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Kozintsev A. G. New lexicostatistical data on the Southern adstratum in Proto-Indo-European

Alexander G. KOZINTSEV — Doctor of Historical Sciences, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia, St. Petersburg)
E-mail: agkozintsev@gmail.com

 

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ABSTRACT. The multivariate analysis of the matrix of pairwise lexical matches between 104 languages representing 16 families from The Global Lexicostatistical Database suggests that the two-dimensional (quasi-spatial) model is informative even when basic vocabulary is concerned. Two Semitic languages intuitively chosen at the initial stage of analysis –– reconstructed Northwest Semitic and Akkadian–– are not merely geographically but also lexically closest to IE. Also, the Semitic family as a whole and Middle Egyptian are significantly closer to IE than are other branches of the Afroasiatic macrofamily whereas the one lexically furthest from IE –– Chadic –– is also geographically furthest. While no agreement with the genealogical classification of Afroasiatic languages is seen, the role of the areal factor is obvious. The Dravidian family cannot be regarded as a sister branch of either Kartvelian or any other. The analysis provides no evidence of genetic or areal ties between Dravidian languages and either of the two sister branches of the Indo-Uralic macrofamily. The totality of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological data suggests that the IE homeland was situated east of the Caspian Sea, close to the presumed Indo-Uralic homeland, which can be associated with the eastern Caspian Mesolithic. Proto-Uralians could correlate with the Kelteminar culture, and Indo-Hittites, with one of the early farming cultures of southern Turkmenia. The first Indo-Hittite migration route evidently passed across northern Iran toward Anatolia. Three secondary northward migration routes can be reconstructed: the first, along the western Caspian coast toward the Volga (Khvalynsk ancestors), the second, related to the Darkveti-Meshoko culture, along the eastern Black Sea coast to northwestern Caucasus (both in the fifth millennium BC), and a later migration, Leilatepe-Maykop, in the early fourth millennium, from Iranian Azerbaijan along the Kura valley to north central Caucasus. While all the three northward migrations contributed to the dispersal of IE dialects to the steppe, only the first one appears to have been accompanied by gene flow.

 

KEYWORDS: Indo-European languages, Uralic languages, Semitic languages, lexicostatistics, Nostratics.

 

УДК 81-112
DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2019-3(5)-122-155

 

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