Nostratic Languages

Nostratic Languages

Nostratic is a hypothetical language family (sometimes called a macrofamily or a superfamily) that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, including the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic as well as Kartvelian languages. Usually also included are the Afroasiatic languages native to the North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East, as well as the Dravidian languages of the Indian Subcontinent (sometimes extended to Elamo-Dravidian, connecting India and the Iranian Plateau). The exact composition and structure of the family varies among proponents.

The hypothetical ancestral language of the Nostratic family is called Proto-Nostratic. Proto-Nostratic would necessarily have been spoken at an earlier time than the language families descended from it, which would place it in the Epipaleolithic period, close to the end of the last glacial period.

The Nostratic hypothesis originates with Holger Pedersen in the early 20th century. The name "Nostratic" is due to Pedersen (1903), 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, termed the "Moscovite school" by Bomhard (2008), and it has received renewed attention in English-speaking academia since the 1990s.

The hypothesis is controversial and has varying degrees of acceptance amongst linguists worldwide. In Russia, it is endorsed by a minority of linguists, such as Vladimir Dybo, but is not a generally accepted hypothesis. Allan Bomhard is a supporter. Lyle Campbell presents arguments challenging the hypothesis. Some linguists take an agnostic view. Eurasiatic, a similar but not identical grouping, was proposed by Joseph Greenberg (2000) and endorsed by Merritt Ruhlen: it is taken as a subfamily of Nostratic by Bomhard (2008).