Diachronic Interpretation of the Nostratic Macrofamily

A Comparative Study of Altaic, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Eskimo-Aleut, Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Uralic Proto-Languages

By (author) Yan Kapranov By (author) Bożena Iwanowska By (author) Bolesław Cieślik

Book cover: Diachronic Interpretation of the Nostratic Macrofamily

Extent: 177 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Language & Linguistics

Series: Fields of Linguistics - Aktuelle Fragestellungen und Herausforderungen

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(June 2024)

ISBN: 9783847117308

6.34 x 9.33 inches

Price: $62.00

In stock

This monograph presents a groundbreaking exploration into the Nostratic Macrofamily, a concept that proposes a common ancestral language for several of the world’s foremost language families. The study delves deep into the roots of Altaic, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Eskimo-Aleut, Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Uralic languages, offering a unique perspective on their interconnections and evolutionary paths. The authors examine five pivotal Nostratic etymons from the Swadesh index to illustrate the shared cognitive frameworks of these diverse linguistic groups. This research challenges conventional perspectives on language evolution and introduces new methodologies in cognitive macro-comparative studies. Key to the work is the hypothesis of divergent-convergent and convergent-divergent evolutionary patterns stemming from a common Nostratic origin. Beyond linguistics, this study offers insights into human cognitive development, language formation, and change mechanisms.

Dr habil. Yan Kapranov is a Professor at the School of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw (Poland), a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oulu (Finland), and a Professor at Dmytro Motornyi Tavria State Agrotechnological University (Ukraine). He leads the UEHS Academic and Research Center for Multilingualism in Corpus Translation and Interpreting Studies. His research interests include comparative and macrocomparative linguistics, historical linguistics, corpus-based analysis of multilingual texts, translation studies, and the study of conceptualisation and text-production in religious and educational discourse.

  • By (author) Yan Kapranov
  • By (author) Bożena Iwanowska
  • By (author) Bolesław Cieślik