Indo-Uralic hypothesis

The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea, and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996). Alternatively, it has been proposed that the common protolanguage may have been located north of the Black Sea, with Proto-Uralic moving northwards with the climatic improvement of post-glacial times. == History of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis ==

A history of early Indo-Uralic studies can be found in Holger Pedersen's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century (1931:336-338). Vilhelm Thomsen first raised the possibility of a connection between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in 1869 (336), "he did not pursue the subject very far" (337). The next important statement in this area was that of Nikolai Anderson in 1879. Pedersen said the value of Anderson’s work was "impaired by its many errors" (337). The English phonetician Henry Sweet argued for kinship between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in his semi-popular book The History of Language in 1900 (see especially Sweet 1900:112-121). Sweet's treatment awakened "[g]reat interest" in the question, but "his space was too limited to permit of actual proof" (Pedersen 1931:337). A somewhat longer study by K. B. Wiklund appeared in 1906 and another by Heikki Paasonen in 1908 (i.e. 1907) (ib.). Pedersen considered that these two studies sufficed to settle the question and that, after them, "it seems unnecessary to doubt the relationship further" (ib.). Sweet considered the relationship to be securely established, stating (1900:120; "Aryan" = Indo-European, "Ugrian" = Finno-Ugric): The short name "Indo-Uralic" (German ) for the hypothesis was first introduced by Hannes Sköld 1927. Sound correspondences Among the sound correspondences which Čop did assert were (1972:162): • Uralic = Indo-European . • Uralic = Indo-European . • Uralic sibilants (presumably ) = Indo-European . • Uralic word-initial voiceless stops (presumably ) = Indo-European word-initial voiced aspirates (presumably ) and voiceless stops (presumably ), also Indo-European followed by one of these stops. • Uralic = Indo-European and . == History of opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis ==

The history of early opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis does not appear to have been written. It is clear from the statements of supporters such as Sweet that they were facing considerable opposition and that the general climate of opinion was against them, except perhaps in Scandinavia. Károly Rédei, editor of the etymological dictionary of the Uralic languages (1986a), rejected the idea of a genetic relationship between Uralic and Indo-European, arguing that the lexical items shared by Uralic and Indo-European were due to borrowing from Indo-European into Proto-Uralic (1986b). Perhaps the best-known critique of recent times is that of Jorma Koivulehto. Koivulehto's central contention, agreeing with Rédei's views, is that all of the lexical items claimed to be Indo-Uralic can be explained as loans from Indo-European into Uralic (see below for examples). The linguists Christian Carpelan, Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio suggest that early Indo-European and Uralic stand in early contact and suggest that any similarities between them are explained through early language contact and borrowings. In 2022, a group of scholars concluded that Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European do not share a genealogical relationship with each other, as "whether based on cognacy or loans the argument from lexical resemblances is flawed". According to them, "Uralic is distinctive in western Eurasia. A number of typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim". Previously proposed cognates can be largely explained via borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages. They concluded in regards to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis that "of what we take to be the two statistically soundest recent quantitative tests, Kessler and Lehtonen (2006), using a 100-item Swadesh-like wordlist, found no evidence for Indo-Uralic". == Linguistic similarities ==

Morphological The most common arguments in favour of a relationship between Indo-European and Uralic are based on seemingly common elements of morphology, such as the pronominal roots (*m- for first person; *t- for second person), case markings (accusative *-m; ablative *-ta), interrogative/relative pronouns (*kʷ- "who?, which?"; *y- "who, which" to signal relative clauses). Other, less obvious correspondences are suggested, such as the Indo-European plural marker *-es (or *-s in the accusative plural ) and its Uralic counterpart *-t. This same word-final assibilation of *-t to *-s may also be present in Indo-European second-person singular *-s in comparison with Uralic second-person singular *-t. Compare, within Indo-European itself, *-s second-person singular injunctive, *-si second-person singular present indicative, *-tHa second-person singular perfect, *-te second-person plural present indicative, *tu "you" (singular) nominative, *tei "to you" (singular) enclitic pronoun. These forms suggest that the underlying second-person marker in Indo-European may be *t and that the *u found in forms such as *tu was originally an affixal particle or merely analogical. An Indo-European marginal locative *-en compares in function the most closely with the Uralic locative *-na, in form with the Uralic genitive *-n, which has inspired suggestions of a single Indo-Uralic *n-case with later development into multiple case forms in both families (Pedersen 1933) Similarities have long been noted between the verb conjugation systems of Uralic languages and Indo-European languages. Although it would not be uncommon for a language to borrow heavily from the vocabulary of another language (as in the cases of English from French, Persian from Arabic, and Korean from Chinese), it would be extremely unusual for a language to borrow its basic system of verb conjugation from another. However, the strongly divergent sound systems of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are an aggravating factor both in the morphological and the lexical realm, making it additionally difficult to judge resemblances and interpret them as either borrowings, possible cognates or chance resemblances. Lexical A second type of evidence advanced in favor of an Indo-Uralic family is lexical. A small number of words reconstructable to Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic resemble each other (see list below). The problem is to distinguish between cognates and borrowings. Uralic languages have been in contact with a succession of Indo-European languages for millennia. As a result, many words have been borrowed between them, most often from Indo-European languages into Uralic ones. An example of a Uralic word that cannot be original is Finno-Ugric *śata "hundred". The Proto-Indo-European form of this word was (compare Latin ), which became in early Indo-Iranian (reanalyzed as the neuter nominative–accusative singular of an a stem > Sanskrit , Avestan ). This is evidence that the word was borrowed into Finno-Ugric from Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. This borrowing may have occurred in the region north of the Pontic–Caspian steppes around 2100–1800 BC, the approximate floruit of Indo-Iranian (Anthony 2007:371–411). It provides linguistic evidence for the geographical location of these languages around that time, agreeing with archeological evidence that Indo-European speakers were present in the Pontic-Caspian steppes by around 4500 BCE (the Kurgan hypothesis) and that Uralic speakers may have been established in the Pit-Comb Ware culture to their north in the fifth millennium BCE (Carpelan & Parpola 2001:79). Another ancient borrowing is Finno-Permic *porćas "piglet". This word corresponds closely in form to the Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as , attested by such forms as Latin "hog", Old English (> English farrow "young pig"), Lithuanian "piglet, castrated boar", and Saka pāsa ( Finno-Ugric *-as) is a masculine nominative singular ending, but it is quite meaningless in Uralic languages. This shows that the whole word was borrowed as a unit and is not part of the original Uralic vocabulary. Thus, *śata cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of its phonology, while *porćas cannot be Indo-Uralic on account of their morphology. Such words as those for "hundred", "pig" have something in common: they represent "cultural vocabulary" as opposed to "basic vocabulary". They are likely to have been acquired along with a novel number system and the domestic pig from Indo-Europeans in the south. Similarly, the Indo-Europeans themselves had acquired such words and cultural items from peoples to their south or west, including possibly their words for "ox", (compare English cow) and "grain", (compare English barley). In contrast, basic vocabulary – words such as "me", "hand", "water", and "be" – is much less readily borrowed between languages. If Indo-European and Uralic are genetically related, there should be agreements regarding basic vocabulary, with more agreements if they are closely related, fewer if they are less closely related. Advocates of a genetic relation between Indo-European and Uralic maintain that the borrowings can be filtered out by application of phonological and morphological analysis and that a core of vocabulary common to Indo-European and Uralic remains. As examples they advance such comparisons as Proto-Uralic : Proto-Indo-European , oblique stem , both meaning 'water', and Proto-Uralic : Proto-Indo-European , both meaning 'name'. Objections to this interpretation It has been countered that nothing prevents this common vocabulary from having been borrowed from Proto-Indo-European into Proto-Uralic. For the old loans, it is more the rule than the exception that only the stem is borrowed, without any case-endings. Proto-Uralic has been explained according to sound laws governing substitutions in borrowings (Koivulehto 1999), on the assumption that the original was a zero-grade oblique stem PIE as attested in later Balto-Slavic *inmen- and Proto-Celtic . Proto-Uralic could be a loan from the PIE oblique e-grade form for 'water' or from an indirectly attested cognate root noun *wed-. Proto-Uralic 'give' and PFU 'lead' also make perfect phonologic sense as borrowings. The number systems of Indo-European and Uralic show no commonalities. Moreover, while the numbers in all Indo-European languages can be traced back to reconstructed Proto-Indo-European numbers, this cannot be done for the Uralic numbers, where only "two" and "five" are common to all of the family (roots for 3-6 are common to all subgroups other than Samoyedic, and slightly less widespread roots are known for numerals other than 8 and 9). This would appear to show that if Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are to be related, the connection must lie so far back that the families developed their number systems independently and did not inherit them from their purported common ancestor. Although, the fact that Uralic languages themselves do not share the same numbers across all Uralic branches indicates that they would not with Indo-European languages in any case, even if they were in fact related. It is also objected that some or all of the common vocabulary items claimed are false cognates – words whose resemblance is merely coincidental, like English bad and Persian (bad). == Some possible cognates ==

1Some researchers have interpreted Proto-Uralic as a borrowing from Indo-European that may have replaced a native Proto-Uralic synonym everywhere but in some of the northern fringes of the family (most prominently Proto-Samic ). 2 This word belongs to the r and n stems, a small group of neuter nouns, from an archaic stratum of Indo-European, that alternate -er (or -or) in the nominative and accusative with -en in the other cases. Some languages have leveled the paradigm to one or the other, e.g. English to the r, Old Norse to the n form. 3 Indo-Europeanists are divided on whether to reconstruct this word as *nom(e)n- or as with a preceding "laryngeal". See Delamarre 2003:50 for a summary of views, with references. The o timbre of the root is assured by, among others, Greek ónoma and Latin nōmen (with secondary vowel lengthening). As roots with inherent o are uncommon in Indo-European, most roots having e as their vowel, the underlying root is probably *nem-. The -(e)n is an affixal particle. Whether the e placed in parentheses is inherently part of the word is disputed but probable. 4 The ḷ in Indo-European *pḷlu- represents a vocalic l, a sound found in English in for instance little, where it corresponds to the -le, and metal, where it corresponds to the -al. An earlier form of the Indo-European word was probably . The following resemblance sets are from Aikio (2019). == See also ==