URALIC
LANGUAGES
The
Uralic languages form a language family of 38 languages spoken by
approximately 25 million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia.
The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian,
Finnish and Estonian, while other significant languages are Erzya,
Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, Sami and Komi, spoken in northern regions
of Scandinavia and the Russian Federation.
The
name "Uralic" derives from the family's original homeland
(Urheimat) commonly hypothesized to be in the vicinity of the Ural
Mountains.
Finno-Ugric
is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is
widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who
do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first
from the rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous.
History
:
Homeland :
Proposed homelands of the Proto-Uralic language include
:
•
The vicinity
of the Volga River, west of the Urals, close to the Urheimat of
the Indo-European languages, or to the east and southeast of the
Urals. Historian Gyula László places its origin in
the forest zone between the Oka River and central Poland. E. N.
Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the Volga and Kama
Rivers. According to E. Itkonen, the ancestral area extended to
the Baltic Sea. Jaakko Häkkinen identifies Proto-Uralic with
Eneolithic Garino-Bor (Turbin) culture 3,000-2,500 YBP located in
the Lower Kama Basin.
• P.
Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia.
• Juha
Janhunen suggests a homeland in between the Ob and Yenisei drainage
areas in Central Siberia.
Genetic evidence :
The characteristic genetic marker of peoples speaking Uralic languages
is haplogroup N1c-Tat (Y-DNA). Samoyedic peoples mainly have more
N1b-P43 than N1c. Haplogroup N originated in the northern part of
China in 20,000–25,000 years BP and spread to north Eurasia,
through Siberia to Northern Europe. Subgroup N1c1 is frequently
seen in non-Samoyedic peoples, N1c2 in Samoyedic peoples. In addition,
haplogroup Z (mtDNA), found with low frequency in Saami, Finns,
and Siberians, is related to the migration of people speaking Uralic
languages.
In
2019, a study based on genetics, archaeology and linguistics found
that Uralic speakers arrived in the Baltic region from the East,
specifically from Siberia, at the beginning of the Iron Age some
2,500 years ago.
Early
attestations :
The first plausible mention of a people speaking a Uralic language
is in Tacitus's Germania (c. 98 AD), mentioning the Fenni (usually
interpreted as referring to the Sami) and two other possibly Uralic
tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. There are
many possible earlier mentions, including the Iyrcae (perhaps related
to Yugra) described by Herodotus living in what is now European
Russia, and the Budini, described by Herodotus as notably red-haired
(a characteristic feature of the Udmurts) and living in northeast
Ukraine and/or adjacent parts of Russia. In the late 15th century,
European scholars noted the resemblance of the names Hungaria and
Yugria, the names of settlements east of the Ural. They assumed
a connection but did not seek linguistic evidence.
Uralic
studies :
The
Siberian origin of Hungarians was long hypothesized by European
scholars. Here, Sigismund von Herberstein's 1549 map of Moscovia
shows "Yugra from where the Hungarians originated" (Iuhra
inde ungaroru origo), east of the Ob River. The Ural Mountains in
the middle of the maps are labeled Montes dicti Cingulus Terræ
("The mountains called the Girdle of the Earth")
The affinity of Hungarian and Finnish was first proposed in the
late 17th century. Three candidates can be credited for the discovery:
the German scholar Martin Vogel, the Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm
and the Swedish courtier Bengt Skytte. Vogel's unpublished study
of the relationship, commissioned by Cosimo III of Tuscany, was
clearly the most modern of these: he established several grammatical
and lexical parallels between Finnish and Hungarian as well as Sami.
Stiernhelm commented on the similarities of Sami, Estonian and Finnish,
and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian. These
authors were the first to outline what was to become the classification
of the Finno-Ugric, and later Uralic family. This proposal received
some of its initial impetus from the fact that these languages,
unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, are not part
of what is now known as the Indo-European family. In 1717, Swedish
professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting
Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid.
Several early reports comparing Finnish or Hungarian with Mordvin,
Mari or Khanty were additionally collected by Leibniz and edited
by his assistant Johann Georg von Eckhart.
In
1730, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published his book Das Nord-
und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia (The Northern and Eastern
Parts of Europe and Asia), surveying the geography, peoples and
languages of Russia. All the main groups of the Uralic languages
were already identified here. Nonetheless, these relationships were
not widely accepted. Hungarian intellectuals especially were not
interested in the theory and preferred to assume connections with
Turkic tribes, an attitude characterized by Merritt Ruhlen as due
to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still,
in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit János
Sajnovics travelled with Maximilian Hell to survey the alleged relationship
between Hungarian and Sami. Sajnovics published his results in 1770,
arguing for a relationship based on several grammatical features.
In 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published the most
complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date.
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Uralic languages in the Russian Empire (Russian Census of
1897; the census was not held in Finland because it was an autonomous
area)
Up to the beginning of the 19th century, knowledge on the Uralic
languages spoken in Russia had remained restricted to scanty observations
by travelers. Already Finnish historian Henrik Gabriel Porthan had
stressed that further progress would require dedicated field missions.
One of the first of these was undertaken by Anders Johan Sjögren,
who brought the Vepsians to general knowledge and elucidated in
detail the relatedness of Finnish and Komi. Still more extensive
were the field research expeditions made in the 1840s by Matthias
Castrén (1813–1852) and Antal Reguly (1819–1858),
who focused especially on the Samoyedic and the Ob-Ugric languages,
respectively. Reguly's materials were worked on by the Hungarian
linguist Pál Hunfalvy (1810–1891) and German Josef
Budenz (1836–1892), who both supported the Uralic affinity
of Hungarian. Budenz was the first scholar to bring this result
to popular consciousness in Hungary, and to attempt a reconstruction
of the Proto-Finno-Ugric grammar and lexicon. Another late-19th-century
Hungarian contribution is that of Ignácz Halász (1855–1901),
who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and
Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work is at the base of today's
wide acceptance of the inclusion of Samoyedic as a part of Uralic.
Meanwhile, in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, a chair for
Finnish language and linguistics at the University of Helsinki was
created in 1850, first held by Castrén.
In
1883, the Finno-Ugrian Society was founded in Helsinki on the proposal
of Otto Donner, which would lead to Helsinki overtaking St. Petersburg
as the chief northern center of research of the Uralic languages.
During the late 19th and early 20th century (until the separation
of Finland from Russia following the Russian revolution), a large
number of stipendiates were sent by the Society to survey the still
less known Uralic languages. Major researchers of this period included
Heikki Paasonen (studying especially the Mordvinic languages), Yrjö
Wichmann (studying Permic), Artturi Kannisto (Mansi), Kustaa Fredrik
Karjalainen (Khanty), Toivo Lehtisalo (Nenets), and Kai Donner (Kamass).
The vast amounts of data collected on these expeditions would provide
edition work for later generations of Finnish Uralicists for more
than a century.
Classification
:
The Uralic family comprises nine undisputed groups with no consensus
classification between them. (Some of the proposals are listed in
the next section.) An agnostic approach treats them as separate
branches.
Obsolete
or native names are displayed in italics.
•
Finnic (Fennic,
Baltic Finnic, Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic)
• Hungarian
(Magyar)
• Khanty
(Ostyak, Handi, Hantõ)
• Mansi
(Vogul)
• Mari
(Cheremis)
•
Mordvinic (Mordvin,
Mordvinian)
• Permic
(Permian)
• Sami
(Saami, Samic, Saamic, Lappic, Lappish)
• Samoyedic
(Samoyed)
There is also historical evidence of a number of extinct
languages of uncertain affiliation :
•
Merya
• Muromian
• Meshcherian
(until 16th century?)
Traces of Finno-Ugric substrata, especially in toponymy, in the
northern part of European Russia have been proposed as evidence
for even more extinct Uralic languages.
To
view the above image large Click
here.
Traditional
classification :
All Uralic languages are thought to have descended, through independent
processes of language change, from Proto-Uralic. The internal structure
of the Uralic family has been debated since the family was first
proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed
higher-order branchings (grouping the nine undisputed families)
are becoming more common.
A
traditional classification of the Uralic languages has existed since
the late 19th century. It has enjoyed frequent adaptation in whole
or in part in encyclopedias, handbooks, and overviews of the Uralic
family. Otto Donner's model from 1879 is as follows :
•
Ugric (Ugrian)
• Hungarian
• Ob-Ugric
(Ob-Ugrian)
•
Khanty
•
Mansi
• Finno-Permic
(Permian-Finnic)
• Permic
• Finno-Volgaic
(Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari)
•
Volga-Finnic
•
Mari
•
Mordvinic
•
Finno-Lappic
(Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)
•
Sami
•
Finnic
At Donner's time, the Samoyedic languages were still poorly known,
and he was not able to address their position. As they became better
known in the early 20th century, they were found to be quite divergent,
and they were assumed to have separated already early on. The terminology
adopted for this was "Uralic" for the entire family, "Finno-Ugric"
for the non-Samoyedic languages (though "Finno-Ugric"
has, to this day, remained in use also as a synonym for the whole
family). Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic are listed in ISO 639-5 as primary
branches of Uralic.
a.
Hajdú describes the Ugric and Volgaic groups as areal units.
b.
Austerlitz accepts narrower-than-traditional Finno-Ugric and Finno-Permic
groups that exclude Samic
c.
Häkkinen groups Hungarian, Ob-Ugric and Samoyed into a Ugro-Samoyed
branch, and groups Balto-Finnic, Sami and Mordvin into a Finno-Mordvin
branch
d.
Janhunen accepts a reduced Ugric branch, called 'Mansic', that includes
Hungarian and Mansi
Little
explicit evidence has however been presented in favour of Donner's
model since his original proposal, and numerous alternate schemes
have been proposed. Especially in Finland, there has been a growing
tendency to reject the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. A
recent competing proposal instead unites Ugric and Samoyedic in
an "East Uralic" group for which shared innovations can
be noted.
The
Finno-Permic grouping still holds some support, though the arrangement
of its subgroups is a matter of some dispute. Mordvinic is commonly
seen as particularly closely related to or part of Finno-Samic.
The term Volgaic (or Volga-Finnic) was used to denote a branch previously
believed to include Mari, Mordvinic and a number of the extinct
languages, but it is now obsolete and considered a geographic classification
rather than a linguistic one.
Within
Ugric, uniting Mansi with Hungarian rather than Khanty has been
a competing hypothesis to Ob-Ugric.
Lexical
isoglosses :
Lexicostatistics has been used in defense of the traditional family
tree. A recent re-evaluation of the evidencehowever fails to find
support for Finno-Ugric and Ugric, suggesting four lexically distinct
branches (Finno-Permic, Hungarian, Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic).
One
alternate proposal for a family tree, with emphasis on the development
of numerals, is as follows :
•
Uralic (*kektä
"2", *wixti "5" / "10")
•
Samoyedic (*op
"1", *ketä "2", *näkur "3",
*tette "4", *sempelenke "5", *mektut "6",
*sejtwe"7", *wiet "10")
•
Finno-Ugric (*üki/*ükti
"1", *kormi "3", *neljä "4",
*wiiti "5", *kuuti "6", *luki "10")
•
Mansic
•
Mansi
•
Hungarian (hét
"7"; replacement egy "1")
•
Finno-Khantic
(reshaping *kolmi "3" on the analogy of "4")
•
Khanty
•
Finno-Permic
(reshaping *kektä > *kakta)
•
Permic
•
Finno-Volgaic
(*secem "7")
•
Mari
•
Finno-Saamic
(*kakteksa, *ükteksa "8, 9")
•
Saamic
•
Finno-Mordvinic
(replacement *kümmen "10" (*luki- "to count",
"to read out"))
•
Mordvinic
•
Finnic
Phonological isoglosses :
Another proposed tree, more divergent from the standard, focusing
on consonant isoglosses (which does not consider the position of
the Samoyedic languages) is presented by Viitso (1997), and refined
in Viitso (2000) :
•
Finno-Ugric
• Saamic–Fennic
(consonant gradation)
•
Saamic
•
Fennic
• Eastern
Finno-Ugric
•
Mordva
•
(node)
•
Mari
•
Permian–Ugric
(*d > *l)
•
Permian
•
Ugric
•
Hungarian
•
Khanty
•
Mansi
The grouping of the four bottom-level branches remains to some degree
open to interpretation, with competing models of Finno-Saamic vs.
Eastern Finno-Ugric (Mari, Mordvinic, Permic-Ugric; *k > y between
vowels, degemination of stops) and Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Saamic,
Mari, Mordvinic; *d > *ð between vowels) vs. Permic-Ugric.
Viitso finds no evidence for a Finno-Permic grouping.
Extending
this approach to cover the Samoyedic languages suggests affinity
with Ugric, resulting in the aforementioned East Uralic grouping,
as it also shares the same sibilant developments. A further non-trivial
Ugric-Samoyedic isogloss is the reduction *k, *x, *w > y when
before *i, and after a vowel (cf. *k > y above), or adjacent
to *t, *s, *š, or *s.
Finno-Ugric
consonant developments after Viitso (2000); Samoyedic changes after
Sammallahti (1988).
Note:
Proto-Khanty in many of the dialects yields *t; Häkkinen assumes
this also happened in Mansi and Samoyedic.
The inverse relationship between consonant gradation and medial
lenition of stops (the pattern also continuing within the three
families where gradation is found) is noted by Helimski (1995):
an original allophonic gradation system between voiceless and voiced
stops would have been easily disrupted by a spreading of voicing
to previously unvoiced stops as well.
Honkola,
et al. (2013) :
A computational phylogenetic study by Honkola, et al. (2013) classifies
the Uralic languages as follows. Estimated divergence dates from
Honkola, et al. (2013) are also given.
Uralic
(5300 YBP) :
• Samoyedic
• Finno-Ugric
(3900 YBP)
•
Ugric (3300 YBP)
•
Hungarian
•
Ob-Ugric (1900
YBP)
•
Khanty
•
Mansi
•
Finno-Permic
(3700 YBP)
•
Permian
•
Udmurt
•
Komi
•
Finno-Volgaic
•
Mari (3200 YBP)
•
(core branch)
•
Erzya (2900 YBP)
(Mordvinic)
•
Finno-Saami
•
Sami (800 YBP)
•
Finnic (1200
YBP)
Typology
:
Structural characteristics generally said to be typical of Uralic
languages include :
Grammar
:
• extensive
use of independent suffixes (agglutination)
• a
large set of grammatical cases marked with agglutinative suffixes
(13–14 cases on average; mainly later developments: Proto-Uralic
is reconstructed with 6 cases), e.g.:
•
Erzya: 12 cases
• Estonian:
14 cases (15 cases with instructive)
• Finnish:
15 cases
• Hungarian:
18 cases (together 34 grammatical cases and case-like suffixes)
• Inari
Sami: 9 cases
• Komi:
in certain dialects as many as 27 cases
• Moksha:
13 cases
• Nenets:
7 cases
• North
Sami: 6 cases
• Udmurt:
16 cases
• Veps:
24 cases
•
Unique Uralic
case system, from which all modern Uralic languages derive their
case systems.
•
Nominative singular
has no case suffix.
• Accusative
and genitive suffixes are nasal consonants (-n, -m, etc.)
• Three-way
distinction in the local case system, with each set of local cases
being divided into forms corresponding roughly to "from",
"to", and "in/at"; especially evident, e.g.
in Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, which have several sets of local
cases, such as the "inner", "outer" and "on
top" systems in Hungarian, while in Finnish the "on top"
forms have merged to the "outer" forms.
• The
Uralic locative suffix exists in all Uralic languages in various
cases, e.g. Hungarian superessive, Finnish essive (-na), North Sami
essive, Erzyan inessive, and Nenets locative.
• The
Uralic lative suffix exists in various cases in many Uralic languages,
e.g. Hungarian illative, Finnish lative (-s as in ulos 'out' and
rannemmas 'more towards the shore'), Erzyan illative, Komi approximative,
and Northern Sami locative.
• A
lack of grammatical gender, including one pronoun for both he and
she; for example, hän in Finnish, tämä in Votic,
täma or ta (short form for täma) in Livonian, tema or
ta (short form for tema) in Estonian, sije in Komi, o in Hungarian.
• Negative
verb, which exists in almost all Uralic languages (notably absent
in Hungarian)
use of postpositions as opposed to prepositions (prepositions are
uncommon).
• Possessive
suffixes
•
The genitive
is also used to express possession in some languages, e.g. Estonian
mu koer, colloquial Finnish mun koira, Northern Sami mu beana 'my
dog' (literally 'dog of me'). Separate possessive adjectives and
possessive pronouns, such as my and your, are rare.
• Dual,
in the Samoyedic, Ob-Ugric and Samic languages and reconstructed
for Proto-Uralic
plural markers -j (i) and -t (-d, -q) have a common origin (e.g.
in Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Erzya, Samic languages, Samoyedic
languages). Hungarian, however, has -i- before the possessive suffixes
and -k elsewhere. The plural marker -k is also used in the Samic
languages, but there is a regular merging of final -k and -t in
Samic, so it can come from either ending.
• Possessions
are expressed by a possessor in the adessive or dative case, the
verb "be" (the copula, instead of the verb "have")
and the possessed with or without a possessive suffix. The grammatical
subject of the sentence is thus the possessed. In Finnish, for example,
the possessor is in the adessive case: "Minulla on kala",
literally "At me is fish", i.e. "I have a fish",
whereas in Hungarian, the possessor is in the dative case, but appears
overtly only if it is contrastive, while the possessed has a possessive
ending indicating the number and person of the possessor: "(Nekem)
van egy halam", literally "(To me [dative]) is a fish-my"
("(For me) there is a fish of mine"), i.e. "(As for
me,) I have a fish".
• Expressions
that include a numeral are singular if they refer to things which
form a single group, e.g. "négy csomó" in
Hungarian, "njeallje cuolmma" in Northern Sami, "neli
sõlme" in Estonian, and "neljä solmua"
in Finnish, each of which means "four knots", but the
literal approximation is "four knot". (This approximation
is accurate only for Hungarian among these examples, as in Northern
Sami the noun is in the singular accusative/genitive case and in
Finnish and Estonian the singular noun is in the partitive case,
such that the number points to a part of a larger mass, like "four
of knot(s)".)
Phonology :
• Vowel
harmony: this is present in many but by no means all Uralic languages.
It exists in Hungarian and various Baltic-Finnic languages, and
is present to some degree elsewhere, such as in Mordvinic, Mari,
Eastern Khanty, and Samoyedic. It is lacking in Sami, Permic and
standard Estonian, while it does exist in Võro and elsewhere
in South Estonian, as well as in Kihnu Island subdialect of North
Estonian. (Although diaeresis diacritics are used in writing Uralic
languages, the languages do not exhibit Germanic umlaut, a different
type of vowel assimilation.)
•
Large vowel inventories. For example, some Selkup varieties have
over twenty different monophthongs, and Estonian has over twenty
different diphthongs.
• Palatalization
of consonants; in this context, palatalization means a secondary
articulation, where the middle of the tongue is tense. For example,
pairs like [n] – [n], or [c] – [t] are contrasted in
Hungarian, as in hattyú [hoc: u:] "swan". Some
Sami languages, for example Skolt Sami, distinguish three degrees:
plain {l} [l], palatalized {'l} [l], and palatal {lj}, where {'l}
has a primary alveolar articulation, while {lj} has a primary palatal
articulation. Original Uralic palatalization is phonemic, independent
of the following vowel and traceable to the millennia-old Proto-Uralic.
It is different from Slavic palatalization, which is of more recent
origin. The Finnic languages have lost palatalization, but several
of them have reacquired it, so Finnic palatalization (where extant)
was originally dependent on the following vowel and does not correlate
to palatalization elsewhere in Uralic.
•
Lack of phonologically contrastive tone.
• In
many Uralic languages, the stress is always on the first syllable,
though Nganasan shows (essentially) penultimate stress, and a number
of languages of the central region (Erzya, Mari, Udmurt and Komi-Permyak)
synchronically exhibit a lexical accent. The Erzya language can
vary its stress in words to give specific nuances to sentential
meaning.
Lexicography :
Basic vocabulary of about 200 words, including body parts (e.g.
eye, heart, head, foot, mouth), family members (e.g. father, mother-in-law),
animals (e.g. viper, partridge, fish), nature objects (e.g. tree,
stone, nest, water), basic verbs (e.g. live, fall, run, make, see,
suck, go, die, swim, know), basic pronouns (e.g. who, what, we,
you, I), numerals (e.g. two, five); derivatives increase the number
of common words.
Mutual
intelligibility :
The Estonian philologist Mall Hellam proposed cognate sentences
that she asserted to be mutually intelligible among the three most
widely spoken Uralic languages: Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian
:
•
Estonian: Elav
kala ujub vee all.
• Finnish:
Elävä kala ui veden alla.
• Hungarian:
Eleven hal úszik a víz alatt.
• English:
A living fish swims underwater.
However, linguist Geoffrey Pullum reports that neither Finns nor
Hungarians could understand the other language's version of the
sentence.
Proposed
relations with other language families :
Many relationships between Uralic and other language families have
been suggested, but none of these is generally accepted by linguists
at the present time: All of the following hypotheses are minority
views at the present time in Uralic studies.
Uralic-Yukaghir
:
The Uralic–Yukaghir hypothesis identifies Uralic and Yukaghir
as independent members of a single language family. It is currently
widely accepted that the similarities between Uralic and Yukaghir
languages are due to ancient contacts. Regardless, the hypothesis
is accepted by a few linguists and viewed as attractive by a somewhat
larger number.
Eskimo-Uralic
:
The Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis associates Uralic with the Eskimo–Aleut
languages. This is an old thesis whose antecedents go back to the
18th century. An important restatement of it is Bergsland 1959.
Uralo-Siberian
:
Uralo-Siberian is an expanded form of the Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis.
It associates Uralic with Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo–Aleut.
It was propounded by Michael Fortescue in 1998. It is currently
the most supported hypothesis regarding close relatives of Uralic.
Modern supporters include Morris Swadesh, Juha Janhunen and Häkkinen.
Michael Fortescue (2017) present next to new linguistic evidence
also several genetic studies, that support a common origin of the
included groups, with a suggested homeland somewhere in Northeast
Asia.
Ural-Altaic
:
Theories proposing a close relationship with the Altaic languages
were formerly popular, based on similarities in vocabulary as well
as in grammatical and phonological features, in particular the similarities
in the Uralic and Altaic pronouns and the presence of agglutination
in both sets of languages, as well as vowel harmony in some. For
example, the word for "language" is similar in Estonian
(keel) and Mongolian (hel). These theories are now generally rejected
and most such similarities are attributed to language contact or
coincidence.
Indo-Uralic
:
The Indo-Uralic (or "Indo-Euralic") hypothesis suggests
that Uralic and Indo-European are related at a fairly close level
or, in its stronger form, that they are more closely related than
either is to any other language family.
Uralo-Dravidian
:
The hypothesis that the Dravidian languages display similarities
with the Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of
contact in the past, is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and
has been supported by a number of scholars, including Robert Caldwell,
Thomas Burrow, Kamil Zvelebil, and Mikhail Andronov. This hypothesis
has, however, been rejected by some specialists in Uralic languages,
and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian
linguists, such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.
Nostratic
:
Nostratic associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, Dravidian, and
various other language families of Asia. The Nostratic hypothesis
was first propounded by Holger Pedersen in 1903 and subsequently
revived by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky in the
1960s.
Eurasiatic
:
Eurasiatic resembles Nostratic in including Uralic, Indo-European,
and Altaic, but differs from it in excluding the South Caucasian
languages, Dravidian, and Afroasiatic and including Chukotko-Kamchatkan,
Nivkh, Ainu, and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by Joseph
Greenberg in 2000–2002. Similar ideas had earlier been expressed
by Heinrich Koppelmann in 1933 and by Björn Collinder in 1965.
Uralic
skepticism :
In her book, The Uralic language family: facts, myths, and statistics,
linguist Angela Marcantonio argues against the validity of several
subgroups of the Uralic family, as well against the family itself,
claiming that many of the languages are no more closely related
to each other than they are to various other Eurasian languages
(e.g. Yukaghir or Turkic), and that in particular Hungarian is a
language isolate.
Marcantonio's
proposal has been strongly dismissed by most reviewers as unfounded
and methodologically flawed. Problems identified by reviewers include
:
•
Misrepresentation
of the amount of comparative evidence behind the Uralic family,
by arbitrarily ignoring data and mis-counting the number of examples
known of various regular sound correspondences
• After
arguing against the proposal of a Ugric subgroup within Uralic,
claiming that this would constitute evidence that Hungarian and
the Ob-Ugric languages have no relationship at all
• Overly
much focus on criticizing the work of early pioneer studies on the
Uralic family, while ignoring newer, more detailed work published
in the 20th century
• Criticizing
the evidence for the Uralic family as unsystematic and statistically
insignificant, yet freely proposing alternate relationships based
on even scarcer and even less systematic evidence.
A more ambiguous review comes from linguist Edward Vajda, who does
not, however, specialize in Uralic languages. Although he also rejects
all of the book's new proposals (including the author's dismissal
of Uralic as a language family), he agrees that Marcantonio has
raised a number of worthwhile questions that both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists should aim to answer seriously.
Other
comparisons :
Various unorthodox comparisons have been advanced. These are considered
at best spurious fringe-theories by specialists :
•
Finno-Basque
• Hungarian-Etruscan
• Cal-Ugrian
theory
• Alternative
theories of Hungarian language origins
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Uralic_languages
