Pontic is a proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

macrofamily A macrofamily (also called a superfamily or superphylum) is a term often used in historical linguistics to refer to a hypothetical higher order grouping of languages. Metonymically, the term became associated with the practice of trying to group ...

, comprising 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. ...

and Northwest Caucasian language families, with Proto-Pontic being its reconstructed

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

History of the proposal

The internal reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language done by

Émile Benveniste Émile Benveniste (; 27 May 1902 – 3 October 1976) was a French Structuralism, structural linguistics, linguist and semiotics, semiotician. He is best known for his work on Indo-European languages and his critical reformulation of the linguist ...

and Winfred P. Lehmann has set

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 ...

(PIE) typologically quite apart from its daughters. In 1960, Aert Kuipers noticed the parallels between a Northwest Caucasian language, Kabardian, and PIE. It was Paul Friedrich in 1964, however, who first suggested that PIE might be

phylogenetically In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data ...

related to Proto-Caucasian. In 1981,

John Colarusso John Colarusso is a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages. Since 1976, he has taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Colarusso has published more than sixty-five articles on linguistics, myths, politics, and the Caucasus; he ...

examined typological parallels involving consonantism, focusing on the so-called

laryngeals Laryngeal may refer to: * Laryngeal consonant, in phonetics * Laryngeal theory of the Proto-Indo-European language * Larynx The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ (anatomy), organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, ...

of PIE and in 1989, he published his reconstruction of Proto-Northwest Caucasian (PNWC). Eight years later, the first results of his comparative work on PNWC and PIE were published in his article ''Proto-Pontic: Phyletic Links Between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Northwest Caucasian'', an event which may be considered the actual beginning of the hypothesis.

Evidence

Examples of similarities that have been noted include: * Nasal negating particles in both families: **

PIE A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), fruit preserves ( jam tart ...

: Germanic , Romance , Slavic . ** NWC: Ubykh , Abkhaz . * A

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 ...

variously named "accusative", "oblique" or "objective", marked with nasal suffixes: **

accusative , reflected e.g. in

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 ...

'moon' (nom.) vs (acc.), or Ancient Greek (, nom.) vs. (, acc.). ** NWC: Ubykh 'well (water source)' ( abs.) vs ( obl.).

References

* * {{Eurasian languages Proposed language families Indo-European linguistics Pre-Indo-European languages Indo-European languages 1997 in science Northwest Caucasian languages