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Indo-Uralic is a controversial hypothetical
language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
consisting of
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, Du ...
and
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
. 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 Danish linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintsev in 1889. Early life and ...
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. 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 l ...
, Holger Pedersen,
Björn Collinder Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder (22 July 1894 – 20 May 1983) was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University. Biography Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden on 22 July 1894. After gaining a ...
,
Warren Cowgill Warren 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. Cowgill was unusual among Indo-Europ ...
,
Jochem Schindler Jochem "Joki" Schindler (8 November 1944 in Amstetten, Lower Austria – 24 December 1994 in Prague) was an Austrian Indo-Europeanist. In spite of his comparatively thin bibliography, he made important contributions, in particular to the theory of ...
,
Eugene Helimski Eugene Arnoľdovič Helimski (sometimes also spelled Eugene Khelimski, Russian: Евге́ний Арно́льдович Хели́мский; 15 March 1950 in Odessa, USSR – 25 December 2007 in Hamburg, Germany) was a Soviet and Russian l ...
, Frederik Kortlandt and
Alwin Kloekhorst Alwin Kloekhorst (born in Smilde, 1978) is a Dutch linguist, Indo-Europeanist and Hittitologist. Biography Kloekhorst received his Ph.D. in 2007 at Leiden University for his thesis on Hittite. In over 1200 pages, his dissertation describes t ...
).


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, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central A ...
, and the
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
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 the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Ca ...
, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean 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 bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1).
Allan Bomhard Allan R. Bomhard (born 1943) is an American linguistics, linguist. Born in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York, he was educated at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hunter College, and the City University of New York, and served in the U.S. Arm ...
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 Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
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 Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ...
share a more recent common ancestor with each other than either of them do with
Proto-Samoyedic Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets ( Tundra and Forest), Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of ...
. If valid, this would mean the traditional conception of the Uralic family (with Indo-European excluded) is a
paraphyletic In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In ...
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 Nikolai Karl Adolf Anderson (24 September (6 October) 1845 in Kulina, Estonia – 9 (22) March 1905 in Narva, Estonia) was a Baltic German philologist who specialized in comparative linguistics of Finno-Ugric languages. Life Anderson was bo ...
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 l ...
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 Johannes (''Hannes'') Evelinus Sköld (20 September 1886 – 14 September 1930) was a Swedish socialist and anti-militarist. Sköld was also a linguist, a writer and a poet. He also wrote songs. Johannes Sköld was born in Heby. Large parts of ...
1927.
Björn Collinder Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder (22 July 1894 – 20 May 1983) was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University. Biography Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden on 22 July 1894. After gaining a ...
, 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 Alwin Kloekhorst (born in Smilde, 1978) is a Dutch linguist, Indo-Europeanist and Hittitologist. Biography Kloekhorst received his Ph.D. in 2007 at Leiden University for his thesis on Hittite. In over 1200 pages, his dissertation describes t ...
, 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, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European langua ...
(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 c ...
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 late
Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, and ...
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 "" hypothesis linking the
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, Du ...
,
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
, 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 Sorin Paliga (born Viorel-Sorin Paliga on June 21, 1956 in Braniștea, Dâmbovița County, Romania) is a Romanian linguist and politician. He is a university professor at the University of Bucharest. As a politician, he was the former mayor of ...
(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 Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
(1986b). Perhaps the best-known critique of recent times is that of
Jorma Koivulehto Jorma Juhani Koivulehto (; 12 October 1934 in Tampere – 23 August 2014 in Helsinki) was a Finnish people, Finnish philology, philologist. At University of Helsinki, he was adjunct professor from 1973 to 1983, and later full professor of German ...
, 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 mostly all 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 did not initially stand in direct geographical proximity, as both proto-languages lack cognates with each other in early stages. According to them, a relationship between Uralic and Indo-European is unlikely and note that "''whether based on cognacy or loans the argument from lexical resemblances is flawed''". They furthermore note that "''the morphosyntactic typology of 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''". The spread of Uralic languages westwards may be in part due to the
Seima-Turbino phenomenon The Seima-Turbino phenomenon is a pattern of burial sites with similar bronze artifacts dated to ca. 2300-1700 BC (2017 dated from 2100 BC to 1900 BC, 2007 dated to 1650 BC onwards) found across northern Eurasia, particularly Siberia and Cent ...
, although no direct link between them can be made. Cultural technology of proto-Uralic can be described as "Neolithic", as it included pottery but no vocabulary food production. Note that in this context, “Neolithic” refers to Soviet terminology: this was associated with pottery rather than food production.


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 In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization. Arabic A characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Lev ...
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. Similarities have long been noted between the verb conjugation systems of Uralic languages (e.g. that of
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
) 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 a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, Russian, and Lithuanian). Although it would not be uncommon for a language to borrow heavily from the
vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the ...
of another language (as in the cases of
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
from
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, Persian from
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, and
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...
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 Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
. But even then, similar suspicious parallels have been noted between Hungarian and Armenian verb conjugation.) Given that the morphemes involved are short and the comparisons generally concern only a single phoneme, the probability of accidental resemblances seems uncomfortably high. 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 ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...
*''śata'' "hundred". The Proto-Indo-European form of this word was *''ḱm̥tóm'' (compare Latin ''centum''), which became *''ćatám'' in early Indo-Iranian (reanalyzed as the neuter nominative–accusative singular of an ''a'' stem > Sanskrit ''śatá-'', Avestan ''sata-''). 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, formed by the Caspian steppe and the Pontic steppe, is the steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) to the northern area around the Caspian Sea. It extend ...
s around 2100–1800 BC, the approximate
floruit ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they 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 indicatin ...
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 pa ...
) and that Uralic speakers may have been established in the
Pit-Comb Ware culture The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterised by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE. The bearers of the Comb Ceramic cultur ...
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 ''*porḱos'', attested by such forms as Latin ''porcus'' "hog",
Old English Old English (, ), 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 was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
''fearh'' (> English ''farrow'' "young pig"), Lithuanian ''par̃šas'' "piglet, castrated boar", and
Saka The Saka ( Old Persian: ; Kharoṣṭhī: ; Ancient Egyptian: , ; , old , mod. , ), Shaka (Sanskrit ( Brāhmī): , , ; Sanskrit (Devanāgarī): , ), or Sacae (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples who histo ...
''pāsa'' (< ''*pārsa'') "pig". In the Indo-European word, *''-os'' (> 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. (Further details on ''*porćas'' are given in the Appendix.) One of the most famous borrowings is the Finnish word '' kuningas'' "king" (<
Proto-Finnic Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is it ...
''*kuningas''), which was borrowed from
Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...
'' *kuningaz''. Finnish has been very
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
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 Eng ...
singular
case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
marker reconstructed for Proto-Germanic masculine 'a'-stems. Furthermore, the Proto-Germanic ''*-az'' ending corresponds exactly to the ''*-os'' ending reconstructable for
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
masculine ''o''-stems. Thus, *''śata'' cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of its
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, 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 more complex number system and the domestic pig from the more advanced Indo-Europeans to 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", ''*gʷou-'' (compare English ''cow'') and "grain", ''*bʰars-'' (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, they should show agreements in 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 *' (or *') : Proto-Indo-European *', oblique stem *', both meaning 'water', and Proto-Uralic *' (or *') : Proto-Indo-European *', both meaning 'name'. In contrast to *' and *', the phonology of these words shows no sound changes from Indo-European daughter languages such as Indo-Iranian. In contrast to *' and *', 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 and Proto-Germanic, it is more the rule than the exception that only the stem is borrowed, without any case-endings.
Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
''*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 ''*(H)nmen-'' as attested in later Balto-Slavic ''*inmen-'' and Proto-Celtic ''*anmen-''.
Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
''*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. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
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 and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Eng ...
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 potential cognates 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 ''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World'' is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the or ...
.'' 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. * 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 Finno-Ugrian Society (french: Société Finno-Ougrienne, fi, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura) is a Finnish learned society, dedicated to the study of Uralic and Altaic languages. It was founded in Helsinki in 1883 by the proposal of professor Otto ...
. * 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. * 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'). ''Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 67:308–325. * Sköld, Hannes. 1927. "Indo-uralisch." ''Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen'' 18:216-231.


See also

*
Eurasiatic languages 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 pro ...
*
Indo-Semitic languages The Indo-Semitic hypothesis maintains that a genetic relationship exists between Indo-European and Semitic and that the Indo-European and the Semitic language families descend from a prehistoric language ancestral to them both. The theory has ne ...
*
Laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, th ...
* Nostratic languages *
Ural–Altaic languages Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share ...
* Uralic–Yukaghir languages *
Uralo-Siberian languages Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...


References


External links

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