Research describes human origins debate before Darwin

It might be the mother of a vast set of modern languages.

On the other hand, it might not.

The role of Nostratic – a hypothetical language first thought to have been uttered more than 12,000 years ago – in the development of human language has raged for more than a century in the fields of linguistics, archeology, anthropology and classics. Central to the controversy is the question of which language families might belong in the Nostratic group, and how scientists have derived their arguments.

Now Joseph C. Salmons, professor of German at UW–Madison, and Brian D. Joseph, professor of linguistics at Ohio State University, have collected the most comprehensive volume ever published representing the major points of view on the question.

Salmons concedes that Nostratic: Sifting the Evidence (John Benjamins: 1998) probably will do little to settle the core controversy. Rather, he says, the goal of the book is to shed light on a number of aspects of this increasingly sophisticated debate, including:

• Whether Nostratic existed at all.
• Whether Nostratic is the root of a huge set of languages in Europe, Asia and Africa.
• Which language families realistically can trace their genesis to Nostratic. Today about 8,000 languages have been grouped into about 250 families, and researchers have been eager to see how much further they can go into the past in this area. Various scholars have linked the Indo-European (for example, English and Hindi), Uralic (Finnish and Hungarian), Altaic (Turkish and Manchu), Kartvelian (Georgian), Afroasiatic (Arabic and Hebrew), Dravidian (Tamil) and Eskimo-Aleut language families to Nostratic.
• What methods scholars have used to evaluate the role of a hypothetical language no living person has heard. Evidence often hinges upon similarities between languages. Nostratic believers argue that the similarities may indicate common origin. Skeptics often see the similarities as coincidence.

After weighing the evidence for and against Nostratic as the potential parent of so many languages, Salmons says he sides with the skeptics. However, he adds, he cannot dismiss Nostratic theory out of hand.

“It would be extremely exciting to be able to establish without a doubt that Indo-European, Uralic, Afroasiatic and various other families are directly and genetically related,” he says. “Unfortunately, for many of us, the evidence is still too tentative.”

Nostratic: Sifting the Evidence grew out of a conference on Nostratic that Salmons and Joseph organized in 1993. The book has just been released and will be in bookstores later this month.