Nostratic

Nostratic is a hypothetical language family which includes many of the present-day language families of Eurasia. The idea is that Nostratic was spoken after the ice sheets melted but before people spread out throughout Europe and Asia.

Many of today's languages are descendants of Nostratic, so it is thought. These include the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian languages. The Afroasiatic languages, native to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Near East, as well as the Dravidian languages of the Indian subcontinent, are usually included as well.

The name "Nostratic" is derived from the Latin nostrates, meaning "us" (in other words, fellow countrymen). The idea was expanded in the 1960s by Soviet linguists, called the "Moscovite school" by Bomhard.Bomhard, Allan R. and John C. Kerns 1994. The Nostratic macrofamily: a study in distant linguistic relationship. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Bomhard, Allan R. 1996. Indo-European and the Nostratic hypothesis. Signum.Bomhard, Allan R. 2011. The Nostratic hypothesis in 2011: trends and issues. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man. ISBN (paperback) 978-0-9845383-0-0 It has received renewed attention in English-speaking academia since the 1990s.

The hypothesis is controversial and has varying degrees of acceptance amongst linguists worldwide. Some linguists are unsure.For instance Philip Baldi: "No particular side on the issue is taken in this book" (Baldi 2002:18).

The hypothetical ancestral language of the Nostratic family is called Proto-Nostratic. It would have been spoken between 15,000 and 12,000 BC, in the Epipalaeolithic period, near the end of the last glacial period.


 Related pages 
Historical linguistics

 References 

Category:Linguistics