Nostratic languages

Nostra table refers to a hypothetical macro family Eurasian and African languages. The term was coined by Holger Pedersen in 1903 and derives from the Latin nostras, " from our country home " here. In the early 1960s, the idea of the Russian nostra tables Vladislav Illich - linguists Svitych and Aaron Dolgopolsky was resumed and provided intensive language comparisons with concrete content.

The nostra tables macro Family

The exact composition of nostra matic macro family varies from author to author, but the common core component is Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartwelisch. Furthermore, it is usually reckoned to the Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic.

The nostra tables macro family to Dolgopolsky 1998

• Nostra table Indo-European
• Ural- Jukagirisch
• Mongolian
• Tungusisch
• Korean
• Japanese

Origin and modern revival

The nostra tables, it was hypothesized in the early 20th century by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen after affinities of Indo-European had been on the one hand, on the other hand believed to Semitic to the Uralic and Altaic before. Heinrich Koppelmann hit 1933 Eurasian language family front, which should include not only the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic also Niwchische ( Giljakische ), Ainu and Sumerian. He likened mainly Indo-European and Korean, but graduated from Japanese.

These hypotheses, however, remained largely unnoticed until they were revived in the 1960s by Vladislav Illich - Svitych and Aaron Dolgopolsky. Illich - Svitych summarized Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Kartwelisch, Uralic Nostra table ( with Jukagirisch ), Dravidian and Altaic to the new unit together. This was confirmed by Dolgopolsky substantially. However, he finished the Dravidian, first; the Altaic he replaced by its subgroups Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic. Later, the Tschuktscho - Kamtschadalische (1972 ), Eskimo - Aleut (1984) and Niwchische was trying to add. These approaches have not been able general acceptance among the sufferers Nostra. A recent tendency is to look at the Afro-Asiatic no longer as a subgroup of Nostra tables, but rather as its peer parallel branch.

Basic idea and problem

The Indo-European hypothesis has been very successful in the 19th century, it sought to linguists, the method by which you had opened the Indo-European proto-language to repeat in other language groups. So were large language families, similar to the Indo-European, demonstrated ( eg Uralic, Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic ). We then examined the question of whether the family tree even further could be traced back to the past and the original languages ​​of individual language families are related to each other again.

There are two aspects distinguish, on the one hand the potential fact of a relationship and the other, the possibility of this relationship, given the long period of separation from a common proto-language ( when Nostra tables at least 10,000 years ) still demonstrated.

However, the evidence for such distant relationships are sparse and partly doubtful. So other sound laws are about Allan R. Bomhard be accepted by Aharon Dolgopolsky, which leads to different word equations and detrimental to the confidence in the tables nostra hypothesis. From most linguists nostra tables hypothesis is therefore not accepted; they believe it is unrealistic to more than 10,000 years to reconstruct past linguistic affinities.

Relationship to the Eurasian macro Family

A partially competing hypothesis as Joseph Greenberg in the form of the Eurasian macro family. This covers in particular the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic ( " Euraltaischen ") with the Nostra tables, but excludes the Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and Kartwelische. Today - after including the Tschuktscho - Kamchadal, Niwchischen and Eskimo - Aleut into Nostra tables - see many Nostra sufferers in the Eurasian Greenberg's a subunit of Nostra tables, such as Allan Bomhard:

• Nostra table Eurasia table Indo-European, Uralic - Jukagirisch, Altaic, Korean -Japanese- Ainu, Niwchisch, Tschuktscho -K., Eskimo - Aleut

Example of a nostra matic word equation

The following is a word equation was cited as an example of Dolgopolsky 1998 abridged and simplified phonetic notation. As nostra tables No. 34 * tap- root is " hit a target " treated. To this end, the following parallels:

• Indo-European * top " hit on something; Place where you sat arrived " > Greek tópos " place " top -azo " targets out, guess guess "; Latvian pa - Tapt " attain unto " lithuanian pri - Tapti " meet, learn "
• " Access to information, learn " Afro-Asiatic * tbb > Syrian tab " get information ", similar to Arabic.
• Uralic * tap " find " > Finnish tapaan " find, meet "
• Altaic * t'ap " hit a target " Turkish * tupa " reach an agreement "
• Mongolian * taba " advise, solve a mystery "

Even this one example shows the whole issue nostra matic word equations, since you obviously have to work with wide fields of meaning and generous phonetic match to find appropriate parallels. It is not unlikely that a variant of the suspected root * tap with a similar meaning in the many hundreds of languages ​​of the sub-groups of Nostra tables can be found.