Borean languages

Last updated

Borean
(widely rejected)
Geographic
distribution		 Eurasia, sometimes the Americas
Linguistic classification Proposed language family
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottolog None
BoreanLanguagesMap.png
Borean macro-family according to Sergei Starostin

Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) [1] is a hypothetical (i.e. proposed) linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name Borean is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families that are native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.

Contents

Fleming's model

The concept is due to Harold C. Fleming (1987), who proposed such a "mega-super-phylum" for the languages of Eurasia, termed Borean or Boreal in Fleming (1991) and later publications. In Fleming's model, Borean includes ten different groups: Afrasian (his term for Afroasiatic), Kartvelian, Dravidian, a group comprising Sumerian, Elamitic, and some other extinct languages of the ancient Near East, Eurasiatic (a proposal of Joseph Greenberg that includes Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and several other language families), Macro-Caucasian (a proposal of John Bengtson that includes Basque and Burushaski), Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Amerind. [2]

In 2002, Fleming argued that there were not a two large super-phyla distinction between a Nostratic and a Dené–Caucasian taxon among Borean languages, and that the language kinship between its branches is possibly more complex than a Nostratic versus a Dené–Caucasian super-phyla. [2]

However, in 2013, Fleming had changed his view about this issue in a joint article with Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita – "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue , issue XVIII, p. 143–188, 2013, where he argues that Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian as language phyla within Borean is a hypothesis that is well grounded and convincing.

Fleming writes that his work on Borean is inspired by Joseph Greenberg's exploration of Eurasiatic, and is oriented towards the concept of "valid taxon". He rejects Nostratic, a proposed macrofamily somewhat broader than Eurasiatic, and withholds judgment on Dené–Caucasian, a proposal that would encompass Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, Basque, and several other language families and isolates. Fleming calls Borean a "phyletic chain" rather than a super-phylum. He notes that his model of Borean is similar to Morris Swadesh's Vasco-Dene proposal, although he also sees similarities between Vasco-Dene and Dené–Caucasian. He sees Borean as closely associated with the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in the Levant, Europe, and western Eurasia from 50 thousand to 45 thousand years ago, and observes that it is primarily associated with human populations of Caucasoid and Northern Mongoloid physical appearance, the exceptions being southern India, southern China, southwestern Ethiopia, northern Nigeria, and the Chad Republic. [2]

The phylogenetic composition of Borean (noncommital about higher linkages within the whole) according to Fleming, Bengtson, Zegura, Harrod, and Keita (2013) [3] is as follows:

Starostin's model

Borean language tree according to Starostin BoreanLanguageTree.png
Borean language tree according to Starostin

As envisaged by Sergei Starostin (2002), Borean is divided into two groups, Nostratic (sensu lato, consisting of Eurasiatic and Afroasiatic) and Dene–Daic, the latter consisting of the Dené–Caucasian and Austric macrofamilies. [8] Starostin tentatively dates the Borean proto-language to the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 16 thousand years ago. Starostin's model of Borean would thus include most languages of Eurasia, as well as the Afroasiatic languages of North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the Eskimo–Aleut and the Na-Dene languages of the New World.

Murray Gell-Mann, Ilia Peiros, and Georgiy Starostin maintain that the comparative method has provided strong evidence for some linguistic superfamilies (Dené-Caucasian and Eurasiatic), but not so far for others (Afroasiatic and Austric). Their view is that since some of these families have not yet been reconstructed and others still require improvement, it is impossible to apply the strict comparative method to even older and larger groups. However, they consider this only a technical rather than a theoretical problem, and reject the idea that linguistic relationships further back in time than 10,000 years before the present cannot be reconstructed, since the "main objects of research in this case are not modern languages, but reconstructed proto-languages which turn out to be more similar to one another than their modern day descendants". [1] They believe that good reconstructions of superfamilies such as Eurasiatic will eventually help in investigating still deeper linguistic relationships. While such 'ultra-deep' relationships can currently be discussed only on a speculative level, they maintain that the numerous morphemic similarities between language families of Eurasia, many of which Sergei Starostin compiled into a special database that he later supplemented by his own findings, are unlikely to be due to chance, making it possible to formulate a Borean super-superfamily hypothesis. [9]

They have also suggested possible links between 'Borean' and other families. In their view comparisons with 'Borean' data suggest that Khoisan cannot be included within it but that more distant connections on an even deeper level might be possible, that how the African superfamilies Niger–Congo, East Sudanic, Central Sudanic and Kordofanian are related to Borean remains to be investigated, that the situation with the native languages of the Americas remains unresolved, and that while there are some lexical similarities between Borean and the Trans–New Guinea languages, these remain too scarce to establish a firm connection. They comment that while preliminary data indicates possible connections between Borean and some superfamilies from Africa, the Americas, and the Indo-Pacific region further research is needed to determine whether these additional superfamilies are related to Borean or unidentified branches of it. [9] Gell-Mann et al. note that their proposed model of Borean differs significantly from that of Fleming. [9]

Sergei Starostin died prematurely in 2005 and his hypothesis remains in a preliminary form, with much of the material he collected available online. [10] [11]

The phylogenetic composition of Borean according to Starostin is as follows:

Jäger (2015)

A computational phylogenetic analysis by Jäger (2015) did not support the Borean macrophylum in its entirety, but provided the following phylogeny of language families in Eurasia: [12]

Other languages

Sumerian

Allan Bomhard argues that Sumerian did not descend from a daughter language of Proto-Nostratic but from a sister language of it. In other words, Sumerian descended from an older common ancestor language with Proto-Nostratic and did not descend directly from it; that is, Sumerian was closer to Nostratic but not a member of it. [13]

Kartvelian

Bomhard argues that Kartvelian is closer to Eurasiatic than to other language families within Nostratic and that the differences are due to the fact that Kartvelian became separated from Eurasiatic at a very early date. [13]

Status of the hypothesis

Linguist Asya Pereltsvaig states in Languages of the World: An Introduction that both versions of the Borean hypothesis are "controversial and tentative". [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Greenberg</span> American linguist (1915–2001)

Joseph Harold Greenberg was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nostratic languages</span> Proposed superfamily of Eurasian and African languages

Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia first proposed in 1903. Though a historically important proposal, it is now generally considered a fringe theory. Its exact composition varies based on proponent; it typically includes the Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northwest Caucasian languages</span> Language family

The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages, is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, chiefly in three Russian republics, the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleo-Siberian languages</span> Group of languages in Siberia

The Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of Siberia. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their turn by Russian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Na-Dene languages</span> Indigenous North American language family

Na-Dene is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now considered doubtful. By far the most widely spoken Na-Dene language today is Navajo, also the most spoken indigenous language north of Mexico.

In historical linguistics, the homeland or Urheimat of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the reconstructed or historically-attested parent language of a group of languages that are genetically related.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yeniseian languages</span> Language family of central Siberia

The Yeniseian languages are a family of languages that are spoken by the Yeniseian people in the Yenisei River region of central Siberia. As part of the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseian languages have been argued to be part of "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics". The only surviving language of the group today is Ket.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austric languages</span> Hypothetical parent family of the Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages

The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as Kra–Dai and Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. A genetic relationship between these language families is seen as plausible by some scholars, but remains unproven.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merritt Ruhlen</span> American linguist (1944–2021)

Merritt Ruhlen was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized as standing outside the mainstream of comparative-historical linguistics. He was the principal advocate and defender of Joseph Greenberg's approach to language classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dené–Caucasian languages</span> Proposed language family

Dené–Caucasian is a discredited language family proposal that includes widely-separated language groups spoken in the Northern Hemisphere: Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages and Burushaski in Asia; Na-Dené languages in North America; as well as Vasconic languages and North Caucasian languages from Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergei Starostin</span> Russian linguist (1953–2005)

Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothetical proto-languages, including his work on the controversial Altaic theory, the formulation of the Dené–Caucasian hypothesis, and the proposal of a Borean language of still earlier date. None of his proposed macrofamilies have seen wide-scale acceptance in the linguistic community, though his proposals remain influential outside of academia. He was also the author of a widely respected reconstruction of Old Chinese.

A macrofamily is a term often used in historical linguistics to refer to a hypothetical higher order grouping of languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurasiatic languages</span> Proposed language macrofamily

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uralo-Siberian languages</span> Proposed language family including Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskimo–Aleut and possibly Nivkh

Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskaleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait. Some have attempted to include Nivkh in Uralo-Siberian. Until 2011, it also included Chukotko-Kamchatkan. However, after 2011 Fortescue only included Uralic, Yukaghir and Eskaleut in the theory, although he argued that Uralo-Siberian languages have influenced Chukotko-Kamchatkan.

John D. Bengtson (1948-2024) was an American historical and anthropological linguist. He had been president and vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and had served as editor of the journal Mother Tongue. Since 2001 he had been a member/researcher of Evolution of Human Languages, an international project on the linguistic prehistory of humanity coordinated by the Santa Fe Institute. His areas of specialization included Scandinavian languages and linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Dené–Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) languages, and paleolinguistics.

Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Václav Blažek</span> Czech linguist

Václav Blažek is a Czech historical linguist. He is a professor at Masaryk University and also teaches at the University of West Bohemia.

Dene–Yeniseian is a proposed language family consisting of the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of northwestern North America.

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References

  1. 1 2 "«Evolution of Human Languages»: current state of affairs (03.2014)" (PDF). ehl.santafe.edu. Retrieved 3 August 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "Harold Fleming (2002) "Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: the Borean Hypothesis", Global Perspectives on Human Language". Archived from the original on 9 June 2007. Retrieved 2 July 2006.
  3. 1 2 Harold C. Fleming, Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita – "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue (journal), issue XVIII, pp. 143–188, 2013
  4. ↑ "It is clear that the Borean hypothesis involves a super-phylum some of whose sub-taxa are themselves super-phyla. The term phyletic chain is introduced as a better label," in name="Greenberg conference">Harold Fleming (2002) "Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: the Borean Hypothesis", Global Perspectives on Human Language Archived 9 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ "The basic hypothesis is that Afrasian is related to the following groups of languages before it is related to any others." in Harold Fleming (2002) "Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: the Borean Hypothesis", Global Perspectives on Human Language.
  6. ↑ "The Nostratic hypothesis is explicitly rejected here because it is not a valid taxon, Afrasian being coordinate to the rest and group c being aberrant in its relationship to the others." in name="Greenberg conference">Harold Fleming (2002) "Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: the Borean Hypothesis", Global Perspectives on Human Language Archived 9 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ "Ainu is still controversial, being classified as a branch of Eurasiatic by some and as a branch of Austric by others." (p.165) in Harold C. Fleming, Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita – "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue (journal), issue XVIII, p. 143–188, 2013
  8. ↑ Driem, George van (2006). "Sino-Austronesian vs. Sino-Caucasian, Sino-Bodic vs. Sino-Tibetan, and Tibeto-Burman as Default Theory" (PDF). Contemporary Issues in Nepalese Linguistics. Kathmandu: Linguistic Society of Nepal. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2011.
  9. 1 2 3 Murray Gell-Mann et al. (2009) "Distant Language Relationship:The Current Perspective", Journal of Language Relationship·Вопросы языкового родства
  10. ↑ Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (ed.), Past human migrations in East Asia: matching archaeology, linguistics and genetics, volume 5 of Routledge studies in the early history of Asia, Taylor & Francis, 2008, ISBN   978-0-415-39923-4, obituary, p. xxvi.
  11. ↑ Starostin's site includes a tree diagram with a hypothesized branching chronology for Borean, Sergei Starostin. "Borean tree diagram"., a database of proposed etymologies, "Description of database of suggested Borean etymologies"., "Online query of database of long-range etymologies".
  12. ↑ Jäger, Gerhard (2015). "Statistical support for linguistic macrofamilies". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (41): 12752–12757. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11212752J. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1500331112 . PMC   4611657 . PMID   26403857.
  13. 1 2 BOMHARD, Allan. (2018). A Comprehensive Introduction to Nostratic Comparative Linguistics, p. 7
  14. ↑ Pereltsvaig, Asya (9 February 2012). Languages of the World: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781107002784.

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