Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia, first proposed in 1903. Though the Nostratic hypothesis once had a measure of support among mainstream linguists, it is now generally considered a fringe theory with very low support. The exact composition of languages families included in Nostrastic varies based on proponent; it typically includes the Kartvelian, Indo-European, and the controversial Ural-Altaic family, as well as the Afroasiatic languages and the hypothetical Elamo-Dravidian languages. The Nostratic hypothesis originated with Holger Pedersen in the early 20th century. The name "Nostratic" was put forth by Pedersen (1903) and is derived from the Latin nostrates "fellow countrymen." The hypothesis was significantly expanded in the 1960s by Soviet linguists, notably Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky. The hypothesis has fallen out of favour since the latter half of the 20th century and has limited degrees of acceptance, predominantly among a minority of Russian linguists. Linguists worldwide mostly reject many macrofamily hypotheses, including the Nostratic, with the exception of Dené–Yeniseian languages, which has been met with some degree of acceptance. In Russia, the Nostratic hypothesis is endorsed by a minority of linguists, such as Vladimir Dybo, but is not a generally accepted hypothesis. Some linguists take an agnostic view. Eurasiatic, a similar grouping, was proposed by Joseph Greenberg (2000) and endorsed by Merritt Ruhlen.
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 and Altaic. These proposals were taken much further in 1903 when Holger Pedersen proposed "Nostratic" as a common ancestor for the Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Samoyed, Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, Yukaghir, Eskimo, Semitic, and Hamitic languages, with the door left open to the eventual inclusion of others. The name Nostratic derives from the Latin word nostrās, with plural nostrātēs, meaning "our fellow-countryman," and has been defined, since Pedersen, as consisting of those language families that are related to Indo-European. 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. Martin Bernal has described the term as distasteful because it implies that speakers of other language families are excluded from academic discussion. 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." Proposed alternative names such as Mitian, formed from the characteristic Nostratic first- and second-person pronouns mi "I" and ti "you" (more accurately "thee"'), 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—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
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, published in 2008, is considered the most up-to-date attempt at a Nostratic lexicon. 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 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. 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—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.
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