Indo-European and its closest relatives. 1. GrammarThe basic thesis of this book is that the well known and extensively studied Indo-European family of languages is but a branch of a much larger Eurasiatic family that extends from northern Asia to North America. Eurasiatic is seen to consist of Indo-European, Uralic-Yukaghir, Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus-Manchu), Japanese-Korean-Ainu (possibly a distinct subgroup of Eurasiatic), Gilyak, Chuckchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo-Aleut. The author asserts that the evidence for the validity of Eurasiatic as a single linguistic family, including the vocabulary evidence to be presented in Volume II on semantics, confirms his hypothesis since the numerous and interlocking resemblances he finds among the various subgroups can only reasonably be explained by descent from a common ancestor. The evidence in this volume deals in great detail with the distribution of 72 grammatical elements and the forms they take in the various Eurasiatic languages. The book also contains a historical introduction and a discussion of certain phonological phenomena. Of these phenomena, the most important is the vocal-harmony system found in many of these languages that is the ancestor of the so-called Ablaut variations of vowels in Indo-European, still seen in English in such contrasts as "come”/”came.” The origin and earliest form of this system have long been a puzzle to Indo-Europeanists, but in this work they are shown to be the outcome of this original system. An appendix deals with the vowel variation of Ainu, which resembles that of other languages in Eurasiatic. The origin of the Ainu has hitherto been considered a great mystery, and this volume shows a north Asian origin, not, as some have thought, one in Southeast Asia or the Pacific. The book also includes a Classification of Eurasiatic Languages and an Index of the Etymologies. |
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Nutzerbericht - vpfluke - LibraryThingJoseph Greenberg has amassed quite a bit of evidence for super-language families. It is similar to the Nostratic hypotheses, but it does exclude Afro-Asiatic, which Nostratic includes. A web of ... Vollständige Rezension lesen
Inhalt
The Historical Background | 1 |
Some Aspects of the Comparative Phonology | 24 |
ProtoIndoEuropean Vowel Alternations | 32 |
The Chukchi Vowel Harmony System | 40 |
The Gilyak Vowel Harmony System | 41 |
Interdialectal Vowel Variation in Gilyak | 42 |
Vowel Variation in South Mongolian Languages | 43 |
The PreProtoIndoEuropean Vowel Harmony System | 44 |
Grammatical Evidence for Eurasiatic | 61 |
The Ainu Vowel System | 243 |
Distribution of Korean Japanese Ainu and Gilyak 4 | 246 |
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Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: Grammar Joseph Harold Greenberg Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2000 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Ablaut accusative addition adjectives adverbs Ainu Aleut alternation basic Batchelor branches of Eurasiatic Brugmann Chukchi Chukotian Chuvash cited Collinder common compared consonant contrast corresponding dative demonstrative derives discussed Dobrotvorskij dual Eskimo Eurasiatic languages evidence example Finnish Finno-Ugric first-person singular forms function genitive Gilyak grammatical Greek Greenlandic Hattori height harmony Hittite Hokkaido Hokkaido dialects Hungarian imperative indicates Indo-European Indo-Europeanists inflection instances interrogative intransitive Kamchadal Kolyma Korean Koryak Krejnovich Kuriles locative Manchu marker meaning Mongolian Moshiogusa nasal negative non-Chuvash Turkic Nostratic noted oblique occurs Old Church Slavic Old Japanese Old Turkish original participle person phonetic Pilsudski's prefixed pronominal Proto-Indo-European Ramstedt Raychishka reconstructed reflexes root Sakhalin Samoyed Sanskrit second-person second-person plural second-person singular Selkup semantic Siberian Yupik similar singular pronoun Sirenik stem suffix survives third-person plural third-person singular Tocharian transitive verbs Tundra Tungus Turkic languages Uralic variant verbal noun Vovin vowel harmony vowel harmony system word Yukaghir Yupik