Editing Nostratic languages (section)

==History of research==

===Origin of the Nostratic hypothesis===
The last quarter of the 19th century saw various linguists putting forward proposals linking the [[Indo-European languages]] to other language families, such as [[Finno-Ugric languages|Finno-Ugric]] and [[Altaic languages|Altaic]].<ref>[[Henry Sweet|Sweet]] 1900: vii, 112–132.</ref>

These proposals were taken much further in 1903 when [[Holger Pedersen (linguist)|Holger Pedersen]] proposed "Nostratic", a common ancestor for the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]], [[Finno-Ugric languages|Finno-Ugric]], [[Samoyedic languages|Samoyed]], [[Turkish language|Turkish]], [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]], [[Manchu language|Manchu]], [[Yukaghir languages|Yukaghir]], [[Eskimo–Aleut languages|Eskimo]], [[Semitic languages|Semitic]], and [[Afroasiatic languages|Hamitic]] languages, with the door left open to the eventual inclusion of others.

The name ''Nostratic'' derives from the [[Latin]] word ''nostrās'', meaning 'our fellow-countryman' (plural: ''nostrates'') and has been defined, since Pedersen, as consisting of those language families that are related to Indo-European.<ref>Pedersen as cited by Ruhlen, 1991: 384.</ref> [[Merritt Ruhlen]] notes that this definition is not properly taxonomic but amorphous, since there are broader and narrower degrees of relatedness, and moreover, some linguists who broadly accept the concept (such as Greenberg and Ruhlen himself) have criticised the name as reflecting the [[ethnocentrism]] frequent among Europeans at the time.<ref>Ruhlen 1991: 384-5.</ref> [[Martin Bernal]] has described the term as distasteful because it implies that speakers of other language families are excluded from academic discussion.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bernal|author-link=Martin Bernal|title=[[Black Athena]]|chapter=Nostratic and Euroasiatic|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yFLm_M_OdK4C|year=1987|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn= 0-8135-3655-3}}</ref> However, some people like Pedersen's older contemporary [[Henry Sweet]] attributed some of the resistance by Indo-European specialists to hypotheses of wider genetic relationships as "prejudice against dethroning [Indo-European] from its proud isolation and affiliating it to the languages of yellow races".<ref>Sweet (1900), ''The History of Language'', cit in Ruhlen 1991: 381-2.</ref> Proposed alternative names such as ''Mitian'', formed from the characteristic Nostratic first- and second-person pronouns ''mi'' 'I' and ''ti'' 'you' (more accurately '[[thee]]'),<ref>Ruhlen 1991:259.</ref> have not attained the same currency.

An early supporter was the French linguist [[Albert Cuny]]—better known for his role in the development of the [[laryngeal theory]]<ref>Szemerényi 1996:124.</ref>—who published his ''Recherches sur le vocalisme, le consonantisme et la formation des racines en « nostratique », ancêtre de l'indo-européen et du chamito-sémitique'' ('Researches on the Vocalism, Consonantism, and Formation of Roots in "Nostratic", Ancestor of Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic') in 1943. Although Cuny enjoyed a high reputation as a linguist, the work was coldly received.

===Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics===
{{main|Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics}}
[[File:NostraticLanguageTree.png|thumb|273x273px|More detailed tree of the Nostratic languages]]
While Pedersen's Nostratic hypothesis did not make much headway in the West, it became quite popular in the [[Soviet Union]]. Working independently at first, [[Vladislav Illich-Svitych]] and [[Aharon Dolgopolsky]] elaborated the first version of the contemporary form of the hypothesis during the 1960s. They expanded it to include additional language families. Illich-Svitych also prepared the first dictionary of the hypothetical language. Dolgopolsky's most recent ''Nostratic Dictionary'' was published in 2008, and is considered the most up-to-date attempt at a Nostratic lexicon.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/196512|title=Nostratic Dictionary|first=Aharon|last=Dolgopolsky|date=May 7, 2008|isbn=9781902937441|via=www.repository.cam.ac.uk}}</ref>

A principal source for the items in Illich-Svitych's dictionary was the earlier work of [[Alfredo Trombetti]] (1866–1929), an Italian linguist who had developed a classification scheme for all the world's languages, widely reviled at the time<ref>Cf. Trombetti’s defense against his critics in ''Come si fa la critica di un libro'' (1907).</ref> and subsequently ignored by almost all linguists. In Trombetti's time, a widely held view on classifying languages was that similarity in inflections is the surest proof of [[Genetic relationship (linguistics)|genetic relationship]]. In the interim, the view had taken hold that the [[comparative method]]—previously used as a means of studying languages already known to be related and without any thought of classification<ref>Cf. Greenberg 2005:159. See also Saussure's remarks on Franz Bopp, the founder of comparative linguistics, after Saussure has described the discovery of Indo-European by Cœurdoux and William Jones: "Bopp's originality is great. His merit is not to have discovered the kinship of Sanskrit with other European languages, but to have conceived that there was a subject for study in the precise relations of one related language to another related language." (From course notes by R. Engler, quoted by Tullio De Mauro in his critical edition of Ferdinand de Saussure, ''Cours de linguistique générale'', Paris: Payot, 1972, p. 412; cp. ''Cours'' p. 14.)</ref>—is the most effective means to establish genetic relationship, eventually hardening into the conviction that it is the only legitimate means to do so. This view was basic to the outlook of the new Nostraticists. Although Illich-Svitych adopted many of Trombetti's etymologies, he sought to validate them by a systematic comparison of the sound systems of the languages concerned.