Uralic languages

Uralic
Geographic distribution	Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, North Asia
Linguistic classification	A number of proposals linking Uralic to other language families have been made, all currently controversial
Proto-language	Proto-Uralic
Subdivisions	See Classification section for subgroupings. The universally accepted groups are: Finnic Hungarian Khanty Mansi Mari Mordvinic Permic Sami Samoyedic
ISO 639-5	urj
The Uralic languages

The Uralic languages /jʊˈrælk/ (sometimes called Uralian /jʊˈreɪliən/ languages) constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, which are official languages of Hungary, Finland and Estonia, respectively, as well as the European Union. Medium-sized Uralic languages are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, and Komi, which are officially recognized languages in various regions of Russia.

The name "Uralic" refers to the proposed Urheimat (original homeland) of the Uralic family, which is often located 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.

History

Further information: Proto-Uralic

Homeland

In recent times, linguists often place the Urheimat, (German: original homeland), of the Proto-Uralic language in 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. 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. P. Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia.

Early attestations

The first mention of a Uralic people is in Tacitus's Germania, mentioning the Fenni (usually interpreted as referring to the Sami) and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. 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")

In 1671, Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Sami, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian, while the German scholar Martin Vogel tried to establish a relationship between Finnish, Sami, and Hungarian. These two authors were thus 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 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 (Collinder, 1965). In the same year, the German scholar Johann Georg von Eckhart, in an essay published in Leibniz's Collectanea Etymologica, proposed for the first time a relation to the Samoyedic languages.

By 1770, all the languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric languages had been identified, almost 20 years before the traditional starting-point of Indo-European studies. 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 Ruhlen (1987) as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit János Sajnovics suggested a relationship between Hungarian and Sami (Lapp) in 1770, and in 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date.

At the beginning of the 19th century, research on Uralic was thus more advanced than Indo-European research. But the rise of Indo-European comparative linguistics absorbed so much attention and enthusiasm that Uralic linguistics was all but eclipsed in Europe; in Hungary, the only European country that would have had a vested interest in the family (Finland and Estonia being under Russian rule), the political climate was too hostile for the development of Uralic comparative linguistics. Some progress was made, however, culminating in the work of the German linguist Josef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Uralic specialist in Hungary.

Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignác Halász, 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.

During the 1990s, linguists Kalevi Wiik, Janos Pusztay, and Ago Künnap and historian Kyösti Julku announced a "breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics", dating Proto-Finnic to 10,000 BC. The theory was almost unanimously rejected in the scientific community.

Classification

Relative numbers of speakers of Uralic languages Hungarian   56% Finnish   20% Estonian   4.2% Erzya   2.8% Moksha   2.5% Mari   2% Udmurt   1.9% Komi   1.6% Other   8.9%

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 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 (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.

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 of the proposed higher-order branchings (grouping the nine undisputed families) are becoming more common.

The traditional classification is as follows:

• Samoyedic
• Finno-Ugric
  • Ugric (Ugrian)
    • Hungarian
    • Ob-Ugric (Ob Ugrian)
      • Khanty
      • Mansi
  • Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)
    • Permic
    • Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari)
      • Mari
      • Mordvinic
      • Finno-Lappic (Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)
        • Sami
        • Finnic

Three distinct subfamilies are usually recognized: Finno-Permic, Ugric, and Samoyedic. It had formerly been widely accepted to group Finno-Permic and Ugric as the Finno-Ugric family, but especially in Finland there has been a growing tendency to cut the family tree lower by rejecting the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. In more marked opposition to the traditionally accepted branching, a recent proposal 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-Lappic. 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.

Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic are listed in ISO 639-5 as primary branches of Uralic.

Lexical isoglosses

Lexicostatistics has been used in defense of the traditional family tree. A recent re-evaluation of the evidence however 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", *tettə "4", *səmpəleŋkə "5", *məktut "6", *sejtwə "7", *wiət "10")
  • Finno-Ugric (*üki/*ükti "1", *kormi "3", *ńeljä "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 (*śećem "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, 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 (*δ > *l)
        • Permian
        • Ugric (*s *š *ś > *ɬ *ɬ *s)
          • 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 > ɣ between vowels, degemination of stops) and Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Saamic, Mari, Mordvinic; *δ́ > δ 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 > ɣ when before *i, and after a vowel (cf. *k > ɣ above), or adjacent to *t, *s, *š, or *ś.

Finno-Ugric consonant developments after Viitso (2000); Samoyedic changes after Sammallahti (1988)

		Saamic	Finnic	Mordvinic	Mari	Permic	Hungarian	Mansi	Khanty	Samoyedic
Medial lenition of *k		no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Medial lenition of *p, *t		no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
Degemination		no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Consonant gradation		yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes
Development of	*δ	*δ	*t	*t	∅	*l	l	*l	*l	*r
	*δ́				*δ	*ĺ	ď ⟨gy⟩, j	*ĺ	*j	*j
	*s	*s	*s	*s	*š	*s	∅	*t	*ɬ	*t
	*š		*h	*š		*š
	*ś	*ć	*s	*ś		*ś	s ⟨sz⟩	*š	*s	*s
	*ć					*ć	č ⟨cs⟩	*ć ~ *š	*ć

• Note: Proto-Khanty *ɬ in many of the dialects yields *t; it is assumed 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.

Typology

Structural characteristics generally said to be typical of Uralic languages include:

Grammar

• extensive use of independent suffixes, AKA 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
  • 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 sounds (-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 rannemmas), 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, tema in Estonian, sijə in Komi, ő in Hungarian.
• negative verb, which exists in almost all Uralic languages, e.g. Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Kamassian, Komi, Meadow Mari, Erzya (in the first preterite, the conjunctional, optative and imperative moods, sometimes there are alterations in choice of negative verb stems), North Sami (and other Samic languages), Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc. (Some innovative languages have lost this feature, e.g. 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, which exists, e.g. in the Samoyedic, Ob-Ugric and Samic languages.
• 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. In the old orthographies, the plural marker -k was also used in the Samic languages.
• 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 (some 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", 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 čuolmma" 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 inaccurate for Finnish and Estonian, where the singular 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, Khanty, and Samoyedic. It is lacking in Sami, Permic and standard Estonian, while it does exist in Võro and elsewhere in South Estonian. (Although umlaut letters are used in writing Uralic languages, the languages do not exhibit Germanic umlaut; front and back values are intrinsic features of words and modify suffixes, not vice versa as in umlaut.)
• 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 [ɲ] – [n], or [c] – [t] are contrasted in Hungarian, as in hattyú [hɒcːuː] "swan". Some Sami languages, for example Skolt Sami, distinguish three degrees: plain ⟨l⟩ [l], palatalized ⟨'l⟩ [lʲ], and palatal ⟨lj⟩ [ʎ], 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 Russian palatalization, which is of more recent origin. The Finnic languages have lost palatalization, but the eastern varieties 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.

Selected cognates

The following is a very brief selection of cognates in basic vocabulary across the Uralic family, which may serve to give an idea of the sound changes involved. This is not a list of translations: cognates have a common origin, but their meaning may be shifted and loanwords may have replaced them. It is immediately apparent from the list that Finnish is the most conservative of the Uralic languages, with nearly half the words on the list below identical to their Proto-Uralic reconstructions and most of the remainder only having minor changes, such as the conflation of ś into s, or widespread changes such as the loss of x and alteration of ï. Finnish has even preserved old Indo-European borrowings relatively unchanged as well. (An example is porsas ("pig"), loaned from Proto-Indo-European *porḱos or pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian *porśos, unchanged since loaning save for loss of palatalization, *ś > s.)

English	Proto-Uralic	Finnic			Samic		Mordvinic	Mari	Permic		Ugric			Samoyedic
		Finnish	Estonian	Võro	North	Inari	Erzya		Komi	Udmurt	Khanty	Northern Mansi	Hungarian	Tundra Nenets
'fire'	*tuli	tuli (tule-)	tuli (tule-)	tuli	dolla	tulla	tol	tul	tyl-	tyl	–	–	–	tuu
'water'	*weti	vesi (vete-)	vesi (vee-)	vesi	–	–	ved´	wüt	va	vu	–	wit	víz	jiʔ
'ice'	*jäŋi	jää	jää	ijä	jiekŋa	jieŋa	ej	i	ji	jə	jeŋk	jaaŋk	jég	–
'fish'	*kala	kala	kala	kala	guolli	kyeli	kal	kol	–	–	kul	xuul	hal	xalʲa
'nest'	*pesä	pesä	pesa	pesä	beassi	peesi	pize	pəžaš	poz	puz	pel	pitʲii	fészek	pʲidʲa
'hand, arm'	*käti	käsi (käte-)	käsi (käe-)	käsi	giehta	kieta	ked´	kit	ki	ki	köt	kaat	kéz	–
'eye'	*śilmä	silmä	silm (silma-)	silm	čalbmi	čalme	śeĺme	šinča	śin	śin, śinm-	sem	sam	szem	sæwə
'fathom'	*süli	syli (syle-)	süli (süle-)	–	salla	solla	seĺ	šülö	syl	sul	ɬöl	tal	öl	tʲíbʲa
'vein / sinew'	*sï(x)ni	suoni (suone-)	soon (soon-)	suuń	suotna	suona	san	šün	sən	sən	ɬan	taan	ín	teʔ
'bone'	*luwi	luu	luu	luu	–	–	lovaža	lu	ly	ly	loγ	luw	–	le
'liver'	*mïksa	maksa	maks (maksa-)	mass	–	–	makso	mokš	mus	mus	muγəl	maat	máj	mudə
'urine'	*kunśi	kusi (kuse-)	kusi (kuse-)	kusi	gožža	kužža	–	kəž	kudź	kyź	kos-	xuńś-	húgy	–
'to go'	*meni-	mennä (men-)	minema	minemä	mannat	moonnađ	–	mija-	mun-	myn-	mən-	men-	megy-/men-	mʲin-
'to live'	*elä-	elää (elä-)	elama (ela-)	elämä	eallit	eelliđ	–	ila-	ol-	ul-	–	–	él-	jilʲe-
'to die'	*ka(x)li-	kuolla (kuol-)	–	kuulma	–	–	kulo-	kola-	kul-	kul-	kol-	xool-	hal-	xa-
'to wash'	*mośki-	–	–	mõskma	–	–	muśke-	muška-	myśky-	myśk-	–	–	mos-	masø-

(Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation (⟨ž⟩ [ʒ], ⟨š⟩ [ʃ], ⟨č⟩ [t͡ʃ]), while the acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation (⟨ś⟩ [sʲ ~ ɕ], ⟨ć⟩ [tsʲ ~ tɕ], ⟨l⟩ [lʲ]). The Finnish letter ⟨y⟩ and the letter ⟨ü⟩ in other languages represent the high rounded vowel [y], while ⟨y⟩ in transcriptions of Permic is a central unrounded vowel [ɨ]. The letters ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are the front vowels [æ] and [ø].

The Estonian philologist Mall Hellam even 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: The living fish swims underwater

However, linguist Geoffrey Pullum reports that neither Finns nor Hungarians could understand the other language's version of the sentence.

Possible relations with other families

Many relationships between Uralic and other language families have been suggested, but none of these are generally accepted by linguists at the present time.

Ural–Altaic

Main article: Ural–Altaic languages

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 (хэл (hel)). These theories are now generally rejected and most such similarities are attributed to coincidence or language contact, and a few to possible relationship at a deeper genetic level.

Indo-Uralic

Main article: Indo-Uralic languages

The Indo-Uralic (or Uralo-Indo-European) 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. It is viewed as certain by a few linguists (see main article) and as possible by a larger number.

Uralic–Yukaghir

Main article: Uralic–Yukaghir languages

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

Main article: Eskimo–Uralic languages

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

Main article: Uralo-Siberian languages

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.

Nostratic

Main article: Nostratic languages

Nostratic associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, 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

Main article: Eurasiatic languages

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 (1933) and by Björn Collinder (1965:30–34).

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.

All of these hypotheses are minority views at the present time in Uralic studies.

Other comparisons

Various unorthodox comparisons have been advanced such as Finno-Basque and Hungaro-Sumerian. These are considered spurious by specialists.

See also

• Finno-Ugric languages
• Proto-Uralic language
• Samoyedic languages
• Proto-Uralic homeland hypotheses

References

Further reading

• Abondolo, Daniel M. (editor). 1998. The Uralic Languages. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08198-X.
• Austerlitz, Robert. 1990. "Uralic Languages" (pp. 567–576) in Comrie, Bernard, editor. The World's Major Languages. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Collinder, Björn. 1955. Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary: An Etymological Dictionary of the Uralic Languages. (Collective work.) Stockholm: Almqvist & Viksell. (Second, revised edition: Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1977.)
• Collinder, Björn. 1957. Survey of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm.
• Collinder, Björn. 1960. Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
• Collinder, Björn. 1965. An Introduction to the Uralic Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Décsy, Gyula. 1990. The Uralic Protolanguage: A Comprehensive Reconstruction. Bloomington, Indiana.
• Hajdu, Péter. 1963. Finnugor népek és nyelvek. Budapest: Gondolat kiadó.
• Hajdu, Péter. 1975. Finni-Ugrian Languages and Peoples, translated by G. F. Cushing. London: André Deutsch. (English translation of the previous.)
• Georg, Stefan, Peter A. Michalove, Alexis Manaster Ramer, and Paul J. Sidwell. 1999. "Telling general linguists about Altaic." Journal of Linguistics 35:65–98.
• Koppelmann, Heinrich. 1933. Die eurasische Sprachfamilie. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
• Laakso, Johanna. 1992. Uralilaiset kansat ('Uralic Peoples'). Porvoo – Helsinki – Juva. ISBN 951-0-16485-2.
• Rédei, Károly (editor). 1986–88. Uralisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Uralic Etymological Dictionary'). Budapest.
• Ruhlen, Merritt, A Guide to the World's languages, Stanford, California (1987), pp. 64–71.
• Sammallahti, Pekka. 1988. "Historical phonology of the Uralic Languages." In The Uralic Languages, edited by Denis Sinor, pp. 478–554. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
• Sinor, Denis (editor). 1988. The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences. Leiden: Brill.

External classification

• Bergsland, Knut (1959). "The Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis". Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne. 61: 1–29.
• Fortescue, Michael. 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait. London and New York: Cassell.
• Greenberg, Joseph. 2000–2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, 2 volumes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Pedersen, Holger (1903). "Türkische Lautgesetze". Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. 57: 535–561.
• Sauvageot, Aurélien. 1930. Recherches sur le vocabulaire des langues ouralo-altaïques ('Research on the Vocabulary of the Uralo-Altaic Languages'). Paris.

Linguistic issues

• Künnap, A. 2000. Contact-induced Perspectives in Uralic Linguistics. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 39. München: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-964-3.
• Wickman, Bo. 1955. The Form of the Object in the Uralic Languages. Uppsala: Lundequistska bokhandeln.

External links

• Uralic family Tree in the MultiTree Project at the LINGUIST List.
• Finnic and Finno-Ugric Swadesh vocabulary lists on Wiktionary
• "The Finno-Ugrics" The Economist, December 20, 2005
• News on the Uralic peoples
• Kulonen, Ulla-Maija: Origin of Finnish and related languages. thisisFINLAND, Finland Promotion Board. Cited 30.10.2009.

"Rebel" Uralists

• "The untenability of the Finno-Ugrian theory from a linguistic point of view" by Dr. László Marácz, a minority opinion on the language family
• "The 'Ugric-Turkic battle': a critical review" by Angela Marcantonio, Pirjo Nummenaho, and Michela Salvagni
• "Linguistic shadow-boxing" by Johanna Laakso – a book review of Angela Marcantonio’s The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics