Pontic is the proposed
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
or
macrofamilyIn linguistics, a macrofamily, also called a superfamily, is a proposed language family that unites two or more established language families. "Macrofamily" is thus a relative term. It does not designate any particular size of family or any particular time depth of genetic relationship...
, with
Proto-Pontic being the reconstructed
proto-languageA proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead....
. See the disambiguation links provided above for other linguistic and non-linguistic uses of the term
Pontic-Geography:* The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores* Pontus, a region on its southern shores* The Pontic-Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from north of the Black Sea as far as the east as the Caspian Sea...
.
The internal reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language done by Benveniste and Lehmann has set Proto-Indo-European (PIE) typologically quite apart from its daughters. In 1960, Aert Kuipers noticed the parallels between a Northwest Caucasian language,
KabardianThe Kabardian language is closely related to the Adyghe language , both members of the Northwest Caucasian language family. It is spoken mainly in the Russian republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia and in Turkey and the Middle East...
, and PIE.
Pontic is the proposed
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
or
macrofamilyIn linguistics, a macrofamily, also called a superfamily, is a proposed language family that unites two or more established language families. "Macrofamily" is thus a relative term. It does not designate any particular size of family or any particular time depth of genetic relationship...
, with
Proto-Pontic being the reconstructed
proto-languageA proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead....
. See the disambiguation links provided above for other linguistic and non-linguistic uses of the term
Pontic-Geography:* The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores* Pontus, a region on its southern shores* The Pontic-Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from north of the Black Sea as far as the east as the Caspian Sea...
.
History of the proposal
The internal reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language done by Benveniste and Lehmann has set Proto-Indo-European (PIE) typologically quite apart from its daughters. In 1960, Aert Kuipers noticed the parallels between a Northwest Caucasian language,
KabardianThe Kabardian language is closely related to the Adyghe language , both members of the Northwest Caucasian language family. It is spoken mainly in the Russian republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia and in Turkey and the Middle East...
, and PIE. It was Paul Friedrich in 1964, however, who first suggested that PIE might be phylogenetically related to
Proto-CaucasianNorth Caucasian languages is a blanket term for two language phyla spoken chiefly in the north Caucasus and Turkey: the Northwest Caucasian family and the Northeast Caucasian family North Caucasian languages (sometimes called simply Caucasic as opposed to Kartvelian, and to avoid confusion with...
. In 1981, Colarusso examined typological parallels involving consonantism, focusing on the so-called
larygealsThe laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three consonant sounds known as "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
of PIE and in 1989, he published his reconstruction of Proto-Northwest Caucasian (PNWC). Eight years later, the first results of his comparative work on PNWC and PIE were published in his article
Proto-Pontic: Phyletic Links Between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Northwest Caucasian, an event which may be considered the actual beginning of the hypothesis.
Evidence
Examples of similarities that have been noted include:
- Nasal negating particles in both families:
- PIE
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough shell that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients...
*n-: GermanicThe Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
un-, Romance in-, RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
ne-.
- NWC: Ubykh
Ubykh or Ubyx is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s.The word is derived from , its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe language...
m-, AbkhazAbkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
m-.
- A case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. Usually a language is said to "have cases" only if nouns change their form to reflect their case. Others indicate cases in...
variously named "accusative", "oblique" or "objective", marked with nasal suffixes:
- PIE
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough shell that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients...
accusative *-m: LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
luna 'moon' (nom.) vs lunam (acc.).
- NWC: Ubykh kwæy 'well (water source)' (abs.
In ergative-absolutive languages, the absolutive is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb...
) vs kwæyn (obl.An oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...
).
Critics consider these resemblances to be superficial. Many of the similarities can also be found in languages not always included in the suggested Proto-Pontic language family. For example, Japanese and Korean also both have nasal negating particles.
See also
- Pontic language
Pontic Greek is a form of the Greek language originally spoken in the Pontus area on the southern shores of the Black Sea, and today mainly in Greece...
is a Greek languageGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
which was spoken in the PontusPontus or Pontos is a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area, and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Pontos...
, and has no special relationship to Proto-Pontic.