Indo-European nominal inflection in Nostratic perspective

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Authors

BLAŽEK Václav

Year of publication 2014
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Journal of Language Relationship
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Field Linguistics
Keywords Historical linguistics; Indo-European languages; comparative morphology; Nostratic hypothesis
Description The paper summarizes some of the current views on the history and origins of Indo-European nominal declension, including a brief comparison of several hypotheses on the mechanism of arisal of the "thematic" type of declension (o-stems). The reconstructed paradigmatic system is subsequently compared with the respective systems for other language families that form part of the hypothetical Nostratic macrofamily: Semitic (and Afro-Asiatic in general), Kartvelian, Dravidian, Uralic, and Altaic. It is concluded that, since most of the case endings of Proto-Indo-European are explainable either through internal derivation within Indo-European itself or through comparison with other Nostratic languages, the situation points strongly towards an analytic nature of Proto-Nostratic.
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