Borean languages (that is, northern ; from ancient Greek -ορέας - North , in this case with reference to the Northern Hemisphere [1] , also boreal [2] ) is a hypothetical macro - family of languages, including almost all [1] languages (most part [3] of languages) of the planet. There are two models of Borean languages: S. A. Starostin and G. Fleming .
Fleming's hypothesis
The first article on Borean languages was published by G. Fleming in 1987 [4] . The term proposed in 1991 [5] . Fleming attributed to the Borean languages Afraziysky , Kartvelian , Dravidian languages, Greenberg 's Eurasian Macroseme — Indo-European , Uralic , Altai languages (all Nostratic languages as understood by V.I. Illich-Svitych ), Sumerian with Elamic and some other ancient languages, and some other ancient languages as well as some other ancient languages as well as some other ancient languages as well. “Macro-Caucasian languages” of Bengtson (including North Caucasian , Basque, and Burushaski ), Yenisei , Sino-Tibetan , Na-Dene (the last four families are united in the Dene-Caucasian languages ), Amerindian languages [6] .
Starostin's hypothesis
S.A. Starostin attributed Nostratic , Sino-Caucasian , Amerindian , Austrian languages to Borean.
Some researchers working on this hypothesis do not exclude that all known languages are generally referred to as “Borean”. If this is so, it does not prove that humanity had a single parent language and the language arose exactly once (the hypothesis of monogenesis ) - other ancient languages could become extinct, leaving no witness to their descendants.
G.S. Starostin writes that by the working term “Borean language” he and his colleagues denote a hypothetical language, the speakers of which could live in Africa or the Middle East 20-25 thousand years ago. 20-25 thousand years ago, they supposedly began to spread around the world, displacing other native speakers, and the “oases” left over from the previous diversity were Khoisan languages and Papuan New Guinea languages (with the exception of Trans-Guinean languages ) [3] .
In American linguistics, this direction was called "global studies"; it is engaged in the selection of "global etymologies" ("global etymologies"), that is, the roots of words common to all known macrofamilies . [7]
This hypothesis has not received general recognition in the linguistic community, primarily because the work on the proof of “Borean” unity cannot be considered complete even from the point of view of its supporters; far from all the macro families supposedly belonging to this unity have themselves been consistently and convincingly reconstructed (and their boundaries, the directions of possible borrowings complicating the picture, and so on) are not completely clear. In addition, there are many researchers skeptical about the very idea of establishing such a deep genetic relationship of languages, based on the method of stepwise reconstruction, in which the primary material is not really testified languages, but restored (in turn, with varying degrees of hypothetical) language. A balanced approach to the reconstructions of the level of the Nostratic languages should be even more careful when it comes to deeper linguistic unity.
See also
- Turite
- Comparative Historical Linguistics
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Article about Borean languages in English-speaking Wikipedia
- ↑ Burlak S. A .. The importance of studies of glottogenesis for comparative-historical linguistics // Questions of language relatedness . - 2012. - № 7 . - S. 1-8 .
- ↑ 1 2 Starostin G. S. et al. To the origins of linguistic diversity. Ten conversations about comparative historical linguistics with E. Ya. Satanovsky. - Moscow: Delo publishing house, RANEPA, 2015. - p. 29. - 584 p. - ISBN 978-5-7749-1054-0 , UDC 81-115, BBK 81.
- ↑ Fleming HC Proto-Gongan Consonant Phonemes: Stage One (English) // Leo Reinisch. Werk und Erbe / Editor HG Mukarovsky. - Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. - P. 141-159 .
- ↑ Fleming HC A New Taxonomic Hypothesis: Borean / Boralean (Eng.) // Mother Tongue / Editor HC Fleming. - 1991. - August ( iss. 14 ).
- ↑ Harold Fleming (2002) "Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: The Borean Hypothesis", Global Perspectives on Human Language
- ↑ Burlak S. A. , Starostin S. A. Chapter 1.8. Macrocomparative // Comparative historical linguistics: A textbook for stud. higher studies. institutions. - M .: Publishing Center "Academy", 2005. - 432 p. - ISBN 5-7695-1445-0 , UDC 800 (075.8), BBK 81ya73.