Re: Kentum/satem (was: The future of Sturnan)

From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>

> --- Keith wrote:
>
> > PIE sister languages? Huh? I didn't think there was anything like that?
>
> There is such a theory, that links some big language families with each
other.
> IIRC: Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Semitic, Caucasian, Etruscan, and
perhaps a
> few others. They call it "Nostratic".
> I don't know how widely this theory is accepted among scientists; I know
too
> little about it to give my own opinion. But if it were true, it would mean
that
> Proto-Indo-European actually did have sister languages.
>
> Danny, please enlighten us...
You already explained it, though more accurately Afro-Asiatic (the parent of
Semitic) and Kartvelian (South Caucasian *only*) theoretically belong to it.

But most likely the closest "sister" of Proto-Indo-European is either
Etruscan or Uralic. Joseph Greenberg proposes a Eurasiatic macrofamily, made
up of IE, Uralic-Yukaghir, Altaic, Chuckchi-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut but
not Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, Dravidian or Sumerian. Bomhard has Eurasiatic
as a branch of Nostratic, so IE would be the "granddaughter" of Nostratic,
whose other daughters are Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian and Elamite-Dravidian.

~Danny~