolanguage may have been located north of the Black Sea, with Proto-Uralic moving northwards with the climatic improvement of post-glacial times. Expanding upon his earlier hypothesis, Kortlandt (2021) proposes that Proto-Indo-European, rather than being a sister of Proto-Uralic, is a daughter of Proto-Uralic, and that Indo-European is a branch of the Uralic family. More specifically, he proposes that Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Finno-Ugric share a more recent common ancestor with each other than either of them do with Proto-Samoyedic. If valid, this would mean the traditional conception of the Uralic family (with Indo-European excluded) is a
paraphyletic Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...
clade.


History of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis

An authoritative if brief and sketchy history of early Indo-Uralic studies can be found in Holger Pedersen's ''Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century'' (1931:336-338). Although Vilhelm Thomsen first raised the possibility of a connection between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in 1869 (336), "he did not pursue the subject very far" (337). The next important statement in this area was that of Nikolai Anderson in 1879. However, Pedersen reports, the value of Anderson’s work was "impaired by its many errors" (337). The English phonetician
Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...
argued for kinship between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in his semi-popular book ''The History of Language'' in 1900 (see especially Sweet 1900:112-121). Sweet's treatment awakened " eat interest" in the question, but "his space was too limited to permit of actual proof" (Pedersen 1931:337). A somewhat longer study by K. B. Wiklund appeared in 1906 and another by Heikki Paasonen in 1908 (i.e. 1907) (ib.). Pedersen considered that these two studies sufficed to settle the question and that, after them, "it seems unnecessary to doubt the relationship further" (ib.). Sweet considered the relationship to be securely established, stating (1900:120; "Aryan" = Indo-European, "Ugrian" = Finno-Ugric): The short name "Indo-Uralic" (German ''Indo-Uralisch'') for the hypothesis was first introduced by Hannes Sköld 1927. Björn Collinder, author of the ''Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages'' (1960), a standard work in the field of Uralic studies, argued for the kinship of Uralic and Indo-European (1934, 1954, 1965). Alwin Kloekhorst, author of the ''Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon'', endorses the Indo-Uralic grouping (2008b). He argues that, when features differ between the
Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...
(including Hittite) and the other Indo-European languages, comparisons with Uralic can help to establish which group has the more archaic forms (2008b: 88) and that, conversely, the success of such comparisons helps to establish the Indo-Uralic thesis (2008b: 94). For example, in Anatolian the nominative singular of the second person pronoun comes from *''ti(H)'', whereas in the non-Anatolian languages it comes from *''tu(H)''; in Proto-Uralic it was *''ti'', which agrees with evidence from
internal reconstruction Internal reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier state in a language's history using only language-internal evidence of the language in question. The comparative method compares variations between languages, such as in sets of co ...
that Anatolian has the more archaic form (2008b: 93). The most extensive attempt to establish sound correspondences between Indo-European and Uralic to date is that of the
Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
n linguist Bojan Čop. It was published as a series of articles in various academic journals from 1970 to 1989 under the collective title ''Indouralica''. The topics to be covered by each article were sketched out at the beginning of "Indouralica II". Of the projected 18 articles only 11 appeared. These articles have not been collected into a single volume and thereby remain difficult to access. In the 1980s, Russian linguist (Nikolai Dmitrievich Andreev) proposed a "
Borean languages Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical (i.e. proposed) linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. It is considered a ...
" hypothesis linking the
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
, Uralic, and Altaic (including Korean in his later papers) language families. Andreev also proposed 203 lexical roots for his hypothesized Boreal macrofamily. After Andreev's death in 1997, the Boreal hypothesis was further expanded by Sorin Paliga (2003, 2007).Paliga, Sorin (2003)
N. D. Andreev’s Proto-Boreal Theory and Its Implications in Understanding the Central-East and Southeast European Ethnogenesis: Slavic, Baltic and Thracian
''Romanoslavica'' 38: 93–104. Papers and articles for the 13th International Congress of Slavicists, Ljubljana, August 15–21, 2003.


Sound correspondences

Among the sound correspondences which Čop did assert were (1972:162): *Uralic ''m n l r'' = Indo-European ''m n l r''. *Uralic ''j w'' = Indo-European ''i̯ u̯''. *Uralic sibilants (presumably ''s š ś'') = Indo-European ''s''. *Uralic word-initial voiceless stops (presumably ''p t č ć k'') = Indo-European word-initial voiced aspirates (presumably '' '') and voiceless stops (presumably ''p t k ''), also Indo-European ''s'' followed by one of these stops. *Uralic ''ŋ'' = Indo-European ''g'' and ''ng''.


History of opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis

The history of early opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis does not appear to have been written. It is clear from the statements of supporters such as Sweet that they were facing considerable opposition and that the general climate of opinion was against them, except perhaps in Scandinavia. Károly Rédei, editor of the etymological dictionary of the Uralic languages (1986a), rejected the idea of a genetic relationship between Uralic and Indo-European, arguing that the lexical items shared by Uralic and Indo-European were due to borrowing from Indo-European into Proto-Uralic (1986b). Perhaps the best-known critique of recent times is that of Jorma Koivulehto, issued in a series of carefully formulated articles. Koivulehto's central contention, agreeing with Rédei's views, is that all of the lexical items claimed to be Indo-Uralic can be explained as loans from Indo-European into Uralic (see below for examples). The linguists Christian Carpelan, Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio suggest that early Indo-European and Uralic stand in early contact and suggest that any similarities between them are explained through early language contact and borrowings. According to Angela Marcantonio (2014) and Johan Schalin a genetic relation between Uralic and Indo-European is very unlikely and most similarities are explained through borrowings and chance resemblances. Marcantonio argued that the fundamental typological differences between Uralic and Indo-European are so much, that a relationship is unlikely. In 2022, a group of scholars concluded that Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European do not share a genealogical relationship with each other, as "whether based on cognacy or loans the argument from lexical resemblances is flawed". According to them, "Uralic is distinctive in western Eurasia. A number of typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim". Previously proposed cognates can be largely explained via borrowings from
Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages) constitute the largest branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers ...
. They concluded in regards to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis that "of what we take to be the two statistically soundest recent quantitative tests, Kessler and Lehtonen (2006), using a 100-item Swadesh-like wordlist, found no evidence for Indo-Uralic".


Linguistic similarities


Morphological

The most common arguments in favour of a relationship between Indo-European and Uralic are based on seemingly common elements of morphology, such as the pronominal roots (''*m-'' for first person; ''*t-'' for second person; ''*i-'' for third person), case markings (accusative ''*-m''; ablative/partitive ''*-ta''), interrogative/relative pronouns (''*kʷ-'' "who?, which?"; ''*y-'' "who, which" to signal relative clauses) and a common SOV word order. Other, less obvious correspondences are suggested, such as the Indo-European plural marker ''*-es'' (or ''*-s'' in the accusative plural ''*'') and its Uralic counterpart ''*-t''. This same word-final assibilation of ''*-t'' to ''*-s'' may also be present in Indo-European second-person singular ''*-s'' in comparison with Uralic second-person singular ''*-t''. Compare, within Indo-European itself, ''*-s'' second-person singular injunctive, ''*-si'' second-person singular present indicative, ''*-tHa'' second-person singular perfect, ''*-te'' second-person plural present indicative, ''*tu'' "you" (singular) nominative, ''*tei'' "to you" (singular) enclitic pronoun. These forms suggest that the underlying second-person marker in Indo-European may be ''*t'' and that the ''*u'' found in forms such as ''*tu'' was originally an affixal particle or merely analogical. An Indo-European marginal locative ''*-en'' compares in function the most closely with the Uralic locative ''*-na'', in form with the Uralic genitive ''*-n'', which has inspired suggestions of a single Indo-Uralic ''*n''-case with later development into multiple case forms in both families (Pedersen 1933) Similarities have long been noted between the verb conjugation systems of Uralic languages (e.g. that of Finnish) and Indo-European languages (e.g. those of
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, Russian, and Lithuanian). Although it would not be uncommon for a language to borrow heavily from the
vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...
of another language (as in the cases of English from French, Persian from
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, and Korean from Chinese), it would be extremely unusual for a language to borrow its basic system of verb conjugation from another. Supporters of the existence of Indo-Uralic have thus used morphological arguments to support the Indo-Uralic thesis by, for example, arguing that Finnish verb conjugations and pronouns are much more closely related to Indo-European than they would be expected to be by chance; and since borrowing basic grammar is rare, that this would suggest a common origin with Indo-European. (Finnish is preferred for this argument over Saami or Hungarian because it seems to be more conservative, i.e. to have diverged less than the others have from Proto-Uralic. But even then, similar suspicious parallels have been noted between Hungarian and
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...
verb conjugation.) However, the strongly divergent sound systems of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are an aggravating factor both in the morphological and the lexical realm, making it additionally difficult to judge resemblances and interpret them as either borrowings, possible cognates or chance resemblances.


Lexical

A second type of evidence advanced in favor of an Indo-Uralic family is lexical. Numerous words in Indo-European and Uralic resemble each other (see list below). The problem is to distinguish between cognates and borrowings. Uralic languages have been in contact with a succession of Indo-European languages for millennia. As a result, many words have been borrowed between them, most often from Indo-European languages into Uralic ones. An example of a Uralic word that cannot be original is
Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic languages, Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in ...
*''śata'' "hundred". The Proto-Indo-European form of this word was (compare Latin ), which became in early Indo-Iranian (reanalyzed as the neuter nominative–accusative singular of an ''a'' stem > Sanskrit , Avestan ). This is evidence that the word was borrowed into Finno-Ugric from Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. This borrowing may have occurred in the region north of the
Pontic–Caspian steppe The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is a steppe extending across Eastern Europe to Central Asia, formed by the Caspian and Pontic steppes. It stretches from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the ''Pontus Euxinus'' of antiquity) to the northern a ...
s around 2100–1800 BC, the approximate
floruit ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
of Indo-Iranian (Anthony 2007:371–411). It provides linguistic evidence for the geographical location of these languages around that time, agreeing with archeological evidence that Indo-European speakers were present in the Pontic-Caspian steppes by around 4500 BCE (the
Kurgan hypothesis The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and part ...
) and that Uralic speakers may have been established in the Pit-Comb Ware culture to their north in the fifth millennium BCE (Carpelan & Parpola 2001:79). Another ancient borrowing is Finno-Ugric ''*porćas'' "piglet". This word corresponds closely in form to the Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as , attested by such forms as Latin "hog",
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
(> English ''farrow'' "young pig"), Lithuanian "piglet, castrated boar", and
Saka The Saka, Old Chinese, old , Pinyin, mod. , ), Shaka (Sanskrit (Brāhmī): , , ; Sanskrit (Devanāgarī): , ), or Sacae (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples, Eastern Iranian peoples who lived in the Eurasian ...
''pāsa'' (< ''*pārsa'') "pig". In the Indo-European word, (> Finno-Ugric *''-as'') is a masculine nominative singular ending, but it is quite meaningless in Uralic languages. This shows that the whole word was borrowed as a unit and is not part of the original Uralic vocabulary. One of the most famous borrowings is the Finnish word "king" (<
Proto-Finnic Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish language, Finnish and Estonian language, Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been linguisti ...
''*kuningas''), which was borrowed from
Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...
. Finnish has been very
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
in retaining the basic structure of the borrowed word, nearly preserving the
nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...
singular
case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...
marker reconstructed for Proto-Germanic masculine 'a'-stems. Furthermore, the Proto-Germanic ending corresponds exactly to the ending reconstructable for
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
masculine ''o''-stems. Thus, *''śata'' cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of its
phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
, while *''porćas'' and *''kuningas'' cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of their morphology. Such words as those for "hundred", "pig", and "king" have something in common: they represent "cultural vocabulary" as opposed to "basic vocabulary". They are likely to have been acquired along with a novel number system and the domestic pig from Indo-Europeans in the south. Similarly, the Indo-Europeans themselves had acquired such words and cultural items from peoples to their south or west, including possibly their words for "ox", (compare English ''cow'') and "grain", (compare English ''barley''). In contrast, basic vocabulary – words such as "me", "hand", "water", and "be" – is much less readily borrowed between languages. If Indo-European and Uralic are genetically related, there should be agreements regarding basic vocabulary, with more agreements if they are closely related, fewer if they are less closely related. Advocates of a genetic relation between Indo-European and Uralic maintain that the borrowings can be filtered out by application of phonological and morphological analysis and that a core of vocabulary common to Indo-European and Uralic remains. As examples they advance such comparisons as Proto-Uralic *''weti-'' (or *''wete-'') : Proto-Indo-European *', oblique stem *', both meaning 'water', and Proto-Uralic *''nimi-'' (or *''nime-'') : Proto-Indo-European *', both meaning 'name'. In contrast to *''śata'' and *''kuningas'', the phonology of these words shows no sound changes from Indo-European daughter languages such as Indo-Iranian. In contrast to *''kuningas'' and *''porćas'', they show no morphological affixes from Indo-European that are absent in Uralic. According to advocates of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis, the resulting core of common vocabulary can only be explained by the hypothesis of common origin.


Objections to this interpretation

It has been countered that nothing prevents this common vocabulary from having been borrowed from Proto-Indo-European into Proto-Uralic. For the old loans, as well as uncontroversial ones from
Proto-Baltic Proto-Baltic (PB, PBl, Common Baltic) is the Attested language, unattested, Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all Baltic languages. It is not attested in writing, but has been partly reconstructed through the com ...
and Proto-Germanic, it is more the rule than the exception that only the stem is borrowed, without any case-endings. Proto-Uralic ''*nimi-'' has been explained according to sound laws governing substitutions in borrowings (Koivulehto 1999), on the assumption that the original was a zero-grade oblique stem PIE as attested in later Balto-Slavic ''*inmen-'' and Proto-Celtic ''*anmen-''. Proto-Uralic ''*weti-'' could be a loan from the PIE oblique ''e''-grade form for 'water' or from an indirectly attested cognate root noun ''*wed-''. Proto-Uralic ''*toHį-'' 'give' and PFU ''*wetä-'' 'lead' also make perfect phonologic sense as borrowings. The number systems of Indo-European and Uralic show no commonalities. Moreover, while the numbers in all Indo-European languages can be traced back to reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
numbers, this cannot be done for the Uralic numbers, where only "two" and "five" are common to all of the family (roots for 3-6 are common to all subgroups other than Samoyedic, and slightly less widespread roots are known for 1 and 10). This would appear to show that if Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are to be related, the connection must lie so far back that the families developed their number systems independently and did not inherit them from their purported common ancestor. Although, the fact that Uralic languages themselves do not share the same numbers across all Uralic branches indicates that they would not with Indo-European languages in any case, even if they were in fact related. It is also objected that some or all of the common vocabulary items claimed are
false cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds or spelling and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For exampl ...
s – words whose resemblance is merely coincidental, like English ''bad'' and Persian (''bad'').


Some possible cognates

1Some researchers have interpreted Proto-Uralic ''*wete'' as a borrowing from Indo-European that may have replaced a native Proto-Uralic synonym ''*śäčä'' everywhere but in some of the northern fringes of the family (most prominently Proto-Samic ''*čācē''). 2 This word belongs to the ''r'' and ''n'' stems, a small group of neuter nouns, from an archaic stratum of Indo-European, that alternate ''-er'' (or ''-or'') in the nominative and accusative with ''-en'' in the other cases. Some languages have leveled the paradigm to one or the other, e.g. English to the ''r'', Old Norse to the ''n'' form. 3 Indo-Europeanists are divided on whether to reconstruct this word as ''*nom(e)n-'' or as ''*'', with a preceding "laryngeal". See Delamarre 2003:50 for a summary of views, with references. The ''o'' timbre of the root is assured by, among others, Greek ''ónoma'' and Latin ''nōmen'' (with secondary vowel lengthening). As roots with inherent ''o'' are uncommon in Indo-European, most roots having ''e'' as their vowel, the underlying root is probably ''*nem-''. The ''-(e)n'' is an affixal particle. Whether the ''e'' placed in parentheses is inherently part of the word is disputed but probable. 4 The ''ḷ'' in Indo-European ''*pḷlu-'' represents a vocalic ''l'', a sound found in English in for instance ''little'', where it corresponds to the ''-le'', and ''metal'', where it corresponds to the ''-al''. An earlier form of the Indo-European word was probably ''*pelu-''. The following resemblance sets are from Aikio (2019).


Bibliography


Works cited

* Anderson, Nikolai. 1879
''Studien zur Vergleichung der ugrofinnischen und indogermanischen Sprachen''
('Studies on the Comparison of the Ugro-Finnic and Indo-Germanic Languages'). Dorpat: Heinrich Laakmann. Reprint: . * Anthony, David W. 2007. '' The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press. * Bomhard, Allan R. 1996. ''Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis.'' Charleston, South Carolina: Signum. * Carpelan, Christian and Asko Parpola. 2001. "Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Aryan." In ''The Earliest Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and Archeological Considerations'', edited by C. Carpelan, A. Parpola, and P. Koskikallio. ''Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 242. Helsinki. * Collinder, Björn. 1934. ''Indo-uralisches Sprachgut'' ('The Indo-Uralic Linguistic Heritage'). Uppsala. * Collinder, Björn. 1954. "Zur indo-uralischen Frage" ('On the Indo-Uralic question'), ''Språkvetenskapliga Sällskapets i Uppsala Förhandlingar'' Jan. 1952 – Dec. 1954, 79–91. * Collinder, Björn. 1960. ''Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages.'' Stockholm: Almqvist & Viksell. * Collinder, Björn. 1965. "Is the Uralic family isolated?" in ''An Introduction to the Uralic Languages'', pages 30–34. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Čop, Bojan. 1970–1989. ''Indouralica.'' **I.1974. ''Slovenska Akademija Znanosti in Umetnosti'' 30.1. **II. 1972. ''Ural-Altaische Jährbucher'' 44:162–178. **III. (Not published.) **IV. 1973. ''Linguistica'' 13:116–190. **V. 1978. ''Collectanea Indoeuropaea'' 1:145–196. Ljubljana. **VI. (Not published.) **VII. 1970. ''Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung'' (KZ) 84:151–174. **VIII. 1974. ''Acta linguistica Academiae scientarum hungaricae'' 24:87–116. **IX. 1989. ''Linguistica'' 29:13–56. **X. (Not published.) **XI.( Not published.) **XII. 1987. ''Linguistica'' 27:135–161. **XIII. (Not published.) **XIV. 1970. ''Orbis'' 19.2:282–323. **XV. 1974. ''Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung'' (KZ) 88:41–58. **XVI. 1973. ''Orbis'' 22:5–42. **XVII. (Not published.) **XVIII. (Not published.) * Delamarre, Xavier. 2003. ''Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise.'' Paris: Editions errance. * Dolgopolsky, Aharon. 1988. "The Indo-European homeland and lexical contacts of Proto-Indo-European with other languages." ''Mediterranean Language Review'' 3:7–31. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. * Fortescue, Michael. 1998. ''Language Relations across Bering Strait.'' London and New York: Cassell. * Greenberg, Joseph. 2000–2002. ''Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family'', 2 volumes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. * Greenberg, Joseph. 2005. ''Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method'', edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Kloekhorst, Alwin. 2008a. ''Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon.'' Leiden: Brill. * Kloekhorst, Alwin. 2008b
"Some Indo-Uralic aspects of Hittite."
''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' 36, 88-95. * Koivulehto, Jorma. 1999. "Verba mutuata. Quae vestigia antiquissimi cum Germanis aliisque Indo-Europaeis contactus in linguis Fennicis reliquerint" (in German). ''Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 237. Helsinki. * Kortlandt, Frederik. 1989
"Eight Indo-Uralic verbs?"
''Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft'' 50:79–85. * Kortlandt, Frederik. 2002
"The Indo-Uralic Verb."
In ''Finno-Ugrians and Indo-Europeans: Linguistic and Literary Contacts: Proceedings of the Symposium at the University of Groningen, November 22–24, 2001'', 217–227. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing. (Also
HTML version
) * Kortlandt, Frederik. 2021
"The dissolution of the Eurasiatic macrofamily."
Web. * Lewis, Henry and Holger Pedersen. 1989. ''A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar.'' Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. * Paasonen, Heikki. 1907. "Zur Frage von der Urverwandschaft der finnisch-ugrischen und indoeuropäischen Sprachen" ('On the question of the original relationship of the Finnish-Ugric and Indo-European languages'). ''Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen'' 7:13–31. * Pedersen, Holger. 1931. ''Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century: Methods and Results,'' translated from the Danish by John Webster Spargo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. * Pedersen, Holger. 1933. "Zur Frage nach der Urverwandschaft des Indoeuropäischen mit dem Ugrofinnischen" ('On the question concerning the original relationship of Indo-European with Ugrofinnic')
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308–325. * Rédei, Károly (editor). 1986a. ''Uralisches etymologisches Wörterbuch'', 3 volumes, translated from Hungarian by Mária Káldor. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. * Rédei, Károly. 1986b. "Zu den indogermanisch-uralischen Sprachkontakten." ''Sitzungberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse'' 468. *Sweet, Henry. 1900. ''The History of Language''. London: J.M. Dent & Co. (Reprinted 1901, 1995, 2007.) (1995) (2007) * Thomsen, Vilhelm. 1869. ''Den gotiske sprogklasses indflydelse på den finske.'' København. (Doctoral thesis, University of Copenhagen.) * Thomsen, Vilhelm. 1870. ''Über den Einfluss der germanischen Sprachen auf die finnisch-lappischen'' ('On the Influence of the Germanic Languages on Finnish-Lappish'), translated by Eduard Sievers. Halle. (German translation of the previous.) (Reprint: London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1997.) (1997) * Wiklund, Karl Bernard. 1906. "Finnisch-Ugrisch und Indogermanisch" ('Finnish-Ugric and Indo-Germanic'). ''Le monde oriental'' 1:43–65. Uppsala.


Further reading

* Campbell, Lyle. "Indo-European and Uralic Tree Names". In: ''Diachronica'', Volume 7, Issue 2, Jan 1990, pp. 149-180. . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.7.2.02cam * Hyllested, Adam. 2010
"Internal reconstruction vs. external comparison: The case of the Indo-Uralic laryngeals."
In ''Internal Reconstruction in Indo-European'', edited by Jens Elmegård Rasmussen and Thomas Olander, 111-136. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. * Joki, Aulis J. 1973. ''Uralier und Indogermanen''. ''Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne'' 151. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. * Jolkesky, Marcelo. 2004. ''Uralisches Substrat im Deutsch – oder gibt es eigentlich die indo-uralische Sprachfamilie?'' Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. * Koivulehto, Jorma. 1991. "Uralische Evidenz für die Laryngaltheorie." In ''Veröffentlichungen der Komission für Linguistik und Kommunikationsforschung'' 24. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. * Koivulehto, Jorma. 2001. "The earliest contacts between Indo-European and Uralic speakers in the light of lexical loans." In ''The Earliest Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and Archeological Considerations'', edited by C. Carpelan, A. Parpola, and P. Koskikallio. ''Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 242. Helsinki. * Mithen, Steven. 2003. ''After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000 – 5000 BC.'' Orion Publishing Co. * Sköld, Hannes. 1927. "Indo-uralisch." ''Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen'' 18:216-231.


See also

*
Eurasiatic languages Eurasiatic is a hypothetical and controversial language macrofamily proposal 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 ...
* Indo-Semitic languages *
Laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in historical linguistics positing that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language included a number of laryngeal consonants that are not linguistic reconstruction, reconstructable by direct application of the com ...
*
Nostratic languages Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia first proposed in 1903. Though a historically important proposal, it is now generally considered a fringe theory. Its exact composition ...
*
Ural–Altaic languages Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic, Uraltaic, or Turanic is a linguistic convergence zone and abandoned language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is now generally agreed that even the Altaic langua ...
* Uralic–Yukaghir languages * Uralo-Siberian languages


References


External links

* *(2004) {{DEFAULTSORT:Indo-Uralic Languages Proposed language families Indo-European languages Indo-European linguistics Uralic languages