Proto-Turkic homeland

siberia-large-turkic

This post is part of a draft on South Siberian language homelands and Sprachbünde.

The following text contains a description of Proto-Turkic and its main dialectal split. Contacts with Samoyed, Ob-Ugric, Iranian, Yeniseian, Tocharian, Chinese and Mongolic, as well as palaeolinguistics, hydronymy, and ethnonymy are taken into account to pinpoint the succeeding homelands and expansion territories. The archaeological-archaeogenetic discussion is focused on the Middle and Late Bronze Age Altai Mönkhkhairkhan and Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex and related groups, as well as on Ulaanzukh; Early Iron Age “Scytho-Siberian” Pazyryk & Uyuk and Slab Grave cultures; and on the Late … Read the rest “Proto-Turkic homeland”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (IX): West Caucasian

trade-bronze-age

This post is a continuation of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. Or, rather, a preliminary approach to the most likely key to understand the ultimate origin of Proto-Uralic.

Despite the multiple far-fetched proposals of long-range connections between Asian languages and Uralic – e.g. Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Siberian, Eskimo-Uralic, or Uralo-Dravidian – its closest language family is evidently Indo-European, whether by inheritance or by long-lasting intertwined language developments. This supports that Pre-Proto-Uralic and Proto-Uralic developed in Eastern Europe, always close to the Proto-Indo-European homeland. Therefore, it can be assumed that they were subject … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (IX): West Caucasian”

Proto-Hungarian Homeland: East and West of the Urals?

magyar-pecheneg-migration-steppes

The study of eastern Uralic branches is clearly underdeveloped relative to western ones, and in desperate need of a proper reassessment. This linguistic obscurity contrasts heavily with the decades-long tradition of categorically pinning ethnolinguistic labels (“Ugric” or “Hungarian”) to different prehistorical cultures by (post-)Soviet archaeology, and with the identification of Hungarian as Turkic continuing Turanist trends; 20th century papers showing one of both trends rarely if ever withstand basic scientific scrutiny.

The following is a combination of rewritten excerpts about Ugric in general and Hungarian in particular, as well as some other texts on the linguistic predecessor of the Old … Read the rest “Proto-Hungarian Homeland: East and West of the Urals?”

Palaeolinguistics: The Homeland Problem

germanic-iron-forges

The practice of making inferences about the cultures of language users on the evidence of reconstructed languages is called linguistic palaeontology. These inferences may concern the material culture and geographic location of speakers as well as their social relations, mythology, and beliefs – the notion of ‘archaeological culture’ is used to capture both material culture and behaviour (Mallory 2020).

Proto-Uralic Homeland

This is the introductory post for my draft on the Proto-Uralic Homeland, which I have divided into eight pieces according to semantic fields or chronology, or both. During the following week, you will … Read the rest “Palaeolinguistics: The Homeland Problem”

European hydrotoponymy (VIII): Meshchera, a Permian wedge between Volga Finns?

north-east-europe-hydronymy-toponymy

On the ethnolinguistic origin of the Meshchera, Pauli Rahkonen had an interesting proposal that might eventually be tested with Bronze Age and Iron Age DNA samples from North-East Europe: The Linguistic Background of the Ancient Meshchera Tribe and Principal Areas of Settlement, FUF (2009) 60:160-200.

NOTE. The paper is included in his PhD Dissertation, South-eastern contact area of Finnic languages in the light of onomastics (2013).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine, minor changes for clarity)

The ethnonym Meshchera [Мещёра] is not found in such very early Russian chronicles as Povest’ vremennyh let [“Nestor’s Chronicle”] (PSRL 1965), first appearing in

Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (VIII): Meshchera, a Permian wedge between Volga Finns?”

Basic framework of language contact-induced change

ethnographic-map-eastern-europe-russia

The standard textbook for studying language contact, as far as I know, was Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics, by Sarah Grey Thomason & Terrence Kaufman, UCP (1991, c1988). The reader will surely recognize many of this text’s proposals of language contacts in my books.

Posts of the Language Contact series (reverse chronology):

Read the rest “Basic framework of language contact-induced change”

Early Uralic – Indo-European contacts within Europe

north-west-indo-european-uralic

One of the most interesting aspects for future linguistic research, boosted by the current knowledge in population genomics, is the influence of Uralic – most likely spread initially with Corded Ware peoples across northern Europe – on early Indo-European dialects.

Whereas studies on the potential Afroasiatic (or Semitic), Vasconic, Etruscan, or non-Indo-European in general abound for ancient and southern IE branches (see e.g. more on the NWIE substrate words), almost exclusively Uralicists have dealt with the long-term mutual influences between Indo-European and Uralic dialects, and often mostly from the Uralic side.… Read the rest “Early Uralic – Indo-European contacts within Europe”

Intense but irregular NWIE and Indo-Iranian contacts show Uralic disintegrated in the West

chalcolithic-early-uralic-indo-european

Open access PhD thesis Indo-Iranian borrowings in Uralic: Critical overview of sound substitutions and distribution criterion, by Sampsa Holopainen, University of Helsinki (2019), under the supervision of Forsberg, Saarikivi, and Kallio.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

The gap between Russian and Western scholarship

Many scholars in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation also have researched this topic over the last five decades. Notably the eminent Eugene Helimski dealt with this topic in several articles: his 1992 article (republished in Helimski 2000) on the emergence of Uralic consonantal stems used Indo-Iranian and other Indo-European loans as key evidence, and

Read the rest “Intense but irregular NWIE and Indo-Iranian contacts show Uralic disintegrated in the West”

Samoyedic shows Yeniseic substrate; both influenced Tocharian

chalcolithic-late-tocharian

Open access paper The deviant typological profile of the Tocharian branch of Indo-European may be due to Uralic substrate influence by Peyrot, Indo-European Linguistics (2019).

NOTE. This seems to be part of the master’s thesis by Abel Warries, but the paper is authored only by Peyrot.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

1. The stop system

The loss in Tocharian of the Proto-Indo-European obstruent distinctions conventionally noted as voice and aspiration is a very strong indication of foreign influence. Since Proto-Indo-European roots mostly have at least one stop, and often two, the merger of all three stop series into one must have

Read the rest “Samoyedic shows Yeniseic substrate; both influenced Tocharian”