Newest Addition to the Indo-European Family: Burushaski

[Herr Dunkel]

The main problem of this is that we have just enough resources on PU to say "Hey this might be done" but not enough to actually show how it might be done.

[WeepingElf]

Then a Proto-Indo-Uralo-Yukaghir, with the three branches splitting off at relatively the same time?

Perhaps. But Eskimo-Aleut also shows strong signs of being related to Uralic (stronger ones than Yukaghir, at any rate), so it must be counted in.

I admit, this is mostly guesswork as I understand shit Russian whilst using a dictionary to translate - I can't really see what gears're inside Yukaghir's machinery.

The grammar of Tundra Yukaghir I referred to is in English, and available here.

Although, if the simmilarity between Yukaghir and Uralic is on the same level as Uralic-IE, what is the level of simmilarity of Yukaghir to IE?

Yukaghir does not look very similar to IE; it seems that IE and Y have veered off into vastly different directions not only geographically but also structurally, while Uralic occupies a middling position. At any rate, IE and Uralic look, what regards their morphology, much more similar to each other than either to Yukaghir.

[Herr Dunkel]

That means that the proponents of Uralo-Yukaghir would also have to include Indo-European there...
Holy crap that's an extremely potent argument.

[TaylorS]

Then a Proto-Indo-Uralo-Yukaghir, with the three branches splitting off at relatively the same time?

Perhaps. But Eskimo-Aleut also shows strong signs of being related to Uralic (stronger ones than Yukaghir, at any rate), so it must be counted in.

I admit, this is mostly guesswork as I understand shit Russian whilst using a dictionary to translate - I can't really see what gears're inside Yukaghir's machinery.

The grammar of Tundra Yukaghir I referred to is in English, and available here.

Although, if the simmilarity between Yukaghir and Uralic is on the same level as Uralic-IE, what is the level of simmilarity of Yukaghir to IE?

Yukaghir does not look very similar to IE; it seems that IE and Y have veered off into vastly different directions not only geographically but also structurally, while Uralic occupies a middling position. At any rate, IE and Uralic look, what regards their morphology, much more similar to each other than either to Yukaghir.

I downloaded that Yukagir grammar for later, I'm currently looking at this site on Chuckchi:

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~spena/Ch ... EPAGE.html

[Tropylium]

Why the hell are you people writing in size whatever font, it hurts my eyes, stop it

Well, *I* was trying to suggest that we should be switching over to the Nostratic-List already, but that didn't seem to work…

The main problem of this is that we have just enough resources on PU to say "Hey this might be done" but not enough to actually show how it might be done.

PU reconstruction has been progressing quite a bit since the beginning of this century, and that includes getting new arguments for or against the various loaning explanations for some vocab similarities. It's still going to be a while before all the data is accounted for, tho…

That means that the proponents of Uralo-Yukaghir would also have to include Indo-European there...
Holy crap that's an extremely potent argument.

As even the Wikipedia article states, there aren't really any proponents of UY in particular — it only ever crops up as a part of various larger proposals (a holdout from the days when everything Northern Eurasian with agglutination, front rounded vowels and a dislike of initial consonant clusters was thought 'Ural-Altaic', I think).

[Herr Dunkel]

I have a pretty interesting idea which's certainly been done:
Every word claimed a loanword from PIE that lacks suffixes is more likely a cognate.

[hwhatting]

I have a pretty interesting idea which's certainly been done:
Every word claimed a loanword from PIE that lacks suffixes is more likely a cognate.

Can you elaborate this argument? I don't understand it.

[Herr Dunkel]

Let's take "*nizdos" as a PIE word example.

It is made up of *n(e)i-*s(e)d-*os. -*os is presumed to be a fossilised postposition by some linguists.
In certain PIE to PU cognates which normally take the -*os in PIE, not one assumed to be a cognate in PU should have the -*os, leading me to believe that the fossilisation happened after the split, and that the suffixless word is actually closer to the form used in PIU.

Now, when the two got back in contact, certain words borrowed from PIE to PU had -*os, and were reflected simmilarly in PU.

Good enough?
I cannot provide literal examples of borrowing, as I don't really have them on me; it's something that I have read.

[hwhatting]

@Elector Dark
OK, I got what you want to say. I think it would depend on the supposed age of the suffix - if a PIE suffix is also reconstructed for a hypothetical Proto-Indo-Uralic and if a PIE suffixed lexeme looks a) old and has b) a PU cognate with the cognate suffix, there is no reason why this suffixed lexeme ought not to be reconstructed for PIU. Now, I don't know enough about which suffixes and morphological developments are reconstructed as being shared between PIE and PU, so I can't say whether something like *ni-sd-o- can or cannot go back to PIU. As o-stems probably belong to a relatively young stratum of suffixes in PIE and the development of prefixes from spatial adverbs is probably also relatively late, I'd assume this word is unlikely to go back to PIU, but I wouldn't be so sure about older formations like consonant stems etc.

[Herr Dunkel]

I gave "nizdos" as an example.

An "-*os" suffix cannot be reconstructed for PIU for one reason alone: only one language has it. The fossilisation happene relatively later than the split. I mean, it is pretty stable - Icelandic retains it to this day, and I believe so does Sanskrit. Slavic languages have a trace of -"o" in them, coming from "-os" ("gn'azo", per example)

No single Uralic language comes close to having a persistent "-o(S)", though I'm not sure about traces.

[hwhatting]

I gave "nizdos" as an example.

I understood that. I also used it that way, to illustrate my approach.

An "-*os" suffix cannot be reconstructed for PIU for one reason alone: only one language has it.

By "one language" you mean "PIE"?

The fossilisation happene relatively later than the split. I mean, it is pretty stable - Icelandic retains it to this day, and I believe so does Sanskrit.

Why do you talk about "retaining" in relation to Icelandic and Sanscrit, but about "traces" in Slavic? All these languages have continuations of this suffix and none of them retains it in the exact form -os; that form is only retained in Greek (to this day), early Celtic, Early Latin, and some sparsely attested extinct European IE languages.

Slavic languages have a trace of -"o" in them, coming from "-os" ("gn'azo", per example)

Actually, Proto-Slavic *gnězdo is a bad example, as the word has become neuter like in Germanic and the origin of Slavic neuter -o is disputed.

No single Uralic language comes close to having a persistent "-o(S)", though I'm not sure about traces.

Well, that's the questions - are there traces? If yes, they may either be old or go back to laoning from PIE. So, again, we first need a model of which suffixes go back to a hypothetical PIU.

[Tropylium]

This argument definitely estabilishes that words like *porćas "pig" have to be loans in Uralic, but the reverse does not hold — absense of a suffix in a a word compareable with IE does not yet mean it cannot be a loan. PU is generally reconstructed with a limited range of root shapes; all basic roots are bisyllabic and end in one of two vowels (open vs. non-open; the phonetic values are quite debated). Any form that's longer tends to get loaned in a simpler form even in the older stages (*-os itself is an exception, being quite frequent in Baltic/Germanic/Iranian loans into Finnic & Samic). We can tell this from certain loan layers that per distributional grounds are unlikely to be IU inheritance: a good example might be *kesä "summer", proposed to be a loan from the heteroclitic *h₁es-er/n- "harvest". The (initial) *k : *H correspondence is limited almost entirely to Finnic words so it probably results from some specific IE (or para-IE) loangiver.

[Herr Dunkel]

Hh, I didn't know about PU root shapes.

Is there any good resource about PU online?

[Echobeats]

Want to be true... but... pop journalism on linguistics... too... shitty...

Does anybody know of a blog post or anything that comments on this? One that isn't run by Mark "roflrofl look at this curious turn of phrase this politician used rofllmao" Liberman and Victor "omg guise somebody mistranslated some chinese somewhere zomgz" Mair?

What's your epithet for Geoff Pullum?

[hwhatting]

There is an article by John D. Bengtson and Václav Blažek in the “Journal of Language Relationship (JLR)” No. 6 (August 2011) in which they look at the evidence presented in Časule’s 2003 JIES article. Bengtson and Blažek dismiss the evidence as not satisfactory and argue for including Burushaski in the putative Dene-Caucasian group. The bigger part of the article is taken up by demonstrating the Burushaski-DC relationship and arguing that there is much more evidence vor the latter than for a Burushaski – IE relationship. As I know almost nothing about both Burushaski and the languages of the DC macrofamily, I cannot really judge the quality of that evidence.
I'll give a short summary of the points Bengtson and Blažek make concerning Časule’s evidence for a Burushaski – IE relationship; judging by what they adduce, the evidence is pretty feeble and Časule’s argumentation is not up to basic comparatistic standards.

Phonology
At first glance Časule’s comparison of IE and Burushaski phonology seems impressive. An ample number of examples is cited, and superficially it seems that Časule (henceforth “Č”) has made a good case for a correspondence between IE and Burushaski phonology. However, on closer examination a number of problems appear.
(a) Some “Bur” words cited for comparison are actually loanwords from Indo-Aryan or Iranian languages Thus, dumáṣ “cloud of dust, smoke, water” (p. 31) is clearly borrowed from Old Indic dhūmáḥ “smoke, vapor, mist” (even the accent is the same); púrme “beforehand, before the time” (p. 34) is isolated in the Bur lexicon and looks like a derivative of OI *purima- > Pali purima- earlier (CDIAL 8286, cf. Eng. former); badá “sole, step, pace” (p. 40) appears to be from OI padám “step, pace, stride” (CDIAL 7747), and perhaps others.
(b) Some comparisons adduced in support of the correspondences are sematically tortuous if not utterly dubious. For example, IE *dheu- “to die, to lose conscience (sic)” ~Bur diú “lynx” (p. 36); IE *h2erĝ-ṇt-om “white (metal), silver” ~Bur hargín “dragon, ogre”, etc.
(c) The proposed correspondences are not consistent and do not form a coherent system. For example, IE ĝ, ĝh are said to correspond to Bur g (voiced velar stop) or ġ (voiced uvular fricative) (p.39), apparently in free variation, but in Bur bérkat “summit, peak, crest; height” (pp. 30, 35) IE ĝ is matched with Bur k (voiceless velar stop), in Bur buqhéni “a type of goat” (p. 31) IE ĝ is matched with Bur qh (aspirated uvular stop or affricate), and in Bur je, já “I” (p. 72) IE ĝh is matched with Bur j [ʒ´ = dź]. IE *kw is said to correspond to Bur (voiceless velar stop) (p. 38), but in Bur –śóġut “the side of the body under the arm, bosom” (p. 30) it is matched with Bur ġ (voiced uvular fricative), while in Bur waq “open the mouth, talk” (p. 38) it is matched with Bur q (voiceless uvular stop). PIE *w becomes Bur w in waq “open the mouth, talk” (p. 38), but b in budóo “rinsing water, water that becomes warm in the sun” (p. 31). For Č the Bur uvulars (q, qh, ġ) are merely variants of the velars and do not form an historical class of their own. (…)
(d) Č totally overlooks (or minimizes) many distinctive features of the Burushaski phonological system. These features include (1) the retroflex stops, (2) the phoneme /y./, the uvular consonants, (3) the tripartite sibilant contrast /ṣ ~ ś ~ s/, and the cluster -lt-, and the t- ~ -lt- alternation (corresponding, we think to Dene-Caucasian lateral affricates).

B&B adduce a table of the Bur. consonant system (p. 27), which is indeed more complex than the PIE system, so any hypothesis would need to explain how we get from the simpler PIE system to the more complicated Bur system. Especially, as Časule seems to derive Bur from Phrygian, a daughter language of PIE – if Časule would assume a Proto-IE-Burushaski (PIB), he could of course postulate the more complicated system for PIB and derive PIE from there. He doesn’t seem to do either.
B&B over the next 16 pages go into the distinctions shown in (d), make some remarks how Časule ignores them and adduce material for showing how well the Bur material fits into a DC reconstruction.

Some extracts from the Morphology part of the article:

Nouns
In the Burushaski nominal system the case endings, as admitted by Č himself, are the same for both singular and plural. Bur therefore has an agglutinative morphology, not the inflected morphology typical of IE. We find the Bur case endings far more compatible with those of Basque and Caucasian, including the compound case endings found in all three families.

Now, in principle it’s possible that a IE language would develop towards an agglutinative morphology – IIRC, Modern Armenian has tendencies in that direction, but there it can be due to the influence of neighboring Caucasian languages. AFAIK, the Indo-Iranian languages in the Burushaski area don’t show such morphology, so it’s more likely that this morphology is inherited than an areal feature, which would argue against an IE origin.
B&B then point out that many Bur nouns are bound forms that can only occur with a possessive prefix – again not an IE feature, but they argue that Yeniseian (a language they include in the DC macrofamily) nouns are similar in this regard and even reconstruct the possessive prefixes 1Sg. (Bur a-, Ket ab-, PDC *aƞa) and 2Sg. (Bur gu-, Ket ug-, PDC *uxGu-). They continue:

This type of construction is totally alien to IE patterns, as is the enormous number of different plural suffixes: about 70, as noted by Č (p. 23). So is the multiple class system of Bur., which is far more similar to class systems in Caucasian and Yeniseian tan to gender in PIE.

B&B then show the Bur personal pronouns for 1st and 2nd person, here indeed the only pronouns resembling IE are the 1st person plural pronouns featuring a stem mi- / me-. They write:

Here we see that the Bur system is suppletive, wit different sets for direct forms and oblique forms, in both first and second person. Č (p. 72) attempts to connect Bur je, já with PIE *H1e ĝ(H)- but he can do so only by violating the sound correspondence discussed above (PIE * ĝ, ĝh = Bur g, ġ)! He further tries to connect Bur un (~ um, uƞ ) (hwhatting: direct form of the 2nd sg.) with PIE tuHxom, emphatic form of tuHx = tū-, but again by requiring another unprecedented change: t > d > 0!

For good measure, they adduce the pronoun systems of the neighbouring IE languages (Dardic, Indo-Aryan, Iranian), which look very different from Bur.

Interrogative pronouns
As stated correctly by Č (p. 74), Bur interrogative pronouns are built on bases containing the labials /m/ and /b/. Č connects the Bur interrogatives with the rare IE interrogation stem *me/o-, attested only in Anatolian, Tocharian, and Celtic.

That actually doesn’t look too bad to me – a feature attested only in these three languages has a good chance of being old.

We must point out, however, that the *mV- interrogative is much more richly attested in DC than in IE, and furthermore the m ~ b alternation is attested in DC, but not in IE:

(Examples from DC follow)

Verb
In the Vern the Bur variance from IE is just as pronounced as in the noun. The “typological similarity” claimed by Č (p.75) is only in regard to vaguely similar systems of aspects and tenses, without any material parallels pointing to common genetic origin. The verbal endings (Č, pp. 75-77) are similar only in that both Bur and IE have endings containing n and m, thogh there are no real correspondences between them. Most striking is the existence of the Bur template verbal morphology with as many as four prefix positions preceding the verb stem.

(Table 14 on p. 48)

It is well known that Proto.IE had few verbal prefixes. The Bur prefixal template is far more compatible with languages such as those of the Yeniseian family, especially the well-documented verbal morphology of Ket, and of the extinct Kott; Basque, Caucasian (especially West Caucasian), and Na-Dene also seem to preserve distinctive features (multiple noun classes, polysysthesis, extensive verbal prefixing of pronominal and valence-changing grammemes) of the postulated Dene-Caucasian proto-language: …

Again, I’m not really able to judge the DC evidence, but even at first glance it looks much more similar to Bur than what Časule seems to adduce for a Burushaski-PIE relationship. At least anyone who judges the DC evidence as too weak would even more have to reject Časule’s hypothesis.

Next B&B look at the numerals. They show the Burushaski system, which doesn’t look much like an IE derived system. Only the number “one” is a possible candidate for an IE link:

Now as to Č’s proposed material correspondences between Bur and IE numerals: the first, comparing PIE H1oi-no-s “one” with Bur hen / hin (class I, II) ~ han (class II, IV) ~ hek / hik (counting form) “one” is almost plausible, except that the form is characteristic of Western IE (Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic), while forms with different suffixes H1oi-ko-s and H1oi-wo-s gave rise to the Indic and Iranian words for “one” shown above.

This looks indeed plausible, and it isn’t unthinkable that an IE language with Western characteristics would show up in NW India. After all, before the discovery of Tocharian, no IE scholar would have assumed that a centum language would be found in the Tarim Basin. But one numeral looking similar could be chance. And the word for “1” seems to be the only plausible candidate among the numerals:

For Bur *alto “two” Č suggests comparison with IE *H2al- “other” + ordinal suffix *-to-, in spite of the fact that this is not an ordinal but a cardinal number, and that the “suffix”-to- appears nowhere else in the Bur numerals.

B&B argue that “Bur /lt/ is a distinctive cluster that can be traced back to PDC lateral affricates” and compare alto to numerals in various DC languages. Whatever the merit of these comparisons, Č’s proposal is certainly weak.

Next, Č attempts to derive Bur altámbo “8” from PIE *oḱtō(u) “8”, “with a change of ak > al under the influence of the Bur numerals for 2 and 4” (p.75) In view of the holistic relationship of the Bur words for 2, 22, and 23, …, it seems unlikely to us that all the other IE numerals would be discarded and only “8” retained, with this odd change.

(Here B&B refer back to an earlier discussion where they showed how the numeral 2, 4, and 8 build on one each other in Burushaski.)

Finally Č (p.75) tries to connect Bur hunti “9” with PIE *H1newṇ “9”, “with dissimilation”, presumably to eliminate the first nasal

.
B&B argue that the numeral can be etymologized internally in Burushaski as “one from ten” and that the Burushaski numeral system has features that link it with DC languages. In any case, IMO it would be strange if Burushaski would have replaced its IE numerals from 3 to 7 and kept 8 and 9; normally, the lower numerals are more stable than the higher ones.
In a final chapter B&B look at the lexicon, showing that almost none of the basic lexicon of Burushaski looks plausibly IE and arguing that many items can be linked to DC. As they don’t refer to any etymological proposals by Časule here, it seems that he hasn’t made any in the area of the basic lexicon, although it is in this area where one needs to look for evidence for genetic relationship, as the basic lexicon is normally the most stable.
In total, from B&B’s argumentation it appears that Č totally ignores the phonological, morphological, and other systems of Burushaski; that he just picks elements that look IE, and even for those needs to assume many ad-hoc phonological developments and far-fetched semantic developments. Some of these might be acceptable if there otherwise were a solid bedrock of systematic relationships – after all, even in clearly IE languages there are phonological irregularities and strange semantic shifts -, but they are not a sufficient fundament to prove a genetic relationship between Bur and IE.

[Bob Johnson]

Want to be true... but... pop journalism on linguistics... too... shitty...

Does anybody know of a blog post or anything that comments on this? One that isn't run by Mark "roflrofl look at this curious turn of phrase this politician used rofllmao" Liberman and Victor "omg guise somebody mistranslated some chinese somewhere zomgz" Mair?

What's your epithet for Geoff Pullum?

is he the "we must declare holy jihad against this guy who claims to like certain ways of speaking more than others and has the audacity to tell people this" one

or is that somebody else

[Ser]

Want to be true... but... pop journalism on linguistics... too... shitty...

Does anybody know of a blog post or anything that comments on this? One that isn't run by Mark "roflrofl look at this curious turn of phrase this politician used rofllmao" Liberman and Victor "omg guise somebody mistranslated some chinese somewhere zomgz" Mair?

What's your epithet for Geoff Pullum?

I asked Xephyr and he said that he had no idea, that he's the only entertaining guy at LanguageLog. I can't help but agree...

is he the "we must declare holy jihad against this guy who claims to like certain ways of speaking more than others and has the audacity to tell people this" one

...exactly because of this.

[Xephyr]

Want to be true... but... pop journalism on linguistics... too... shitty...

Does anybody know of a blog post or anything that comments on this? One that isn't run by Mark "roflrofl look at this curious turn of phrase this politician used rofllmao" Liberman and Victor "omg guise somebody mistranslated some chinese somewhere zomgz" Mair?

What's your epithet for Geoff Pullum?

"Passives are People, Too!"

[merijn]

The volume with the article and comments on is online. Since I am not affiliated with a University at the moment, I cannot read it right now, but other people may read it and see if his arguments are convincing this time around.

[2+3 clusivity]

I can't get it through my Uni; however, looking at the table of contents . . . a 2 page rebuttal probably means a swift disposal.

[merijn]

I tried to access it from my local University Library, but it didn't work. I am curious if it is really true that his idea has "been verified by a number of the world’s top linguists", or that the press release in the opening post was a bit on the optimistic side.

[Hakaku]

I have access, but the paper is a little overwhelming since it feels a little everywhere. A lot of the comments against Časule's work also seem quite bare and don't really address much besides dismissing everything altogether as chance, coincidence, loans and whatnot. Not really sure what to think.

[Ser]

A few years ago a careful and thorough case was made by a linguist in BC that Tsimshian was an Indo-European language. He had identified systematic sound correspondences covering the bulk of Tsimshian's sounds and assembled a list of more than a hundred perfect "cognates" among core vocabulary (i.e. perfect semantic matches) and another two or three hundred reasonably good ones besides, all of them obeying the correspondences with high regularity. The list included multiple early sound changes that were shared with the Tocharian branch, IE's easternmost offshoot and the one geographically closest to the territory of the Tsimshian, notably its collapse of the three stop series into just one, /p t k/. Meanwhile the Tsimshian themselves apparently have oral histories of having migrated to their present territory from somewhere much further north, possibly Alaska, which could shave another thousand miles off the geographic distance.

But for all the lexical matches and regular sound correspondences, after many years of effort he could not identify even one good grammatical correspondence. Tsimshian is grammatically nothing whatsoever like IE - the matchup is worse than that expectable from random chance. Meanwhile, contrary to the oral histories, the language shows evidence of having been in contact with its current neighbors for a long time - it's a core member of the PNW linguistic area! So there his proposal sits, dead in the water. Not totally implausible, but well short of demonstrated.

This is the fate of most modern attempts to demonstrate genetic relationships among languages, as all the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and very likely this Burushaski proposal will end up in much the same limbo. If you want to demonstrate a relationship these days the argument needs to be powerful.

Relevant:
http://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/sea ... TS968D2001