Indo-Uralic languages

Indo-Uralic is a highly controversial linguistic hypothesis proposing a genealogical family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.

Indo-Uralic
(highly controversial)
Geographic
distribution		Eurasia
Linguistic classificationProposed language family
Subdivisions
  • Indo-European
  • Uralic/Uralic–Yukaghir/Uralo-Siberian (Kortlandt)
GlottologNone
Hypothetical Indo-European
phylogenetic clades
Balkan
Other

The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869 (Pedersen 1931:336), though an even earlier version was proposed by Finnish linguist Daniel Europaeus in 1853 and 1863. Both were received with little enthusiasm. Since then, the predominant opinion in the linguistic community has remained that the evidence for such a relationship is insufficient to confirm a genetic relationship versus similarity due to language contact. However, quite a few prominent linguists have always taken the contrary view (e.g. Henry Sweet, Holger Pedersen, Björn Collinder, Warren Cowgill, Jochem Schindler, Eugene Helimski, Frederik Kortlandt and Alwin Kloekhorst).

The Indo-Uralic hypothesis has been questioned by recent linguistic data, contradicting previous argued cognates, finding no support for a genealogical relationship between Uralic and Indo-European.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.