Dene-Caucasian Language Family: Indo-European's Imposing Neighbor

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 พ.ย. 2024

ความคิดเห็น • 88

  • @LearnHittite
    @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

    There's a short blog post by @LuisAldamiz regarding the Sino-Basque hypothesis and it includes Swadesh 100 data for folks to take a look at, interesting stuff forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2014/07/sino-basque-is-not-for-real.html

  • @danieldirocco8282
    @danieldirocco8282 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +17

    ngl, as soon as Basque was mentioned, the already shaky credibility of this theory plummeted lol

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      I suspect many people feel the same way

  • @DataBeingCollected
    @DataBeingCollected 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

    Do you feel that there are many in the field of linguistics who are guilty of survivorship bias?
    I think most of us are familiar with the story of the returning WW2 bombers. For those not familiar, a study was done to determine how to increase bomber survivability over Europe. An analysis was conducted on bullet hole clusters of returning bombers to determine where to put extra armor plating to increase survivability. Logic goes “These areas are full of bullet holes which means the bombers are being shot at these spots, which means we should strengthen those spots.”
    Someone smart stopped the entire process and said “we need to armor the areas where we have a lack of evidence, or no bullet holes. The bombers shot in the areas where we have no data are the bombers that don’t make it back to base.” The data was always there, the evidence was always there, it was just strewn across the fields of France and Germany and out of reach. Once they armored the actual vulnerable spots, the bombers started returning back home in greater numbers giving them the data they needed to confirm the hypothesis.
    There is a specific type of survivorship bias called “push of the past” associated with evolutionary diversification when extinction is a possibility. To me, this specific type of survivorship bias seems very applicable to substratum and superstratum identification in linguistics.

  • @francisnopantses1108
    @francisnopantses1108 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +23

    To be honest, Sinitic historical linguistics is the field I know the most about in linguistics (read a lot of papers) and I don't think Sino-Caucasian is taken seriously at all by Siniticists.

    • @bigbo1764
      @bigbo1764 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Tbf many siniticists don’t actually like entertaining the idea that sino-Tibetan could be genetically related to another language family in the first place. It feels like talking to an Albanian about their language’s relation to Illyrian or talking to a Georgian about the status of kartvelian languages as being genetically unrelated to any other language family.

  • @seanocarraigh7064
    @seanocarraigh7064 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +32

    I'd love to see a video on Austric! I think a connection between Austronesian and Kra-Dai is highly plausible. There's a small number of cognates, but there's regular sound correspondences (and proto-Kra-Dai tone correspond to proto-Austronesian codas), and most of the shared words are basic concepts rather than cultural words (AFAIK, p-Kra-Dai words for agriculture are borrowed from other language groups?). I think the connection between Austronesian and Austroasiatic is weaker though. There's some morphological similarities (namely, the and infixes, and the pa- causative), and a much more limited number of cognates. I think if there is a relationship between Austronesian and Austroasiatic, it'd be a more distant one than the one between Kra-Dai and Austronesian.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      Ok interesting, I'll have to look into it.

    • @jamesdoyle2769
      @jamesdoyle2769 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      From what I read the connection between Kra-Dai and Austronesian is pretty widely accepted (outside China), with Kra-Dai nested in Austronesian. The relationship between Austronesian and Austroasiatic looks areal, and this makes sense given the importance of rice and other shared cultigens in the spread of those groups.

    • @weifan9533
      @weifan9533 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      This is very interesting and I'd like to know more about it as well. I know some words of the Zhuang language (a Kradai language spoken in South China) and when I compare them with corresponding words in Austronesian languages there're often striking similarities. For instance the Zhuang word for eyes is Da or Ta, which is a cognate of Austronesian Mata; the Zhuang word for water is Naem or Raem, a cognate of Austronesian Danum. The Zhuang word for nose is Naeng, which is a possible cognate of Tagalog Ilong or Indonesian Hidung; the Zhuang word for black is Ndaem, a cognate of Indonesian Hitam, and so on so forth.

    • @weifan9533
      @weifan9533 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I noticed Tai-Kradai languages usually retain the 2nd syllable of a disyllabic Austronesian word, such as the case with Ta and Mata, Naem and Danum, or Nok and Manuk, etc.

    • @siyacer
      @siyacer 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Austria

  • @Channel7Tonight
    @Channel7Tonight 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

    What an informative video! It's not just any channel that cites all its sources in the description. You're great man. Cheers. Nice chatting with you at the Premiere.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Yeah nice chatting with you too! Thanks for the kind words.

  • @joyful77777-m
    @joyful77777-m 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

    Let's go! I've been waiting for this. Also, from another comment, could you please check on the Etruscan language and what classification it is? I'd really like a video on Tyrsenian or a hypothesis that Etruscan is a part of Indo-European. Or Trojan, that's cool too. Anyways, a great video, thanks for getting me into linguistics.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      Tyrsenian I have a soft spot for, it was one of the first language families I ever looked into - well before I studied anything formally. I'll put Tyrsenian on the list!

  • @singletaxjax307
    @singletaxjax307 20 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I just wanted to say thank you, in general, for this video, this channel, and the topics you cover.
    Books I've found through this channel have been all I've been reading for about three months now. As a hobbyist with very little previous education in historical linguistics, its been really excellent to get your overviews of current topics in the academic literature and then follow up on the sources directly.
    This is wonderful and thankless work that makes the boundaries of human knowledge somewhat more accessible.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  20 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      Thank you very much for your kind words! These are exactly the sort of messages that motivate me to continue.
      Glad to hear that the books have been useful for you 👍

  • @TGIFSecretagent
    @TGIFSecretagent 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Love this. I like how even though maybe the subject is a little 'stiff' - we still have some cool edits and music. Nice touch and subbed.

  • @abelzatyko1513
    @abelzatyko1513 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

    Is there any actual genetic (in the purely "DNA" sense) between all these groups? C-M217 seems good enough between na-dene and Sino-Tibetan, but caucasian is very shaky, mostly being attributed to the effects of the Mongol invasion, and adding Basque or any ancient languages mentioned seems utterly insane.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      In David Bradley's 2023 paper that I mentioned in the video, it says that he is due to publish some genetic data. Not sure if it's already published or in preprint because I couldn't find anything when I searched for it.

    • @jamesdoyle2769
      @jamesdoyle2769 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      C is a good fit for Na-Dene and Sino-Tibetan but the Kets are predominantly Q. As for Caucasian, you have to remember that the Caucasus region is a refuge, not a point of origin. The language families found there may well have been more widespread in the past and may in fact have originated elsewhere, and this could be true for Y haplotypes too.
      When it comes to R1b is the predominant haplotype, which looks Ind-European but obviously is probably not. R1b is also fairly common among Armenians, where you would instead expect R1a, so there may be some Anatolian connection. Recently the narrative that the Basques are a remnant of the indigenous European population before the Neolithic has been challenged, with a counter-proposal that the Basques are in fact a remnant of the Neolithic population ("Macro-Caucasian" or some such?). We'll see.
      Oh, and you may say that all that would do is link the Basques with Caucasian, and not with the wider group, and that would be a very fair point.

    • @dcdcdc556
      @dcdcdc556 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      I really appreciate @LearnHittite taking this proposal seriously even though it is, at least at first blush, utterly insane. I remain unconvinced myself, however.
      All that said, while it is reasonable to expect some genetic similarities to show up in DNA studies of linguistically relates populations, I think we do need to be cautious about expecting correspondences in all cases. I am an English speaking American, yet I have very little English ancestry; I speak English for a variety of historical reasons unrelated to genetic descent. This is of course a commonplace in modernity, but if you look at other historical periods you can see the adoption of languages from elites or from neighbors that lead to disconnects between genetic and linguistic descent-- western speakers of Turkic languages like Crimean Tatar and Gagauz come to mind. Or consider the Kalash who are a genetic isolate who speak an Indo-Iranian language, while the Burushaski are a linguistic isolate that are genetically similar to nearby Indo-Iranian speakers.

    • @jamesdoyle2769
      @jamesdoyle2769 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      @@dcdcdc556 You’re right. It’s a little early to be convinced of this.

    • @francisnopantses1108
      @francisnopantses1108 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      ​@dcdcdc556 In fact it's also true of Chinese. The Shang elites (earliest known dynasty) did not speak a Sinitic language, and as China expanded they absorbed the Bai Yue people who absolutely did not speak Sinitic languages.

  • @SuperMegaPeanut
    @SuperMegaPeanut 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

    Really stellar video, very interesting and well-presented! I’d love to hear more on the debates around how to group Haida, if you ever plan on making a video on that topic!

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Thanks for the support! And yeah, a Haida video might be on the cards!

  • @patrik421
    @patrik421 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Interesting video. I'm honestly quite skeptical of links between languages that are so geographically dispersed and whose earliest known speakers were of such different genetic origins. While I have a hard time disagreeing with the analogy of Dene-Caucasian as the "garbage can of Eurasian languages" I do think Starostin, Ruhlen et al have raised some worthwhile questions about larger genetic groupings (e.g. Bradley's proposal linking Dene-Yeniseian to Sino-Tibetan) and language contact in deep time (e.g. Blench's work linking Burushaski agropastoral vocabulary to N Caucasian).

  • @M.athematech
    @M.athematech 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    The whole reason arguments about macro-families arise and are never resolved is that the whole concept of language families with branches is deeply flawed. Yes maybe in the case of Polynesians sailing to different remote islands and ceasing contact with each, we can truly and sensibly speak of branching. But that isn't the reality of how the majority of languages arise. Take English, you had Angles, Saxons and Jutes forming patches of a dialect continuum then heading off to Britain with the continuum ending up getting stirred together. The original continuum would have been part of a larger continuum leading into Denmark - and the Danish arrive in Britain and stir the pot more. They also pick up places names from earlier Celtic and Roman inhabitants, although part of the original continuum had already encountered Latin and borrowed from it. And then the Normans arrive with their French derived from Latin (alhough also in a convoluted manner) and that gets heavily mixed in and Middle English emerges as almost a creole. Then you get the Renaissance and people mixing vast amounts of Latin to sound clever and making up words from Latin and Greek. And then the British empire and borrowing from all over the world. And one should not think of English as being an oddity, similar things were occuring throughout history. Notice also that one can form long lists of words for things in British English vs American English and then use the same "logic" that is used to claim certain languages are completely unrelated to argue that British English and American English are in two different languages families ;)

  • @YouTubeUniversity-ko8ug
    @YouTubeUniversity-ko8ug 24 วันที่ผ่านมา

    The first languages ​​and alphabets began with what is called the pictorial alphabet language, then developed into what is called the syllabic alphabet with the syllabic language, then developed into what is called the agglutinative language. We see these very ancient linguistic and alphabetic stages in the language of the Adyghe people, the indigenous people of the Caucasus, and we see some of their alphabet in other languages ​​such as Greek, Georgian, and Russian.
    The Adyghe people are among the oldest peoples in the world, and they are the ones who invented pictorial writing.
    They are also the ones who transformed what they saw in their environment and lives into theatrical works, as the first people to take this path.
    Many ancient nations and peoples followed the method of writing in the pictorial language invented by the Adyghe people, and this indicates the presence of a lot of this writing in many countries of the world through which ancient civilizations passed, which we call historical monuments and the like.
    The Hittites, who are also from the Adyghe people, whose empire began in the northern Caucasus until they ruled all of the Caucasus, Anatolia, Iraq, the Levant, and a large part of Iran.
    The Hittites established a large empire that began in the Caucasus, and their civilization was not limited to Hattusha only, as some claim.
    The Hattians are also from the same people, but they were before the Hittites
    The Kasugs ( The Kassians ) joined the Hittites when they weakened, their own people
    The Kasugs, who are called the Kas people, who are from the Adyghe people, ruled the region for 576 years
    The name Kaf Kas ( Kavkas / Caucasus ) is attributed to the Kas people, and even the name Kas- pian see ( Caspian see )
    The Hittites are the ones who invented cuneiform writing and then developed it into what is called writing in the Mikhi script, which the Adyghe people still use it to this day on their special occasions
    The Hittites were mentioned in the Torah and in the Holy Quran, and Abraham, peace be upon him, dealt with them.
    Al-Ays married a Hittite woman who is called also Esau, he is the twin brother of the Prophet of God, Jacob, peace be upon him, and David, peace be upon him, married a Hittite princess and from them David, peace be upon him, learned the craft of iron, and what is meant by the Almighty’s saying that there is a mighty people in it, as stated in the Holy Quran, and this was the answer of the Jewish people to Moses, peace be upon him, they are the Hittites.
    Have you heard of what is called the year of the vernal equinox?
    This year traces its origins back to the Adyghe people, also called the Circassians.
    Today, according to the calendar, the year of the vernal equinox is: 6232 years

  • @celtofcanaanesurix2245
    @celtofcanaanesurix2245 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

    my main problem with the proposal the genetic and prehistoric dissimilarities between the different branches' speakers. This is especially the case with Basque and Caucasian when compared to Dene-Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan.
    Even the Basque and the Caucasians have minimal of the same admixtures, Basque people being a mix of the same three groups most europeans are (EEF WHG and WSH), whilst Caucasians are usually a mix of CHG, WSH and various west asian groups. the WSH common to both groups would've spoke Proto Indo-European or one of it's immediate dialects when entering both regions.

    • @sylvien2599
      @sylvien2599 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Only language data can prove langauge relatedness though. And genetic data can prove genetic relatedness but genetic data can not prove language relatedness and vice versa.

    • @belstar1128
      @belstar1128 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      yea i think Basque is just a distant relative of indo European or Etruscan

    • @hokton8555
      @hokton8555 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@belstar1128 yeah there are enough extinct languages in the mediterran & middle east, you don't need chinese or native american languages to explain its existence

    • @comradeofthebalance3147
      @comradeofthebalance3147 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@belstar1128 This is worrying to see. Basque and Etrsucan is one thing, but to Indo European? This is beyond speculation through stretching

    • @belstar1128
      @belstar1128 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@comradeofthebalance3147 i don't think its indo european but i think it had a more distant common ancestor. because it certainly is nothing like these other languages people compare it with

  • @Bjorn_Algiz
    @Bjorn_Algiz 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Interesting analysis and overview overall. 😮 love the research.

  • @paulbennett772
    @paulbennett772 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Excellent synopsis! Unfortunately linguists, formerly a very conservative bunch, these days tend to be overly enthusiastic about bizarre new theories. Not quite on the scale of Gullible's Travels, but sometimes not far off.
    Where do they place Ainu, Etruscan, Minoan, or even Hamitic/Semitic and Tamil in their scenarios? Not mentioned probably because too inconvenient.

  • @sahhaf1234
    @sahhaf1234 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    You are Great!

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      YOU are great! Thanks again for your support.

  • @rr02154
    @rr02154 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Are you planning on doing a video on Altaic/Transeurasian?

  • @Ruirspirul
    @Ruirspirul 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    this is wild indeed

  • @nuodso
    @nuodso หลายเดือนก่อน

    The problem with these hypotheses in my opinion is always that we don't know what evidence at this time depth even looks like. Most spoken languages are probably related anyway, but I feel like beyond 10 kA merely linguistic evidence can't be sufficient, but you have to take genetic and archeological evidence into account as well.

  • @michaelyaroslavtsev2444
    @michaelyaroslavtsev2444 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Thanks for the great video.
    Just a minor note: Starostin has stress on the first syllable.
    Both Sergei and George 😊.

  • @jeremias-serus
    @jeremias-serus 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Liked ✅
    Subscribed ✅
    Shared ✅

  • @bingusiswatching6335
    @bingusiswatching6335 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Awesome video dude thanks

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@bingusiswatching6335 thank you!

  • @SebastianSoong
    @SebastianSoong 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Can you do a video on the Borean and Nostratic hypotheses?

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      They are both on the list!

    • @pftrarer6191
      @pftrarer6191 14 วันที่ผ่านมา

      ​@@LearnHittite btw Borean is the largest hyperfamily ever, combining Nostratic, Afroasiatic, Amerindian, Sino-Caucasian and Austric

  • @sylvien2599
    @sylvien2599 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Thanks

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Thank you for your support!

  • @sahhaf1234
    @sahhaf1234 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    please do a video on sino-caucasian.

  • @nukhetyavuz
    @nukhetyavuz 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Id like to learn more about the sumerian na dene caucasian connection…thanks

    • @vecvan
      @vecvan 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Kassian 2014 has an open access paper in Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (CDLJ) on "Lexical Matches between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian"

  • @Svartalf14
    @Svartalf14 หลายเดือนก่อน

    sorry if I'm stone cold ignorant, but are there any non controversial links between Caucasian languages and other families?

  • @karol9205
    @karol9205 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Question related (somehow) to the videom How do proto-languages even come up? How it's possible to language with it's own, original roots and grammar just come up to existence?

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      That's the type of question that deserves its own video!

  • @theosib
    @theosib 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Love the videos. Always fascinating. I do find the music distracting though.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Noted!

    • @vecvan
      @vecvan 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      around the 19:00 minute mark I thought that's too great 😅

    • @vecvan
      @vecvan 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      21:18 👌🤣

    • @TGIFSecretagent
      @TGIFSecretagent 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Nooo the music is great

  • @belstar1128
    @belstar1128 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    i am just a hobbyist polyglot but i don't see how the Sino Tibetan languages can be related to these i do think there could be a connection with north Caucasian languages i don't know anything about the Yeniseian languages apart from stuff people told me online. i know some very basic Navajo and Abkhazian and also some other languages like mandarin Chinese Tibetan Mongolian Korean Chinese most of them not on a conversational level .but basically i noticed a lot of similarities between Tibetan and Mongolian and Korean and then Turkish has similarities with Mongolian and they have things in common with north Caucasian languages .but i guess all of that came later on history because of the Mongol empire and other civilizations.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      What specific similarities did you notice?

    • @belstar1128
      @belstar1128 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@LearnHittite with tibetan i mostly noticed a lot of loan words and similar phonology same with korean so that makes me think they are related. a lot of people already think mongolian and korean is related because of the Altaic family with abkhasian i noticed similar pronunciation to navajo but not any similar vocabulary but they have sounds aren't found in a lot of languages. but i am quite bad at these languages so i am just making speculations but looks like i am not the only one who noticed this. i think there could have been an even older connection with proto altatic and the north cacasian and dene languages i got even more theories that connect most of the worlds languages but its all just a fun hobby for me i don't want to say i know the true origin .sorry for the bad grammar i am out of time and my keyboard is breaking down .

  • @arkaig1
    @arkaig1 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    FYI This is at least adjacent, if not overlapping, if not conflicting, if not helpful... th-cam.com/video/TLNRGGWpOmA/w-d-xo.html -- Reich speaking in June in Hungary re 3 Caucasian clines in his recent researches -- posting above my non-paygrade, so cheers if useful, and sorry if not. And... thanks for the video! :)

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Thank you, I'll check it out (not that I know much about the topic but I respect Reich's work)

    • @zipperpillow
      @zipperpillow 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Very entertaining.

  • @peterszeug308
    @peterszeug308 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Pls don't go the Sinitic route! Stay true rour roots :/

  • @vlagavulvin3847
    @vlagavulvin3847 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Ah, those ole Soviet armchair linguists tended to Marxism-Monogenesism ;) Unlike Vajda (who's definitely the coolest dude), half of them were no farther than the capital city in their life. And the factual material was taken from putrid books, so they were tryna compare not the proto-Dene and proto-Caucasian, but pulling some pieces from their modern state and on their own taste. Comparing stems with inflections and vice versa often even having no guess about it. Starostin's son followed in the dad's footsteps but so far cannae even get Chinese. Nuff said about modern Russian linguistics.

    • @LearnHittite
      @LearnHittite  2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      I always thought that Starostin Snr had undertaken some fieldwork at some point (on N. Caucasian) but I've never actually been able to find it. If it exists at all, it must be stuck in some archive somewhere....