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From: alderson@netcom21.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Nostratian?  Was, Paucity of Proto-Uralic & Altaic sources
In-Reply-To: Warren Steel's message of Wed, 15 Jan 1997 09:01:49 -0600
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Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 01:44:57 GMT
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In article <32DCF15D.76E5@olemiss.edu> Warren Steel <mudws@olemiss.edu> writes:

>As work progresses in reconstructing proto-languages for these families, the
>work begins in seeking larger and older relationships between these families.
>The "Nostratian hypothesis" posits a common ancestor for Indo-European,
>Uralic, Altaic, Caucasian (Kartvelian), Afro-Asiatic (incl. Semitic) and
>Dravidian-Elamite.  Such connections are not proven, but are promising in some
>cases.  The theory is largely the result of research in the former USSR, and
>is insufficently known or studied in the West to be either accepted or
>rejected.

First, it is usually called "Nostratic" (French _Nostratique_, German _Nostra-
tisch_).

Second, there are a number of well-known historical linguists working on it in
this country, as well as a number of equally well-known linguists in this
country who believe that it is a waste of time to do so.  There is a Nostratic
studies mailing list to which several of the current researchers, as well as
the skeptics, actively post.

Your final sentence is a clear misstatement of the facts, perhaps due to some
infamiliarity with the on-going research.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
