New Indo-European Language Discovered

[DejaVu]

http://www.sci-news.com/otherscience...icle00403.html
A linguistics researcher at the Macquarie University in Australia has discovered that the language, known as Burushaski, which is spoken by about 90,000 people who reside in a remote area of Pakistan, is Indo-European in origin.

Prof Ilija Casule’s discovery, which has now been verified by a number of the world’s top linguists, has excited linguistics experts around the world.
An entire issue of the eminent international linguistics journal the Journal of Indo-European Studies is devoted to a discussion of his findings later this month.
More than fifty eminent linguists have tried over many years to determine the genetic relationship of Burushaski. But it was Prof Casule’s painstaking research, based on a comprehensive grammatical, phonological, lexical and semantic analysis, which established that the Burushaski language is in fact an Indo-European language most likely descended from one of the ancient Balkan languages.
Prof Casule said that the language is most probably ancient Phrygian.
The Phrygians migrated from Macedonia to Anatolia (today part of Turkey) and were famous for their legendary kings who figure prominently in Greek mythology such as King Midas who turned whatever he touched into gold. They later migrated further east, reaching India. Indeed, according to ancient legends of the Burushaski (or Burusho) people, they are descendants of Alexander the Great.

“People knew of its existence but its Indo-European affiliation was overlooked and it was not analyzed correctly. It is considered a language isolate – not related to any other language in the world in much the same way that the Basque language is classified as a language isolate,” he added.
Tracing the historical path of a language is no easy task. Prof Casule said he became interested in the origins of Burushaski more than 20 years ago.
The remoteness of the area that was independent until the early 1970s when it became part of Pakistan, ensured Burushaski retained certain grammatical and lexical features that led Prof Casule to conclude it is a North-Western Indo-European language, specifically of the Paleobalkanic language group and that it corresponds most closely with Phrygian.
Prof Casule’s work is groundbreaking, not only because it has implications for all the Indo-European language groups, but also provides a new model for figuring out the origins of isolate languages – where they reside in the linguistic family tree and how they developed and blended with other languages to form a new language.

[DejaVu]

Burushaski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burushaski

Linguists recently found an Indo-European language hiding in rural Pakistan.
http://hotword.dictionary.com/burushaski/

[superhorn]

This is not only interesting but surprising . I was aware of the existence of the Burushaski language, but it's curious that it's now being classified as Ind-European . Some linguists have classified it as belonging to Dene-Caucasian .

[Alan]

This is not only interesting but surprising . I was aware of the existence of the Burushaski language, but it's curious that it's now being classified as Ind-European . Some linguists have classified it as belonging to Dene-Caucasian .

That they first classified it as a Caucasian related language shows me again that Caucasian and Indo-European languages are related.

[Yetos]

<<a North-Western Indo-European language, specifically of the Paleobalkanic language group and that it corresponds most closely with Phrygian.>>

That indeed is great news, considering that also tocharian is related with Anatolian languages I think it time to research and have another view of IEans

[Knovas]

That they first classified it as a Caucasian related language shows me again that Caucasian and Indo-European languages are related.

They were probably refering to Georgians and Abhkasians, who don't speak Indo-European. However, Indo-European languages were probably brought to Europe from somewhere near the Caucasus area/Anatolia.

I read about this before but wasn't confirmed, so it seems now it is. Interesting news.

[Taranis]

This is very interesting news.

I'd like to see more details, especially of how the author of this theory thinks that Burushaski sounds do correspond with Proto-Indo-European. It should be noted that Burushaski has a very complex sound inventory, which is indeed reminiscient to those of the Caucasian language families (this applies to all three of them).

<<a North-Western Indo-European language, specifically of the Paleobalkanic language group and that it corresponds most closely with Phrygian.>>

That indeed is great news, considering that also tocharian is related with Anatolian languages I think it time to research and have another view of IEans

Tocharian is in my opinion not particularly close with Anatolian:

- Tocharian has three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), whereas in Proto-Anatolian, masculine and feminine were merged into a single "animated" gender.

- in Proto-Tocharian, like most other branches of IE (other than the Anatolian languages), the laryngeal sounds were lost.

- Proto-Anatolian preserved the palatovelar series as distinct (otherwise you cannot explain the differences between Luwian and Hittite), whereas Tocharian is a Centum language (that is, palatovelars and plain velars merged - in fact, Tocharian merges all three velar series into one).

- In the past, some authors (e.g. Calvert Watkins) have sought to tie Tocharian with the "western" Indo-European languages, especially with the Celtic and Italic languages. In any case, Tocharian appears not to be closely related with the Indo-Iranic languages (which might be expected as the most likely given the geographic proximity).

This is not only interesting but surprising . I was aware of the existence of the Burushaski language, but it's curious that it's now being classified as Ind-European . Some linguists have classified it as belonging to Dene-Caucasian .

The so-called "Dene-Caucasian" family is a proposed macro-family, one of many such propals which are not necessarily convincing. In particular, the above "Dene-Caucasian" suggests a relationship between the Na-Dene languages (a major language family in North America), the Caucasian languages (grouping all three families, which may be not necessarily closely related, into one), the Sino-Tibetan languages, and Basque. It's difficult enough as it is finding ancient relationships between languages (note that this is heavily muddled by borrowings), so I think it's very justified to be sceptical of such proposals.

What I find much more convincing in regarding for the Na-Dene languages in particular is a closer relationship with the Yeniseian languages of Siberia (in contrast, Yeniseian was not included, or kept distinct, in most Dene-Caucasian models).

[Yetos]

This is very interesting news.

Tocharian is in my opinion not particularly close with Anatolian:

- Tocharian has three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), whereas in Proto-Anatolian, masculine and feminine were merged into a single "animated" gender.

- in Proto-Tocharian, like most other branches of IE (other than the Anatolian languages), the laryngeal sounds were lost.

- Proto-Anatolian preserved the palatovelar series as distinct (otherwise you cannot explain the differences between Luwian and Hittite), whereas Tocharian is a Centum language (that is, palatovelars and plain velars merged - in fact, Tocharian merges all three velar series into one).

- In the past, some authors (e.g. Calvert Watkins) have sought to tie Tocharian with the "western" Indo-European languages, especially with the Celtic and Italic languages. In any case, Tocharian appears not to be closely related with the Indo-Iranic languages (which might be expected as the most likely given the geographic proximity).

Indeed but conserning syntax and infinitive Tocharian seems to be ahead of Greek
the comparison among Tocharian and proto Greek what results gave?
cause from what I read in cambrige they found a connection to what we call Greco -Aryan
and in that approach IE are more older in minor Asia than Hettit and anatolian languages,
that is why I am expecting also the results.