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9.1. Research State-of-the-art

The established comparative linguistics has long limited itself to the reconstruction of proto-languages of the individual language stocks, such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Austronesian. In Indo-European comparative linguistics, which studies the best and most profoundly examined language stock of them all, it has been a dominating viewpoint that it was not possible to carry out any reliable reconstruction any further back in time than to the early stages of the Indo-European proto-language. This limit appears to be based on tradition, because comparativists of languages outside the European cultural circle allow for reconstructions antedating the Indo-Europeanists’ proto-language by several thousands of years, and most of the world’s language stocks have been established on a less firm basis than the correspondences that tie, e.g., Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric/Samoyed), together.

Still, though, the loose argumentation behind the postulates of very old linguistic relations have thrown a light of lacking seriousness over the whole issue; in traditional research circles there is seldomly drawn any distinctions between, on the one hand, presumed closely related language stocks (within the same language phylum), and, on the other hand, a macro-comparison per se; serious attempts to relate Basque or Japanese to distant language stocks often rank side by side with fantastic and unscholarly fabrications by adventurers that are convinced about close connections between, e.g., Latvian and Sumerian or a special Slovenian-Venetic-Basque relationship.

During the 1990s, cross-comparative linguistics has progressed by leaps and bumps, and its results meet ignorance in an ever declining number of places; there is a quite different respect paid to external comparison. This has two main reasons: The first one is that within the individual comparative linguistics, not the least within Indo-European and Uralic/Finno-Ugric studies, there as been reached a point of accumulated knowledge about the structure of the proto-languages that it has become more difficult to refuse that cross-linguistic comparison or long-range comparison should make any sense. The researchers have simply come so far into the details of reconstructions and so far back in time that it appears natural so seek for new information in the neighbouring language stocks, not the least as concern word formation and earlier language type.

The other main reason is cross-disciplinary studies: Linguists have started to co-operate with completely other disciplines whose research has begun to prove results that confirm the theories about the distant relationships of language stocks hitherto considered "unrelated". Most important are population genetics and physical anthropology, but also prehistorical archaeology, cultural history, statistics and computer simulation and increasingly being included in the cross-disciplinary attempts to uncover different periods of human prehistory. A central position in the research is occupied by an Italian-American research team at the Stanford University in California that has proved the connection between, on the one hand, genetic evidence of the development lines of the populations and of the languages on the other hand.

In the actual Nostraticist research there is a general agreement about the main splits: Hamito-Semitic (a term that arouses wrong associations, thus now mostly called Afroasiatic) and Dravidian constitute their own sub-phyla over the rest of the Nostratic languages, which for their part are divided into Kartvelian and the larger Eurasiatic subphylum that includes Indo-European, Uralic (Finno-Ugric/Samoyed) and Yukaghir, Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus), Eskimo-Aleutian, Luoravetlian (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), Gilyak (Nivkhian) and Ainu,. and, according to some researchers, likewise Sumerian and Etruscan. The two latter are included in Joseph H. Greenberg’s work, whereas Allan Bomhard and John Kerns do not include these languages.

It is not clear how one shall approach Japanese and Korean in this context; some linguists group them with the Altaic stock, others let them constitute their own under-groupings, more others consider at least Japanese to be a mixed language as a result of language contact between Altaic and Austronesian speaking populations. The Altaic hypothesis has had a big, though not universal, support since the 18th century when the studies of the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus languages date their beginnings.

One of the pioneers in comparative linguistics, the Danish Rasmus Rask, was one of the first who connected Indo-European with other languages in Asia, especially Finno-Ugric and Turkic. Seminal attempts like these were silenced later, among others in William Dwight Whitney’s statement in 1867 that was to become a "decree of the impossibility of ever connecting Indo-European with any other languages." In the beginning of the 19th c. Franz Bopp examined the possible relationship between Indo-European and Kartvelian, and in the 1860s Rudolf von Raumer as well as Graziado Ascoli were advocating the thesis of at Indo-European-Semitic relationship. With a starting point in the same theory, the Slesviger Hermann Møller became one of the pioneers in the laryngeal theory in the 1880s. In 1869, Vilhelm Thomsen proposed a larger Indo-Uralic family, which about 30 years later was to be treated by the Estonian Nicolai Anderson and the British phonetician Henry Sweet. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1960s that long-range comparison was really accelerating, in part by the works by the Finno-Swede Björn Collinder and the Slovenian linguist Bojan âop about Indo-Uralic, in part by the establishment of the Russian Nostraticist school under the leadership of Vladislav Iliã-Svityã, Aharon Dolgopolskij, Vladimir Dybo and Rimma Bulatova. In the 1970s and 1980s the research was ticking over, and then in the 199s it went through an impressive renaissance, not the least with Allan Bombard and John Kern’s "The Nostratic Macrofamily" (1994), but also through continued works by Dolgopolskij and Irén Heged¹s, Sergej Starostin, Vitalij ·everoskin a. o. A special place in the mass media has been taken by the linguists who exorbitantly and uncompromisingly consider it possible to reconstruct proto-forms dating back to the infancy of human language and to prove a genetic relationship between all languages of the Earth: Merritt Ruhlen, Joseph H. Greenberg, and John Bengtson.

The pioneering linguistic research has strangely coincided with new refined examinations in population genetics and palaeontology/palaeoanthropology. We must emphasise the seminal work by Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza, Paolo Menozzi and Joanna Mountains, presented in 1988 under the title "Reconstruction of Human Evolution: Bringing Together Genetic, Archeological and Linguistic Data" (from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 85: 6002-06). The article triggered a flow of similar research that could group the DNA types according to ethnia. Of special importance in this respect is the work by Alan C. Wilson’s research team with mitochondrial DNA in Africa, among others. Whereas Cavalli-Sforza’s team mainly deals with nuclear DNA, Wilson and his followers analyse the mitochondrial DNA that is inherited only on the female line; women’s genealogies are most often easier to reconstruct than men’s. For the moment there are rather extensive analyses of genes of especially blood-types, cystic fibrosis, etc. The inclusion of DNA analyses has given a more complete picture of the situation to-day. The analysis of archaeological, not to mention palaeontological human findings, are still to be waited for.

b) Objectives

The objectives with the analyses are manifold. The main objective is a clarification of a number of questions in Nostratic, or Eurasiatic, languages dealing with the way in which they are or can be related.

1. An analysis of what is unique to the Indo-European languages of Europe. In Indo-European comparative linguistics only little has been done in specifying the shared features of the languages that are Indo-European and spoken in Europe. We are dealing with the core groups Italic, Greek, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, and, depending on the definition of Europe, also Armenian. This shall be compared with the DNA types to reply the question whether it is possible to deal with a core European (not to be mistaken with Proto-European languages like Basque) genetic (proto-) type.

2. What position do the peripheral languages of Europe take in relationship to the core European Indo-European languages, compared to the genetic findings? Here, we are dealing with especially Basque and Germanic. Especially Germanic is mysterious, because one observes a number of sound changes that are atypical to Indo-European, a grammar that deviates strongly from the Indo-European proto-language (conf., e.g., prefixes and suffixes) and finally a number of lexemes that have no cognates in other Indo-European languages. This may be observed as early as in the translation of the Bible by bishop Wulfilas in the 5th c. Under this there must be analysed whether the contemporary division into West and North Germanic languages is reflected in the DNA profiles.

3. Rumanian and Albanian: Although both languages take a central position as characteristically core European languages, there are a number of enigmas regarding their earlier extension. As for Albanian, we are dealing with the presence of the ancestors of the Albanians in South Albania (Epirus) in prehistoric time (unlikely) and in Central Balkan (South Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria) (likely). As for Rumanian it should be clarified whether the Rumanians are autochthonous or have entered the area as a consequence of migration, including whether their area of origin has been connected to Albanian, with which Rumanian has a number of shared features, i.e., also a comparison of Rumanian with Albanian. Since Dacia served as a typical zone of transition during the great migrations in the 4th-5th cc., a complicated set of DNA types is the likely result.

4. Altaic languages: It must be examined whether the thesis about the relationship of the Altaic languages can be verified in the DNA analyses. There must be made tests of Turkic languages, especially on Chuvash and Khalaj, which both take a special position in Turkology. There is a need of a glottochronological calculation model for the language split, a model more refined than the existing 200 word models (usual glottochronology). Same attempts must be done in genetics (genochronology).

5. Whence the results of the Turkic languages are made, similar research must be made with the Uralic languages, dealing especially with the split of first Yukaghir, then Samoyed from the remainder Uralic group. DNA tests should be made both from the northern Tundra Yukaghir (the Waduls) and the southern Taiga Yukaghir (the Oduls).

6. The same is to be done regarding Japanese, Korean, and Ainu, of which the latter for long have been considered Indo-European descendants due to the light skin colour, special phenotype and strong growth of beard.

Additions by Peter Bakker in mail of May 10, 2001:

"1) Gypsy languages come from India. There have also been undertaken genetic examinations (I have the references) that show that Gypsies are genetically closely related to Indians.

"2) I have contacts with someone in Madrid who is interested in the Basques. He is a geneticist and has set up a linguistic research project. I only just got some of his articles. They are linguistically a bit naive. But it might be possible to take the Basques into consideration because they linguistically and genetically are different from other Europeans.

"3. I am also interested in North American Indian languages, and there are many interesting developments there. A deal of archeology is also added, because the genetic, archeological and linguistic data point to very different directions."

A1 List of the 5 most relevant publications of the Principal Investigator (and of his/her collaborators) during the last 5 years;

A2 List of applications on the same (or related) subject already submitted to other funding institutions, if any;

A3 Complete name and affiliation of referee(s) not to be asked to review the application, if any.

NB A sheet will be printed listing the names of the Principal Investigator and of his/her collaborators and signed by all of them.

This sheet will be sent to the ESF office at the following address:

The envelop must be sent out by the deadline of the Call.