Dené–Caucasian languages

Dené–Caucasian
(widely rejected)
Geographic distribution	scattered in Eurasia and North America
Linguistic classification	Hypothetical language family
Subdivisions	Na-Dené (including Haida) Yeniseian North Caucasian Sino-Tibetan Burushaski Vasconic Tyrsenian (sometimes included) Sumerian (sometimes included) Almosan (rarely included)
Language codes
Glottolog	None

Dené–Caucasian is a discredited language family proposal that includes widely-separated language groups spoken in the Northern Hemisphere: Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages and Burushaski in Asia; Na-Dené languages in North America; as well as Vasconic languages (including Basque) and North Caucasian languages from Europe.

A narrower connection specifically between North American Na-Dené and Siberian Yeniseian (the Dené–Yeniseian languages hypothesis) was proposed by Edward Vajda in 2008, and has met with some acceptance within the community of professional linguists. The validity of the rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all historical linguists.

History of the hypothesis

Classifications similar to Dené–Caucasian were put forward in the 20th century by Alfredo Trombetti, Edward Sapir, Robert Bleichsteiner, Karl Bouda, E. J. Furnée, René Lafon, Robert Shafer, Olivier Guy Tailleur, Morris Swadesh, Vladimir N. Toporov, and other scholars.

Morris Swadesh included all of the members of Dené–Caucasian in a family that he called "Basque-Dennean" (when writing in English, 2006/1971: 223) or "vascodene" (when writing in Spanish, 1959: 114). It was named for Basque and Navajo, the languages at its geographic extremes. According to Swadesh (1959: 114), it included "Basque, the Caucasian languages, Ural-Altaic, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Chinese, Austronesian, Japanese, Chukchi (Siberia), Eskimo-Aleut, Wakash, and Na-Dene", and possibly "Sumerian". Swadesh's Basque-Dennean thus differed from Dené–Caucasian in including (1) Uralic, Altaic, Japanese, Chukotian, and Eskimo-Aleut (languages which are classed as Eurasiatic by the followers of Sergei Starostin and those of Joseph Greenberg), (2) Dravidian, which is classed as Nostratic by Starostin's school, and (3) Austronesian (which according to Starostin is indeed related to Dené–Caucasian, but only at the next stage up, which he termed Dené–Daic, and only via Austric (see Starostin's Borean macrofamily). Swadesh's colleague Mary Haas attributes the origin of the Basque-Dennean hypothesis to Edward Sapir.

In the 1980s, Sergei Starostin, using strict linguistic methods (proposing regular phonological correspondences, reconstructions, glottochronology, etc.), became the first to put the idea that the Caucasian, Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan languages are related on firmer ground. In 1991, Sergei L. Nikolaev added the Na-Dené languages to Starostin's classification.

In 1996, John D. Bengtson added the Vasconic languages (including Basque, its extinct relative or ancestor Aquitanian, and possibly Iberian), and in 1997 he proposed the inclusion of Burushaski. The same year, in his article for Mother Tongue, Bengtson concluded that Sumerian might have been a remnant of a distinct subgroup of the Dené–Caucasian languages.

In 1998, Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin rejected the Amerind affinity of the Almosan (Algonquian-Wakashan) languages, suggesting instead that they had a relationship with Dené–Caucasian. Several years later, he offered a number of lexical and phonological correspondences between the North Caucasian, Salishan, and Wakashan languages, concluding that Salishan and Wakashan may represent a distinct branch of North Caucasian and that their separation from it must postdate the dissolution of the Northeast Caucasian unity (Avar-Andi-Tsezian), which took place around the 2nd or 3rd millennium BC.

Academic concerns with Dené–Caucasian

• The somewhat heavy reliance on the reconstruction of Proto-(North-)Caucasian by Starostin and Nikolayev. This reconstruction contains much uncertainty due to the extreme complexity of the sound systems of the Caucasian languages; the sound correspondences between these languages are difficult to trace.
• The use of the reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan by Peiros and Starostin, parts of which have been criticized on various grounds, although Starostin himself has proposed a few revisions. All reconstructions of Proto-Sino-Tibetan suffer from the facts that many languages of the huge Sino-Tibetan family are underresearched and that the shape of the Sino-Tibetan tree is poorly known and partly controversial.
• The use of Starostin's reconstruction of Proto-Yeniseian rather than the competing one by Vajda or that by Werner.

Family tree proposals

Starostin's theory

The Dené–Caucasian family tree and approximate divergence dates (estimated by modified glottochronology) proposed by S. A. Starostin and his colleagues from the Tower of Babel project:

• Dené–Caucasian languages [8,700 BCE]
  • Na-Dené languages (Athabascan–Eyak–Tlingit)
  • Sino-Vasconic languages [7,900 BCE]
    • Vasconic (see below)
    • Sino-Caucasian languages [6,200 BCE]
      • Burushaski
      • Caucaso-Sino-Yeniseian [5,900 BCE]
        • North Caucasian languages
        • Sino-Yeniseian [5,100 BCE]
          • Yeniseian languages
          • Sino-Tibetan languages

Bengtson's theory

John D. Bengtson groups Basque, Caucasian and Burushaski together in a Macro-Caucasian (earlier Vasco-Caucasian) family (see the section on Macro-Caucasian below). According to him, it is as yet premature to propose other nodes or subgroupings, but he notes that Sumerian seems to share the same number of isoglosses with the (geographically) western branches as with the eastern ones:

• Dené–Caucasian
  • The Macro-Caucasian family
    • Basque
    • North Caucasian
    • Burushaski
  • Sumerian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Yeniseian
  • Na-Dené

Proposed subbranches

Macro-Caucasian

John Bengtson (2008) proposes that, within Dené–Caucasian, the Caucasian languages form a branch together with Basque and Burushaski, based on many shared word roots as well as shared grammar such as:

• the Caucasian plural/collective ending *-/rV/ of nouns, which is preserved in many modern Caucasian languages, as well as sometimes fossilized in singular nouns with collective meaning; one of the many Burushaski plural endings for class I and II (masculine and feminine) nouns is -/aro/.
• the consonant -/t/, which is inserted between the components of some Basque compound nouns and can be compared to the East Caucasian element -*/du/ which is inserted between the noun stem and the endings of cases other than the ergative.
• the presence of compound case endings (agglutinated from the suffixes of two different cases) in all three branches.
• case endings

Karasuk

Main article: Karasuk languages

George van Driem has proposed that the Yeniseian languages are the closest known relatives of Burushaski, based on a small number of similarities in grammar and lexicon. The Karasuk theory as proposed by van Driem does not address other language families that are hypothesized to belong to Dené–Caucasian, so whether the Karasuk hypothesis is compatible or not with the Macro-Caucasian hypothesis remains to be investigated.

See also

• Dené–Yeniseian languages
• Language families and languages
• Proto-language
• Borean languages
• Haplogroup C-M217 (Y-DNA)
• Sino-Uralic

References

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• BENGTSON, John D. (2008), "Materials for a Comparative Grammar of the Dene–Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) Languages." (PDF), Aspects of Comparative Linguistics, vol. 3, Moscow: RSUH Publishers, pp. 45–118
• BENGTSON, John D., 2004. "Some features of Dene–Caucasian phonology (with special reference to Basque)." In Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain (CILL): 33–54.
• BENGTSON, John D., 2003. "Notes on Basque Comparative Phonology." Mother Tongue 8: 21–39.
• BENGTSON, John D., 2002. "The Dene–Caucasian noun prefix *s-." In The Linguist's Linguist: A Collection of Papers in Honour of Alexis Manaster Ramer, ed. by F. Cavoto, pp. 53–57. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1999a. "Review of R.L. Trask, The History of Basque." In Romance Philology 52 (Spring): 219–224.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1999b. "Wider genetic affiliations of the Chinese language." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 27 (1): 1–12.*BENGTSON, John D., 1994. "Edward Sapir and the 'Sino-Dene' Hypothesis." Anthropological Science (Tokyo) 102: 207-230.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1998. "Caucasian and Sino-Tibetan: A Hypothesis of S. A. Starostin." General Linguistics, Vol. 36, no. 1/2, 1998 (1996). Pegasus Press, University of North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1997a. "Ein Vergleich von Buruschaski und Nordkaukasisch [A comparison of B. and North Caucasian]." Georgica 20: 88–94.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1997b. "The riddle of Sumerian: A Dene–Caucasic language?" Mother Tongue 3: 63–74.
• BENGTSON, John D., 1996. "A Final (?) Response to the Basque Debate in Mother Tongue 1." (see External links below)
• BERGER, Hermann, 1998. Die Burushaski-Sprache von Hunza und Nager. 3 volumes. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• BERGER, Hermann, 1974. Das Yasin-Burushaski (Werchikwar). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• BOMHARD, Allan R., 1997. "On the origin of Sumerian." Mother Tongue 3: 75-93.
• CATFORD, J. C., 1977. "Mountain of Tongues: The languages of the Caucasus." Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 283-314.
• DIAKONOFF, Igor M., 1997. "External Connections of the Sumerian Language." Mother Tongue 3: 54-63.
• HANDEL, Zev Joseph (1998). The Medial Systems of Old Chinese and Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PhD thesis). University of California at Berkeley. Archived from the original on 2008-03-05. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
• KOROTAYEV, Andrey, and KAZANKOV, Alexander, 2000. "Regions Based on Social Structure: A Reconsideration". Current Anthropology 41/5 (October, 2000): 668–69.
• CHIRIKBA, Vyacheslav A., 1985. "Баскский и северокавказские языки [Basque and the North Caucasian languages]." In Древняя Анатолия [Ancient Anatolia], pp. 95-105. Moscow: Nauka.
• NIKOLA(Y)EV, Sergei L., 1991. "Sino-Caucasian Languages in America." In Shevoroshkin (1991), pp. 42–66.
• PEIROS, Ilia, and STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 1996. "A comparative vocabulary of five Sino-Tibetan languages". University of Melbourne Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.
• RUHLEN, Merritt, 2001a. "Il Dene–caucasico: una nuova famiglia linguistica." Pluriverso 2: 76–85.
• RUHLEN, Merritt, 2001b. "Taxonomic Controversies in the Twentieth Century", in New Essays on the Origin of Language, ed. by Jürgen Trabant and Sean Ward, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 197–214.
• RUHLEN, Merritt, 1998a. "Dene–Caucasian: A New Linguistic Family," in The Origins and Past of Modern Humans—Towards Reconciliation, ed. by Keiichi Omoto and Phillip V. Tobias, Singapore: World Scientific, 231–46.
• RUHLEN, Merritt, 1998b. "The Origin of the Na-Dene." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 95: 13994–13996.
• RUHLEN, Merritt, 1998c. "The Origin of the Na-Dene." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 13994–96.
• RUHLEN, Merritt. 1997. "Une nouvelle famille de langues: le déné-caucasien," Pour la Science (Dossier, October), 68–73.
• SCHMIDT, Karl Horst, 1994. "Class Inflection and Related Categories in the Caucasus." In Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR, ed. by H. I. Aronson, pp. 185-192. Columbus, OH: Slavica.
• SCHULZE-FÜRHOFF, Wolfgang, 1992. "How Can Class Markers Petrify? Towards a Functional Diachrony of Morphological Subsystems in the East Caucasian Languages." In The Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR: Linguistic Studies, Second Series, ed. by H. I. Aronson, pp. 183-233. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
• SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaliy V., 2004. "Proto-Salishan and Proto-North-Caucasian Consonants: a few cognate sets." in Nostratic Centennial Conference: the Pécs Papers. ed. by. I. Hegedűs & P. Sidwell, pp. 181–191. Pécs: Lingua Franca Group.
• SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaliy V., 2003. "Salishan and North Caucasian." Mother Tongue 8: 39–64.
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A. and Orel, V., 1989. "Etruscan and North Caucasian." Explorations in Language Macrofamilies. Ed. V. Shevoroshkin. Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics. 23. Bochum.
• SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaliy V., 1999 "Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian: two ancient language phyla." In From Neanderthal to Easter Island (Festschrift W. W. Schuhmacher), ed. by N. A. Kirk & P. J. Sidwell. pp. 44–74. Melbourne.
• SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaly V. (Fall 1998), "1998 Symposium on Nostratic at Cambridge", Mother Tongue (31), The Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory: 28–32, retrieved 2008-01-28
• SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaliy V., 1991. (Ed.) Dene–Sino-Caucasian Languages. Bochum: Brockmeyer.
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 2004–2005. Sino-Caucasian [comparative phonology] & Sino-Caucasian [comparative glossary].
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 2002. "A response to Alexander Vovin's criticism of the Sino-Caucasian theory." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 30.1:142–153.
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 2000. "Genesis of the Long Vowels in Sino-Tibetan." In Проблемы изучения дальнего родства языков на рыбеже третьего тысячелетия: Доклады и тезисы международной конференции РГГУ [Problems of the research on the distant origin of languages at the beginning of the third millennium: Talks and abstracts of the international conference of the RGGU], Moscow 2000.
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 1996. "Word-final resonants in Sino-Caucasian." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 24.2: 281–311. (written for the 3rd International Conference on Chinese Linguistics in Hongkong in 1994)
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A., 1995. "Old Chinese Basic Vocabulary: A Historical Perspective." In The Ancestry of the Chinese Language (Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph No. 8), ed. by W. S.-Y. Wang, pp. 225–251. Berkeley, CA.
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A. (1994), "Preface" (PDF), in Sergei A., Starostin; Nikola(y)ev, Sergei L. (eds.), A North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary, Moscow: Asterisk Publishers, pp. 7–199
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A. (1991), "On the Hypothesis of a Genetic Connection Between the Sino-Tibetan Languages and the Yeniseian and North Caucasian Languages", in SHEVOROSHKIN, Vitaliy V. (ed.), Dene–Sino-Caucasian languages: materials from the First International Interdisciplinary Symposium on Language and Prehistory, Ann Harbor: Bochum: Brockmeyer, pp. 12–41 [Translation of Starostin 1984]
• STAROSTIN, Sergei A. (1984), "Гипотеза о генетических связях синотибетских языков с енисейскими и северокавказскими языками [A hypothesis on the genetic relationships of the Sino-Tibetan languages with the Yeniseian and the North Caucasian languages]", in Vardu, I. F. (ed.), Лингвистическая реконструкция и древнейшая история Востока [Linguistic reconstruction and the ancient history of the East], Moscow: Академия наук, Институт востоковедения Institute of Orientalistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, pp. 19–38 [See Starostin 1991 for English translation]
• "The preliminary phylogenetic tree" (PNG), The Tower of Babel, Evolution of Human Language Project, 2006-05-28, retrieved 2008-01-28
• TRASK, R. L., 1999. "Why should a language have any relatives?" Pages 157–176 in: C. Renfrew & D. Nettle (eds.): Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge (UK).
• TRASK, R. L., 1997. "Basque and the Superfamilies". The History of Basque, Routledge, London. (See especially pages 403–408.)
• TRASK, R. L., 1995. "Basque and Dene–Caucasian: A Critique from the Basque Side". Mother Tongue 1:3–82.
• TRASK, R. L., 1994–1995. "Basque: The Search for Relatives (Part 1)." Dhumbadji! 2:3–54.

• VAN DRIEM, George, 2001. "The Languages of the Himalayas." Brill, Leiden.
• VOVIN, Alexander, 2002. "Building a 'bum-pa for Sino-Caucasian." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 30.1: 154–171.
• VOVIN, Alexander, 1997. "The Comparative Method and Ventures Beyond Sino-Tibetan." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 25.2: 308–336.
• WERNER, Heinrich K. (2004): Zur jenissejisch-indianischen Urverwandtschaft [On the Yeniseian-[American] Indian primordial relationship]. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz

Further reading

• Kozintsev, Alexander (2023). "The Dene-Caucasian Macrofamily: Lexicostatistical Classification and Homeland". Mother Tongue. 24 (1): 133–150. doi:10.31826/mot-2023-240109.
• Nikolayev, Sergei. 2014. Possible Dene-Caucasian cognates. The 9th Annual Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative Historical Linguistics. Moscow: RSUH.
• Starostin, George. 2014. Basque / North Caucasian lexical matches on the 50-item wordlist. 9th Annual Readings in memory of S. Starostin. Moscow, RSUH, March 27–28, 2014.
• Vajda, Edward. 2013. Assessing the Sino-Caucasian Hypothesis. Comparative-Historical Linguistics of the XXIst Century: Issues and Perspectives. Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities. Moscow, March 20–22, 2013.

External links

• Moscow Lexical Database (MosLex) by Alexei Kassian, which compares basic vocabulary for Dené–Caucasian languages
• Dené–Caucasian ethno-linguistic map
• The Tower of Babel (site in English and Russian including Proposed family tree and Word-final resonants in Sino-Caucasian)
• A Final (?) Response to the Basque Debate in Mother Tongue 1 (GIF)