Talk:Indo-Uralic languages

Cognate table

I decided to add a meaty list of possible cognates for budding Indo-Uralicists since this article looked a little empty.--Glengordon01 18:27, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I took a link out of the entry of 'I, me'. I didn't think that a site written entirely in Finnish is going to be helpful to the average non-Finnish speaking Anglophone, quite frankly. Secondly, it will get godawful-nasty if we add links like this to every word in this table. Kinda pointless. If people want to track individual words down, they can get a dictionary. This article is about Indo-Uralic -- not Finnish, or Hungarian, or Samoyedic, etc. I think it makes more sense to restrict the topic here to IE and Uralic reconstruction, void of the specifics. The specifics will be found in their respective articles afterall, n'est-ce pas? --Glengordon01 04:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Assibilation

Added by Vuo

 Word-final assibilation of -ti occurs in modern Finnish, a Uralic language.

Irrelevant. This IE-Uralic correspondance works for both the plural (IE *-es, Ur *-t) and the 2ps (IE *-s, Ur *-t). Finnic assibilation (as in Ur *weti > vesi) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the preceding sentences in that paragraph. --Glengordon01 04:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The third person and the stem *i-

i for thir person? Proto-Uralic had -βa. -- anonymous

Yes, Proto-Uralic *sa- (Finnish hän). I'm afraid you're right: There is no expression of the equivalent of IE *ʔi- in Uralic. I'm thinking Altaic and mixing diachrony too. Horrible! Personally, I still think there is an early stem *i for 3rd person oblique here but my views on Indo-Uralic are different and I have trouble calling this stage we're talking about "Indo-Uralic". I consider Uralic, IE and Altaic representatives of three seperate branches (so I don't quite accept the Indo-Uralic hypothesis in its purest form). Indo-Aegean (IE plus Aegean) and Altaic shared special isoglosses since they were both located in the southern regions of this main proto-group, situated somewhere in Central Asia circa 9,000 BCE. With the three language families, *i could be better established. Internally in Indo-Aegean, both *ʔi- and *ʔe- are relatable due to the Centralization event when *i and *u were replaced with central vowels early on in pre-IE: merging to schwa *ɜ (> IE *e) in accented closed syllables, becoming diphthongs *ei and *eu respectively in accented open syllables, or becoming *ɜ and *a respectively in unaccented syllables. This was probably due to areal influence with an early form of Proto-Abkhaz-Adyghe. I reconstruct Indo-Aegean 3ps animate *i, inanimate *in and general 3ps oblique *e, all from earlier 3ps *i / *in and therefore relatable to Altaic *an. It gets more complicated because of split ergativity in the 3ps inanimate 'n' stuff. But that's just my shtick and Wikipedia isn't interested in that because it's too "POV". --Glengordon01 14:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

That's all very interesting because you seem to reach the same conclusions as the Nostratic hypothesis! According to the latter, PIE went through a Great Vowel Steamrollering (as it should IMHO be called) that turned all vowels into *e, except when preceded by **/ʔ/ or when **/i/ and **/u/ became *ai/ei/au/eu. That seems to be the same as your centralization. I only wonder how you arrive at the precise value [ɜ]. Isn't that so precise as to be untestable? – Split ergativity occurs in Kartvelian, another Nostratic branch.

Have you published any of this? I'd like to read more… and of course, if it's published, it's no longer Original Research…

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:13 CEST | 2006/10/29

Deleted sentences

I deleted a couple of sentences which included somewhat unclear or dubious claims:

• "Indo-European and Uralic languages look remarkably similar for neighbouring languages traditionally considered unrelated." -- This is a subjective impression, and as such hardly relevant; moreover, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European look rather different to me at least.
• "One challenge to this research is that it is often assumed that similar words in Uralic and Indo-European languages are simply loans from IE to Uralic, even if this is not chronologically possible" -- I deleted the part after the comma - this could be reintroduced to the article if explained and referenced.
• "We know now that IE and Uralic, both dated to approximately 4000 BCE, were probably very distant from each other at the time. Uralic would have been northward up the Volga River while, if the Ukrainian thesis is correct, PIE would have been centered in the north-west Pontic region." -- While I'm inclined to agree with the idea, I think that the verb know is too strong in claims of speaking areas of proto-languages in remote prehistory; at least, a reference should be provided. --AAikio 20:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems very reasonable to me, actually. --Glengordon01 05:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

And I strongly agree. We "know" nothing, because pots regrettably cannot speak up to now. And let me cancel

one more sentence: "Critics of these efforts object to the potential circularity of the logical basis, since Kloekhorst and Kortlandt are both members of the Leiden School of Indo-European Linguistics, and often write mutually supportive works.", because writing mutually supportive works may, but must not necessarily imply circularity. HJJHolm (talk) 08:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Vetää

(quote: Ante Aikio) "rv - this is regarded an IE loan by standard etymological dictionaries"

Isn't "nimi" and "myydä" also regarded IE loans by standard etymological dictionaries?

The word "vetää" is in the Illich-Svitych's Nostratic poem: k̥aλai palhʌ-k̥ʌ na wetä --Muhaha 13:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

On kuningas etc.

A user with the IP address 82.181.182.83 has reverted a large number of edits back to a previous version of his. Might I offer a few suggestions:

(1) If you wish to remove extensive sections of correctly referenced and formatted text, it might be desirable to get a username so we can track your edits and you can participate with maximum credibility in the Wikipedia process.

(2) You have reverted several formatting errors that I had (at the cost of some labor) corrected, for example in italicization and in use of ś rather than š as per standard Indo-Europeanist usage. (Indo-Iranian šatam gets š as per Indo-European, as does Old Iranian when this sound occurs, e.g. in xšwaš '6'; Sanskrit śatam gets ś because of the standard transcription adopted in the late 19th century. Thus there is inconsistency in the standard transcriptions, but these both stand for the same sound.)

(3) You have eliminated the example kuningas, but this is a standard example in comparing Indo-European and Uralic, used for instance by Henry Sweet in The History of Language (1900) and by Raimo Anttila in Historical and Comparative Linguistics (rev. ed. 1989). In addition, the phonology of this word happens to be particularly clear and easy to convey. Readers deserve to be informed of it. I grant that kuningas is a more recent loan than porćas (also a standard example), but this usefully emphasizes the very long period during which Indo-European and Uralic languages have been in contact and, consequently, have had the opportunity to interact. Let’s give readers both.

Please note that I did not eliminate your addition of porćas but strove to integrate it with the existing text of the article. It is a real contribution.

(4) As to the information you provide on Koivulehto’s arguments, I welcome this. He is clearly a major authority in the field.

(5) You are obviously in a position to make substantial contributions to this and other Wikipedia articles. Please, let’s not get into an editing war (the bane of the wiki format). If you think there are points of view which are left out or need to be emphasized more, I’m sure I would be sympathetic.

(6) There is no article on Koivulehto which is why his name appears in red in the “References” list. Perhaps you could contribute one?

Regards, VikSol 04:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks VikSol,

I take your point and I did overreact to the numerous editing needs in your text by reverting it completely back to an older version. I now see that there is a better way with this discussion site. I tried to make a more careful edit, just adressing the problematic issues as limited as possible and leaving as much as possible intact. I hope we can continue in this constructive way.

(2) (numbers refer to your points above) For the time being (I remain waiting for you to give a more thorough explanation) I left your *š in the text for Indo-Iranian *šatam even though it is a most confusing transliteration. It is generally used for a later Proto-Baltic sound which is already depalatalized and therefore substituted by non-palatalized Finnic *š becoming later Finnish /h/. In contrast the Indo-Iranian sound was still palatalized, as attested by Indo-Aryan and by many Finno-Ugrian loanwords. Only in Proto-Iranian was the sound depalatalized, whereas Indo-Aryan remained with the palatalized *ś. In fact the possibly Indo-Iranian original for *porćas ‘piglet’ is a case in point, it would still have contained a palatal PIE *ḱ or Indo-Iranian *ć (the word is not attested in Indo-Aryan). So right now the text is not internally coherent. How shall we go about? Shall we explain to the reader that in this particular case of *šatam, *š stands for a palatalized sound, or shall we just change it to the unambiguously palatalized *ś?

(As for *ć/*ś it has recently (1999 see Koivulehto 2001, p.255 and references) been shown, that the Proto-Iranian articulation must still have been affricate when the Pre-Iranian palatalization was lost because in Nuristani the representation has conserved a depalatalized affricate /c/ = [ts]. Logically the affricate manner of articulation, as opposed to a fricative one, is a more archaic stage of development intermediate from the PIE palatovelar, and must be reconstructed into Proto-Indo-Iranian as well, but with palatalisation. The original for *śata on the other hand, may well be a younger borrowing from the neighbouring Indo-Aryan branch)

The problems your text highlighted for the etymology of *porćas ‘piglet’ are not really problems. I adjusted the text to explain briefly how the substitutions would have worked. What grounds do you have to put forward an alternative reconstruction **porkos? All satem languages bears testimony of palatalisation, jus as Finno-Permic does! (By the way: Permic has been argued to be a borrowing from Mordvinic, therefore I changed to Finno-Mordvinic)

(3) The example of *kuningas is of course very illustrative but due to its very young age (may be as late as Proto-Nordic, considering its three syllable structure in Proto-Finnic) utterly irrelevant for the historic period considered. In the good spirit of cooperation that you have shown also, I found a way to leave it in the text ignoring one additional problem: Note that from a Uralic point of view, to be precise, the nonsense suffix is not *-as but *-ingas, because **kuning- is not a stem in accordance with phonotactic limitations for Uralic stems.

(6) An article on Koivulehto would take some time. There is one in German in the prologue of Verba Mutuata but I am note sure whether copyright allows us to bring a wild translation of it here? Ay least I would favour caution.

Finally I take issue with the highly problematic mentioning that Proto-Uralic would have been spoken 6700 BCE throughout its historic area. I substituted it with a more mainstream reference bringing the dating a couple of millenia foreword. In fact a very strong case has been made as well by Petri Kallio to bring the datings even more foreward http://www.kotikielenseura.fi/virittaja/hakemistot/jutut/kallio1_2006.html by one or two more millenia or so. Unfortunately only the abstract is available in English. If you insist on Mithens radical datings (not to mention his wide Urheimat!!) we would need to mention Kallios article as well to balance it. But is it necesary for the article at hand, would a short mentioning of the mainstream view be enough? I admit there is a strong logical link to the Indo-Uralic hyphothesis, but the whole subject would be a pandoras box expanding the article disproportionally into archeology.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinji (talk • contribs) 22:45, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Dinji,

(1) Regarding ś versus š:

It’s a classic problem in linguistics for different signs to be used for the same sounds when representing different languages. For example English sh and German sch both represent the voiceless postalveolar sibilant, IPA [ʃ], but use different combinations of letters to represent it. Similarly, in the scholarly transcriptions adopted to represent non-Roman writing systems, sometimes this symbol, sometimes that symbol is used, often depending on what was in fashion at the time the language first came under intensive study. Thus it happens that in Indic studies [ʃ] is represented by ś (earlier often by ç), but in Indo-European studies by š, including in reconstructions of Proto-Indo-Iranian. š also represents [ʃ] in Iranian studies.

The regular outcomes of Indo-Iranian [s] and [ʃ] are [s] and [ʃ] (transcribed s and ś) in Old Indic (i.e. no change), but [h] and [s] in Old Iranian (i.e. [s > h] and [ʃ > s]). However, sandhi phenomena preserve many [ʃ]’s in Old Iranian. So both languages had [s] and [ʃ], but most often not in the same positions.

In short, [ʃ] is represented by š when discussing reconstructed Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Iranian, and Iranian, but by ś when discussing Indic languages (including modern Indo-Aryan languages). Iranian š = Indic ś = IPA [ʃ]. This is a mere convention and has no absolute justification.

My understanding is that in Uralic studies, where you obviously have much more extensive knowledge than I do, ś ordinarily represents the palatal sibilant [ç] and ć the palatal stop [kʲ].

(2) I am aware of the view that the Nuristani languages have an affricate from an earlier č [tʃ] where Sanskrit and Old Iranian have [ʃ], but the matter is a bit complicated and has not really been resolved to my knowledge (I haven’t looked at the material by Koivulehto you mention). Some claim the Nuristani c [ts] is of uncertain origin and that consequently no claims can be based on it. (Perhaps what they have in mind is a development [s > ts].) Others see it as attesting a pre-Indo-Iranian state of Indo-European, when [kʲ] had become the affricate č [tʃ] but not yet the sibilant š [ʃ]. The view you mention, namely that Proto-Indo-Iranian still had č, is probably the dominant one currently, but I see several problems with it. For one thing, Old Iranian and Sanskrit both reconstruct back to a common point [ʃ], not [tʃ], and this [ʃ] is an essential sound in a coherent, integrated sound system. I see no necessity for [tʃ] from [kʲ] to have still existed at this point.

Another problem, which you touch on, is that Finno-Ugric *śata [çata] evidently continues a *[ʃata-] from one of the Indo-European successor languages. This cannot be Baltic, since the PIE m̥ in *km̥tóm would lead to im, not a, and (for various reasons) is not likely to be Slavic. Indo-Aryan is a possible source phonologically but is ruled out by geography as a practical matter. *śata [çata] thus comes from an Indo-Iranian *[ʃata-] or, presuming it had not yet become [sata-], an early Iranian *[ʃata-] (but I am skeptical the language prior to the [s > h] and [ʃ > s] changes can be linguistically defined as Iranian). To me it needlessly complicates the chain of events to suppose Indo-Iranian still had [tʃ], not yet [ʃ].

This suggests to me that *śata comes from Indo-Iranian *[ʃata-], not any earlier or later state of the language.

(3) Your point on the location of Uralic is well taken. Actually, Mithen only claims one site of 6700 BC and later as quite possibly Uralic (based on continuity in a peculiar burial custom). This plausibly locates Uralic in its "general" zone, i.e. to the north of Indo-European. I did not mean to imply Mithen claimed to have located Uralic in the full extent of its historical area.

As you suggest, I’m not sure how much we need to get into a detailed chronology of IE and Uralic in the context of this article. After reading David Anthony’s book, though, it seems to me that the early chronology of IE and Uralic is going to become increasingly relevant. If so, it might become desirable to add a section on chronology.

(4) The defense of using *kuningas is not that it is the most linguistically relevant example but that it is the easiest example for the uninitiated to grasp. So, logically, it could not be in first position, but, pedagogically, there is a case that it should be. However, I am willing to let this go as non-essential.

(5) The reason for reconstructing the Indo-European antecedent of *porćas as either *porḱos or *porkos is that Indo-Europeanists are not in agreement on whether the palatovelar series, ḱ ǵ ǵʱ, IPA [kʲ gʲ gʲʱ], was part of the original language or a later development from k g gʱ, such that k g gʱ calved into two separate series, k g gʱ and ḱ ǵ ǵʱ. The classic view since Brugmann’s time has been that the two series were original, but the trend at present (as I read it) is to view only the plain velars as original, and the palatovelars as a development from them. Still, both views have currency. The dual reconstruction *porḱos or *porkos is meant to be agnostic (a) as to which the original form was, and (b) as to which form was the direct antecedent of Finno-Ugric *porćas.

Possibly the answer to (b) can be determined. I have very little experience in how Finno-Ugric ć (which I presume represents [kʲ]) correlates with Indo-European ḱ [kʲ]. Since ć is phonetically identical to ḱ, it is intuitively attractive to suppose that it was used for IE ḱ, but I don’t know this for a fact; I can also imagine that ć might replace IE k on occasion. Is there a simple or a complicated answer to this?

(6) I have reworked the current version a bit in light of considerations raised, nothing radical.

(7) I don’t know whether copyright restrictions would apply but even a sentence or two providing biographical information would be useful and could always be elaborated.

Regards, VikSol 01:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello VikSol,

From what you write I see that the problem is not really about transliteration but we really do not share the understanding of Indo-Iranian phonology. I am the first to admit that I am reliant on litterature mainly dealing with historic Uralic contacts. But I am confident that this research is bound to use mainstream views of Indo-Iranian soundhistory. The Wikipedia article on Classical_Sanskrit supports my view. Moreover the phonological shape of lexical borrowings in Finno-Ugric may contribution significantly as primary evidence as well.

Proto-Uralic, Finno-Ugric and later Pre-Finnic made a very rigorous destinction between so called palatalized sibilants and non-palatalized sibilants. The palatalised sibilants were:

1) /ć/ = IPA [ʨ] voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate

2) /ś/ = IPA [ɕ] voiceless palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) fricative,

The non-palatalised were:

3) /č/ = IPA [ʧ] voiceless postalveolar affricate,

4) /š/ = IPA [ʃ] voiceless postalveolar fricative,

5) /s/ = IPA [s] voiceless alveolar grooved fricative,

This richness in sibilants makes Finno-Ugric an excellent indicator of the process of depalatalisation in Indo-European. The most known depalatalisation was that of centum languages. Before the centumisation PIE ḱ was substituted by FU /ć/ = IPA [ʨ]. After the centumisation a velar stop was applied.

In the light of FU borrowings a depalatalisation of Proto-Baltic also occurred early. Before that depalatalisation satemized Balto-Slavic /ś/ = IPA [ɕ] (from PIE ḱ) would have rendered Pre-Finnic /ś/ = IPA [ɕ]. Later Proto-Baltic was however depalatalized because the substitution in Finnic is consistantly non-palatal post-alveolar /š/ = IPA [ʃ]

Archaic Indo-Iranian borrowings always has a substitution of historical PIE palatovelars with palatalised FU /ć/ = IPA [ʨ] or palatalised FU /ś/ = IPA [ɕ]. Borrowings from Indo-Aryan likewise. There is no other explanation possible than the fact that PIE ḱ has developed in the palato-alveolar position from Indo-Iranian /ć/ = IPA [ʨ] and further to Indo-Aryan /ś/, which definitely cannot be IPA [ʃ]. Even after developing into Classical_Sanskrit no IPA [ʃ] has appeared in the phonemic system: /ś/ is still represented by IPA [ɕ].

The level of reconstruction common for Avestan, Old Persian and Nuristani on the other hand had already depalatalised sibilants, meaning that alveolo-palatal sounds had become alveolar (perhaps through a post-alveolar intermediate stage). Thus Indo-Iranian /ć/ = IPA [ʨ] had become Proto-Iranian [ʦ] (voiceless alveolar affricate). In Proto-Iranian borrowings the Pre-Finnic substitute of this affricate is intervocalically [-ks-] because Pre-Finnic had neither that affricate or the sequence **ts. Later, after the Iranian affricate had become plain fricative it was substituted by plain [s].

Based on this discussion I will change “Indo-Iranian *šatám” into “Indo-Iranian *ćatám”

On point (5) the controversy is in effect whether there should be reconstructed three points of articulation or just two, taking account the labio-velar series as the third. You are right that there seems to be a tendency to assume, that orignally ther were just two series, the labiovelar one and the palatovelar one. You are perfectly right that as the middle series (plain velar in classic description) is questioned, the palatovelar series has been thought to have aquired its palatalisation as a secondary fronting. Nevertheless, in transliteration it is the standard to keep up the three way convention. And as transliteration is heavily phonemic-based (as opposed to phonetic based) it would certainly not be logical to give up the marked transliteration for the palato-velar series. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinji (talk • contribs) 21:06, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Regards, Dinji —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinji (talk • contribs) 20:29, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad quality article

The section Arguments for relationship between Indo-European and Uralic mainly gives arguments against. Somewhere in the history, I believe, someone actually wrote a section of arguments for the theory. Then others developed the text so that each paragraph also held counterarguments, and so, without keeping an overview, the paras became kind of a negotiation consensus of the opinions proponed by the editors. This is wrong and in disaccord with the principes of wikipedia, which intends to be a reflection of the debate outside, not of the opinions inside. The article should be layouted approximately:

• the arguments for should contain a discourse, a coherent set of arguments leading to the conclusion that PIU is reasonable to believe,
• the arguments against should as systematically as possible try to disprove each argument for, and probably also refer to scientific principles used within linguistics and general philosophy.

Now they're mixed, in such a way that for and against cannot be understood by a non-linguist: for example para 2 in "Arguments for...":

• Numerous words in Indo-European and Uralic resemble each other. The problem is to weed out words due to borrowing...

Now, is "the problem..." an argument against, or is it a sweeping reference to a set of methods used for "weeding out" true cognates? Then a specific method should be referred to, or the "weeding out" problem is a counterargument that shouldn't be the second sentence in the second para in a for-section. Said: Rursus ☻ 09:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I'm inclined to write a short method for writing a compact article. Said: Rursus ☻ 09:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Not if you read it more carefully

From a scientific standpoint, the methods which serve to identify borrowed words leave genetic cognates as their residue, should there be any, so it makes no difference whether they are applied from an "anti-" or a "pro-" perspective, in principle. There may of course be tendentiousness on the part of some applying them, but if correctly applied the methods should work. It is just as important to weed out borrowings for those who hope to establish genetic relationship as for those who hope to disprove it. With all due respect, it's a little over the top to condemn an entire article on this ground. Nevertheless, I may give some thought to clarifying some of the phonological material which in my opinion is a bit abstrusely presented. Sincerely, VikSol 13:50, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Section removed

I have removed the section “Some example words” on the ground that it focuses on words in modern languages, whereas to establish genetic relationship between languages it is ordinarily preferable to use the earliest forms available, e.g. not Russian but Old Russian, or better still Old Church Slavic, likewise not English but Old English or better still Proto-Germanic, since it can be reliably reconstructed and is nearly identical with the earliest runic inscriptions. For example, we can more easily see that Proto-Germanic ek is related to Indo-European *egom than that English I or even Old English ic is, especially once we know the sound law that Indo-European g became Proto-Germanic k. Also, this section was largely superseded when the table "Possible cognates" was added. On the other hand, I think this section retains enough interest that I have moved it here rather than simply deleting it. VikSol 18:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Some example words

Indo-European: French 'moi', English 'me', Russian 'menja'; Finno-Ugric: Estonian 'ma', 'mina', Finnish 'minä'.

IE: English 'water', 'wet', Russian 'vodá'; FU: Finnish and Estonian 'vesi' (oblique 'vete-'), Hungarian 'víz'

IE: Russian 'vodít' (to lead), FU: Finnish 'vetää' (to pull, to lead), Hungarian 'vezetni' (to lead)

Some Indo-European roots (I.E.) and their equivalents in Finno-Ugric languages (F.U.)(examples are added from different languages too):

I.E. mey-, to exchange (derivatives include Latin 'mutare' (to change), German 'mischen' (to mix)), , F.U. meqi-, to sell, give > Estonian 'müük' I.E. mesg-, to wash, F.U. moski-, to wash > Estonian 'mõskma', Hungarian 'mosni'

Well, but these are most probably borrowings, because the Indo-Uralic hypothesis doesn't make any sense from the view of genetics. As far as I can interfere from the spread of the Comb ceramic pottery, the ancestors of Ugrofinians crossed the Urals around 5200 BC. And all the Uralic groups were not behind the Urals much longer, because originally they came from northern China and during their way northwards, they heavily mixed with Proto-Turkic tribes in the Altai region (ca. 5000-8000 BC). Since their language is not close to Turkic languages, they obviously preserved their original one. Thus, the hypothesis is simply nonsensical. How could the language of Indo-Europeans be closely related to a language from northern China?! By the way, the maternal lineages of Ugrofinians show a heavy European influence, which means that Ugrofinian men took women of the Corded Ware culture and this is why many Ugrofinian groups now look European and even blonde. The mystery of many borrowings is thus easily explained. After all, if you steal a European woman, the first thing you ask her is what's her name. And then she will probably ask you for a bit of water. LOL 82.100.61.114 (talk) 01:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Revisions to table

I have tentatively revised the table “Some possible cognates”. The old version of the table is preserved below, in case anybody wants to work with the forms it includes.

The changes made are:

The entry on "stative *-s-" is removed because the basis for it is obscure to me. There is a good case the IE s-aorist is a desiderative in origin.

The entry on yo- rpn : -ja agent noun is removed because their equivalence is far from established, in my opinion.

1p –m and 2p –s are placed under the pronouns they correspond to, as these forms are likely to have a common origin.

Changed "definitive accusative" to "accusative", as the qualification "definite" is meaningless for IE.

A few minor typographical retouches.

Regards, VikSol 01:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The original table was:

Some possible cognates

Meaning	Indo-European	Uralic
'I, me'	*me 'me' (accusative), *mene 'my' (genitive)	*mun, *mina 'I' 1
'you' (singular)	*tu (nominative), *twe (objective), *tewe 'your' (genitive)	tun, *tina
demonstrative pronoun	*so 'this, he/she' (animate nominative)	*ša (third person singular)
'who?' (animate interrogative pronoun)	*kʷi- 'who?, what?' *kʷo- 'who?, what?'	*ken 'who?' *ku- 'who?'
'who, which' (relative pronoun)	*yo-	*-ja (agent noun)
definite accusative	*-m	*-m
ablative/partitive	*-od	*-ta
dual	*-H₁	*-k
nominative/accusative plural	*-es (nominative plural), *-n̥s (accusative plural) < *-m̥ (acc.sg.) + *-(e)s (pl.)	*-t
oblique plural	*-i (pronominal plural) (as in *we-i- 'we', *to-i- 'those')	*-i
first person singular	*-m (first person singular active)	*-m
second person singular	*-s (second person singular active)	*-t
stative	*-s- (aorist), *-es- (stative substantive), *-t (stative substantive)	*-ta
negative particle	*ne 2	*ne 3
'to give'	*deH₃- 4	*toHi-
'to moisten', 'water'	*wed- 'to wet', *wódr̥ 'water' 5	*weti 'water'
'to assign', 'name'	*nem- 'to assign, to allot', *H₁nōmn̥ 'name' 6	*nimi 'name'

Notes

¹ Finnish minä /minæ/, Estonian mina, Nenets /møn^jə/. [1] Uralic reconstruction *mun.

² Latin ne-, Greek ne-, Sanskrit ná, Old High German and Old English ne ~ ni, etc.

³ Hungarian në, Cheremis / Mari nõ-, ni-, Votyak / Udmurt ni-, etc.

⁴ Latin dō, Greek dídōmi, Sanskrit dā-, etc.

⁵ Hittite wātar (instrumental wēdanda), Sanskrit ud-án-, Umbrian utur (ablative une < *udne), Greek húdōr, Old English wæter > English water, etc. This word belongs to the r / n stems, a small group of neuter nouns, belonging to an archaic stratum of Indo-European, that alternate -er (or -or) in the nominative and accusative with -en in the other cases. Most languages have leveled the paradigm to one or the other, e.g. English to the r, Sanskrit to the n form.

⁶ Latin nōmen, Greek ónoma, Sanskrit nāman-, Old English nama > English name, etc.

An asterisk (*) indicates reconstructed forms

Finnish verb conjugation being similar to that of IE languages

The article states:

"[...] Indeed, the Finnish verb conjugation system does appear suspiciously Indo-European-like, and similarities to the verb conjugation systems of Latin, Russian, the Baltic languages, and so forth have been noted for years. While the lexicon of a language might receive very heavy influx from even an unrelated language (such as Arabic words into Persian, Italian into Maltese, or most strikingly, Chinese into Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese), entire verb conjugation systems would not be expected to be borrowed."

However, the article on Finnish grammar says:

"[...] Perfect: corresponds to the English present perfect ("I have eaten") in most of its usages, but can carry more sense than in English of a past action with present effects. The form is Germanic of origin, and uses the verb olla "to be" in the present tense as an auxiliary verb. Personal suffixes are added to the auxiliary, while the main verb is in the -nut/-nyt participle form. For example, olen ottanut "I have taken", where ole- is the auxiliary verb stem, -n is the personal suffix for "I", otta- is the stem for the main verb, and -nut is the participle marker. [...]"

Doesn't the latter quote party explain these similarities? I'm no expert so I don't know if that's just a tiny bit of it, but shouldn't it at least be noted?

-- HannesP (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Two different types of verb conjugations are being discussed. In the first case you gave they are considering inflectional endings, so if I take Latin Ferre in the present tense, I get:

fero fers fert ferimus feritis ferunt

You see there are endings which tell you what the verb is doing. In the second case they are talking about the use of an auxiliary verb "to have", this gives the English form "I have gone".

So these are entirely differents types of structures.Ekwos (talk) 21:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It makes absolutely no sense to compare recent languages two times 4000 years apart, where experts have reconstructed the proto types since decennia. HJJHolm (talk) 08:14, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Numeral "one" and first person "-k"

Is the IE root of the number 1 *oiH (with a laryngeal)? If it is, couldn't that be connected to Uralic *ykti assuming that the "t" is analogy from *kakti (two), so that the root is actually *yki?

Uralic "1" must indeed be *üki originally. While this is commonly suffixes (or analogized) to *ükti, forms like Erzya /vejke/ reflect *üki > vej > vej-ke (from *ükti this would be ˣvevte > ˣvevt-ke). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:58, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Does the Hungarian first person suffix -k go back to Proto-Uralic? If it goes back to PU *-k, couldn't it be connected to PIE *-h₂e or *-oh₂?

--85.156.225.195 (talk) 11:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Another Uralic-IE numeral k/laryngeal correspondence: Uralic *kakta (*ka- assuming that the *-kta is a suffix) and IE *h₂e-l-ter (Latin alter) & *h₂e-n-ter (English other, Swedish andra). --85.156.225.235 (talk) 12:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Y'kno, before this gets out of hand, this page isn't for discussion about the topic in general, but about its Wikipedia page. If you're interested in general discussion about Indo-Uralic, try eg. the Nostratic group at Yahoo.

Anyway, I'm afraid your segmentation is ad hoc. *kakta is also limited to Finno-Volgaic, while Ugric and Samoyedic point to *kektä. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:03, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Similarities to Indo-Iranian

How do you determine that those posts were "unrelated fringe" theories? The article on Indo-Uralic (itself a fringe theory) made a claim that basic vocabulary was were not shared between Indo-European and Uralic and cites specific examples. I provided words verifiable using any dictionary to show that claim was misleading and that similarities do exist between Uralic and Indo-Iranian, a major branch of Indo-European.

Abundant examples of Indo-Iranian / Uralic similarities are already known, certainly. Such cases cannot testify for Indo-Uralic kinship though (accepted comparisions have mostly been explained as Indo-European loanwords in the Uralic languages) unless the similarities can be shown to persist to the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic languages.

A hypothesis according to which Uralic is a branch of Indo-Iranian could be entertained, of course, but this is an entirely different thing from Indo-Uralic, which is the idea that Indo-European and Uralic are two sister branches of a single language family. Though speculative, the IU hypothesis has at least been discussed in reliable, peer-reviewed sources for a century.

The Finnish word for hand/arm is similar to the Sanskrit word for fist. This is not presenting a theory but is a statement of fact.

    When compared on a conceptual basis basic vocabulary words are shared between Uralic and Indo-European.
       Hungarian hand (kéz), Finnish hand/arm (käsi), Sanskrit fist (kAzi).  Hungarian water (víz), Finnish water/wash 
    (vesi), Sanskrit rain (viSTi). Hungarian be/exist (van), Sanskrit existence (jIvana).  Finnish be/have/exist (olla), 
    Estonian be/have/live (olema), Sanskrit mother (allA), Sanskrit unborn (aja).

It takes more than similarity to establish words as cognates. FWIW these comparisions (which seem to be sourced from a self-published work anyway, and hence unsuitable for inclusion here) can be easily written off as superficial, due to failing to take into account morphological analysis and historical phonology:

• The Uralic roots for "hand/arm" and "water" are *kätə and *wetə with original *t (cf. e.g. Mari kit and wüt, or the Finnish essive forms kätenä, vetenä), not a sibilant as in the offered Sanskrit counterparts.
• Sanskrit does not have a phoneme /z/, so the claim that "fist" is kAzi must be mistaken in some fashion.
• Hungarian van and Finnic ole- are from the same Uralic root *walə-, yet treated separately here.
• The structure of Sanskrit jīvana is jīva + na (cf. e.g. jīvati "to live"), not jī + vana as required for the comparision with Hungarian.
• Similarly, the final n in Hungarian van is only present as the 3rd person ending and not a part of the root. Cf. e.g. vagyok "I am".
• The semantic comparision between "to be" and "mother" is completely arbitrary.

Hence all this must be written off as amusing coincidences, just as much as cases like Hungarian eszik ~ German essen (both "to eat") or Hungarian ház ~ German Haus (both "house").

Some other comparisions you had included fall prey to other types of pitfalls: e.g. Hungarian barát indeed is related to Sanskrit bhrātā (or just as well English brother, etc.), but this must be due to the word having been loaned from the neighboring Slavic languages. Comparision between all the 30-odd Uralic languages reveals that Hungarian words beginning with b do not have Uralic origins.

You use terms such as "but this must be due","must be mistaken in some fashion" which strongly indicates these statements are nothing more than your opinion. You are correct Sanskrit does not contain /z/, it is written ( काशि) kAzi but pronounced Kāśi. The /z/ in Hungarian can be explained by sh/zh > s/z. The reconstructed Proto-Uralic roots you present are hypothetical not concrete. But this is irrelevant to the article and you are avoiding the question because the article is not about Pro-Uralic reconstruction it is about whether or not Indo-European languages have commonalities with Uralic. Wikipedia is not a platform for your specific views or mine. The article stated a very specific point. That there were no similarities between Indo-European and Uralic for basic words like hand. I provided concrete examples of similar sounding words with similar meanings, verifiable using any standard dictionary, which does make them suitable for inclusion. You deleted the entry claiming it was irrelevant, which turns out is simply your way of saying it contradicts your existing views. Whether you think the sound similarities are false or not is irrelevant, the sound similarities still exist and that is what the article was about. How these similarities fit or don't the proto-Uralic reconstructions is for a different article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.16.80.41 (talk) 16:55, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

The article's claim is not to be taken as "no Indo-European language has a hand-related word that would resemble any hand-related word in any Uralic language". (If it were that easy, let us note English hand ~ colloquial Helsinki Finnish handu, and call it a day! Eh?) The claim is instead "the most basic Indo-European hand-related words do not resemble the most basic Uralic hand-related words". Locating resemblances involving isolated Hungarian words or isolated Sanskrit words is irrelevant to this point — even if they didn't contradict known sound laws of the languages' development.

Point is, the Indo-Uralic theory discusses is the possible relationship of the Uralic and Indo-European families by common descent. For this it needs to be determined what elements in the modern U and IE languages represent ancient inheritance, and what represent newer innovations (coinages, derivatives, loanwords). Though not all details of reconstruction are relevant for this, the task cannot be sidestepped entirely. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 19:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

The article also presents the view that Proto-Indo-Uralic speakers originated north of the Caspian and that Proto-Indo-European branched off westward from there, showing a pre-existing bias towards European languages. The article completely ignores the eastward branch of Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian. A branch that is heavily documented as having close contact with the Uralic speakers. Dr Kuz'mina is a highly respected and influential archaeologist and her book on the topic won national awards. Extensive contact between the Uralic speakers and Indo-Iranian speakers in the Siberia region is not a fringe theory. It is a standard in many university curriculum. One example:

   Some of the earliest Khanty-Mansi seem to have adopted horsebreeding from the Indo-European peoples who became 
   established in the steppe and forest-steppe areas of Western Siberia after 3,000BC (the early ancestors of the 
   Scythians, Persians and modern peoples of northern India).

Dr Kuz'mina's work that the homeland for Proto-Indo-Iranian was in the Urals is very comprehensive and is very relevant to a consideration of the homeland of Indo-Uralic since it is the accepted standard that the homeland for the Uralic speakers is in the same location. Wikipedia already considers her work valid when talking about the origins of Indo-Iranians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.53.100.116 (talk) 15:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

This part, on closer look, seems indeed respectable, if kind of irrelevant. My apologies for lumping it as a fringe position. Uralic-II contacts after the families had already separated are not particularly relevant here though, and comments to the effect that her ideas about the Indo-Iranian homeland "support the possibility that Indo-Uralic is a later evolution of the Indo-Iranian branch" would be an unwarranted conclusion. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 00:51, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

• Apology accepted so I won't push the issue any further. Although I still believe that Kuz'mina's work should cause a serious rethinking of the evolution of the Uralic languages because it introduces a new variable into the matrix that was always discarded in the past. Indo-Iranian words in Uralic, especially Hungarian were always treated as something gained from casual contact, and not a developmental influence. It was always believed the distance between them made any other form of adoption impossible, so other explanations for similarities were always looked for. For example, loan words attributed to Slavic are frequently originally loaned from Indo-Iranian into Slavic. Kuz'mina makes it possible to consider that no Slavic intermediary was required, and as such the etymology of a vast array of Uralic words may be incorrect. Hungarian words can be similar to Slavic because they both came from the same source and not each other. When you change a significant variable then it affects the entire resulting formula. You can not claim that Indo-Iranian was born in the same region as Uralic and no longer consider seriously that the two significantly affected the development of each other. For example, Proto-Uralic does not consider aspirated consonants, a feature of proto-Indo-Iranian still present in Sanskrit, /kh/ph/ etc. This feature although not present in modern Hungarian was present in 9th century Hungarian, written as two separate /k/ sounds. The pre-Latin alphabet contained the /kh/ sound which was dropped in the period of Latinization. This was not a loan word but a feature of their alphabet. The fact that it was so easily dropped shows that by the time of their arrival in Europe loss of aspiration must have already been widespread. It was a sound that had fallen into disuse and they recognized this when constructing their new alphabet. It also raises the question if a loss of aspiration occurred in other Uralic languages. If we consider Indo-Iranian aspirated consonants and drop the /h/ the resulting word frequently resembles Hungarian. Sanskrit digging (khana) Hungarian shovel/spoon (kanál), Sanskrit soil (sthala), Hungarian soil (talaj), Sanskrit leaf (pa/pha) - pha also prefixes tree (phalada), Hungarian tree (fa), Sanskrit a species of grain (magha), Hungarian seed (mag). Coincidence? Possibly, but it can't be determined for sure until the entire reconstruction of Proto-Uralic is re-examined with Indo-Iranian evolution in mind. You stated "Uralic-II contacts after the families had already separated", but this view is from the perspective that Indo-Iranian migrated into the area. If we consider Indo-European originated north of the Caspian and the Urals/Kazakhstan are the homeland of Indo-iranian then this presents a continuous period of occupation by Proto-Iranians in that region, traceable back through the period of Uralic evolution and not simply contact after their separation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.53.100.116 (talk) 18:36, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

References

Dead link

Dead external link at bottom of page: "Early Indo-Uralic linguistic relationships: Real kinship and imagined contacts" by Eugene Helimski (1999) .

A search on google.ca gave url http://aluarium.net/forum/attachment.php?aid=123 which may perhaps be new link to use.

Cool dude ragnar (talk) 01:28, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Section moved from article

The following section has been removed from the article as it basically represents a retort to parts of the article, using discursive but unencyclopedic language suited to the talk page but not to the article, such as "we need a little explanation on how [something stated in the contested section]", or "If the Uralic word is borrowed from Indo-European, why is it found in nearly identical form right across Siberia?". Please discuss these disagreements on this talk page, not in the article itself, and when you can come up with a unitary summary (not a sequel of sections and ounter-sections) of the state of things and the stances of the parties involved, add that to the article. LjL (talk) 00:34, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Responses to objections

Despite a large number of known post-PIE Neolithical cultural loanwords (such as 'hundred' and 'pig' mentioned above), the alleged earliest layer of PIE loans into PU contains almost no words of this type. The words concerned instead represent basic vocabulary (pronoun roots, verbs such as 'do', 'go', 'give') – unlikely to have been borrowed – or items appropriate to a Mesolithic level of culture and therefore plausible as shared terms.

With regard to the postulated equivalence of Uralic -i and Indo-European -en, we need a little more explanation on how "sound laws", which are regular by definition, can be equivalent to "substitutions in borrowings", which are by definition analogical and therefore not regular, phonologically speaking. Koivulehto’s position may be possible; the issue is whether it is the most compelling explanation of the data.

The points raised concerning the words for 'name’, 'water', and 'give' require a glance at the possible relations of Indo-European and Uralic with other language families, in particular the languages hypothetically grouped as Uralo-Siberian by Fortescue, Eurasiatic by Greenberg, and Nostratic by Holger Pedersen and various successors of his. While it is perfectly true that the Uralic words for these things could be derived from the Indo-European ones (or vice versa), the Uralic words have apparent equivalents among other languages variously identified as "Uralo-Siberian" or "Eurasiatic". For example, according to Fortescue (1998:158), Proto-Finno-Ugric *toɣe- 'bring, take, give' is cognate with Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan *teɣiŋrə- 'pull out' and Proto-Eskimo *teɣu- 'take'. He reconstructs these forms to a Proto-Uralo-Siberian *toɣə- 'take'.

If the Uralic word is borrowed from Indo-European, why is it found in nearly identical form right across Siberia? Possible cognates are also found for the words for 'name' in Chukchi nənnə 'name' and Old Japanese na 'name' and for 'water' in Evenki udun 'rain', Even udən 'rain', and Ainu owata 'water' (Greenberg 2002). Thus, alongside the hypothesis of borrowing from Indo-European, another possibility is that Indo-European and Uralic themselves belong to a larger grouping.

With regard to numerals, Frederik Kortlandt states (1986:83-84):

The wide attestation of the Indo-European numerals must be attributed to the development of trade resulting from the increased mobility which was the primary cause of the Indo-European expansions. Numerals do not belong to the basic vocabulary of a neolithic culture, as is clear from their absence in Proto-Uralic and from the spread of Chinese numerals throughout East Asia.

Finally, the claim that all such forms are "false cognates" is not widely accepted. The disagreements between e.g. Koivulehto and Kortlandt do not turn on whether the forms under discussion are true cognates, which is generally accepted, but on whether they result from borrowing or genetic inheritance. This is thus the key point at issue.

I found material that might be useful, but I'm not sure how to add

JOURNAL ARTICLE: C.C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, Uralic and Caucasian Author: Frederik Kortlandt Journal: Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics Bd. 122 (2009), pp. 39-47 (9 pages) Published by: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (GmbH & Co. KG)

Relevant text: "The idea of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic has become fairly well accepted among specialists (e.g. Collinder 1965, 1974). Gimbutas's theory that the Indo-Europeans moved from a primary homeland north of the Caspian Sea to a secondary homeland north of the Black Sea (e.g. 1985) is fully in agreement with the view that their language developed from an Indo-Uralic proto-system which was modified under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum, perhaps in the sixth millennium ВС (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f., Kortlandt 1990, 2002). Johannes Knobloch has suggested that the thematic vowel *-e/o- in the Indo-European verbal inflection represents an earlier object marker (1953). I have argued that the thematic present and the perfect originally had a dative subject, reflecting an earlier intransitive construction with an indirect object (1983). For Proto-Indo-Uralic we can reconstruct a genitive in *-n, which is reflected in the oblique stem form of the Indo-European heteroclitics, a lative-accusative in *-m, a dative-locative in *-i, an ablative-instrumental in *-t, which is reflected as both -t and -s in Indo-European, plural markers *-t and dual *-ki, personal pronouns *mi 'I', *ti 'thou', *me 'we', *te 'you' and cor-responding verbal endings, reflexive *u, demonstratives, participles, derivational suffixes of nouns and verbs, negative *n- and interrogative *k- (cf. Kortlandt 2002). The rise of the ergative construction, gram- matical gender and adjectival agreement can be attributed to North Caucasian influence and may have proceeded as indicated by Pedersen (1907). It is important to note that the accusative is of Indo-Uralic origin and therefore older than the ergative. This explains the peculiar construction of Russian vetrom sneslo krysu 'the wind blew off the roof, where the inanimate agent is in the instrumental and the object is in the accusative. While the Indo-Uralic component of the lexicon (Uhlenbeck's A) has been a focus of research in the past, the identification of the non-Indo-Uralic component (Uhlenbeck's B) remains a task for the future. In view of the large number of consonants and the minimal vowel system of Proto-Indo-European, the northern Caucasus seems to be the obvious place to look (cf. Starostin 2007)."

8.36.251.209 (talk) 21:48, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Religion

I'm not saying I'm giving this Indo-Uralic any credence, but the languages were just elements of an Indo-European and a Uralic culture and there are some fascinating parallels between Uralic and Indo-European religion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 03:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Ket is not a Uralic language

In the "Some possible cognates" table, the accusative case lists a Uralic example "Ket -m". However, Ket is Yeniseian, not Uralic. It also doesn't have an accusative case. Is there some other language the table meant to refer to? Or is that just a nonsense part of the entry?

204.195.47.196 (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Several similarities of IE and Uralic languages are more eastern-looking rather than IE borrowings

If Uralic *nimi was borrowed from PIE, how could we explain that in 17th century Yukaghir, the word for "name" was recorded as Nim?
Also the word for 10. In 18th century Omok Yukaghir it's kimneľ, which is much more similar to Finnic and Mordvin and shows nothing resembling Samoyedic.
I suggest when we are talking about Indo-Uralic, we'd better not ignore the Yukaghir languages, which is very unlikely having contact with PIE.
Furthermore, the root *nimi seems to have contact with Tungusic, or related to it, as in Proto-Tungusic the root for "name" is reconstructed as *gerbǖ. Also the acc. suffixes in Manchu (-be) and Evenki (-me/-ve),, and 1st person pronouns and more.
m-T personal pronouns are very common through northern Eurasia, but only there. They are very rare in other parts of the world, and cannot be explained as coincidence.
It's possible that some PIE roots once came from Siberia, before the oldest PIE form already reconstructed. There are evidences that a/some Siberian population(s) had affected Karelian mesolithic EHGs and Steppe Maykop. 17lcxdudu (talk) 12:59, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The idea of Yukaghir as a "third branch of Indo-Uralic" is nascently there in some early literature such as Paasonen (1907); and see also our version of Uralic–Yukaghir languages circa 2016, which had a somewhat OR but informative essay about this. But this idea has really not been worked on by anyone in decades — it seems people who accept both of these relationships tend to move on to wholesale Nostratic / Eurasiatic (and e.g. any argument from M/T pronouns certainly points in that direction). If you're in a position to work on this yourself, there would be surely some interest for it … but, of course, should not be done on Wikipedia.

The early attestation of Yukaghir nim is unfortunately most likely a transmission error from an original †niw (*niw is also what can be reconstructed for Proto-Yukaghir from all later records), as was recently noted by Zhivlov (2022). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Koivulehto

An interesting quote from the article 'The earliest contacts between Indo-European and Uralic speakers in the light of lexical loans' by Koivulehto is:

"A somewhat greater chance of saving the [Nostratic] hypothesis may perhaps be found in some grammatical morphemes and similarities in some pronouns. But, once again, the lexical material, as presented e.g. in this paper, does not qualify as evidence." (with the note: "Note that I am not opposed to the Nostratic hypothesis as such (cf. Koivulehto 1994b: 145). I only want to stress that the lexical material like that presented in Section I in this paper cannot be used as evidence to support it.")

It is obvious to me that if there is a genetic relation between Indo-European and Uralic languages, the strongest evidence is the amount of similarities in grammatical morphemes (something not at all easily borrowed I'd think). Exarchus (talk) 18:08, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Example table formatting

There has been, it seems to me, some sort of a years-slow tug-of-war here between whether the table should show real attested forms (which some passing-by editors will then accuse to perhaps not represent the protolanguages) versus PIE and PU reconstructions (which some other passing-by editors will then accuse to not represent the real evidence, such that perhaps some could have been fabricated). The current version with both seems unfortunately cumbersome, and would get even more so if we don't restrict what example languages get listed — there's clearly no room to cover all ~40 Uralic and ~400 Indo-European languages all at once. Can we perhaps improve this? I would suggest leaning on Wiktionary's coverage of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic, which is in decent shape by now at least for lexicon (the coverage of suffixes more precarious I think). Linking there would help with the 2nd concern while allowing a much more compact presentation. Any other issues about this that would come up? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:20, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

There’s been a bit of a discussion on other macrofamily proposals that we don’t need giant cognate sets presented for hypothetical macrofamilies which lack meaningful acceptance, I don’t really see why that wouldn’t apply here. The table does not represent a relationship between the languages which is accepted as real by most mainstream linguists, and therefore serves more to either make a case for Indo-Uralic or frankly misrepresent the understanding of the relationship between them on the basis of random claimed cognates. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 22:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what are "random" claimed cognates (false cognates? to claim that would be in turn to insist on making a case against Indo-Uralic). I don't suggest trying to expand the table much from where it is, but language relationships are data-driven and it would be impossible to reasonably present an overview of what the concept is without going over some of the lexicon for it too. In the Indo-Uralic case, we have 150+ years of research to go on on and would have the option to focus on some particular comparisons that have been debated in detail.

The "table" does not necessarily even have to be a table: if we had e.g. a paragraph-long discussion altogether on *wodr̥ ~ *wetə, it could be simply a paragraph or two rather than crammed into a table and endnotes to it. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:37, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

but language relationships are data-driven and it would be impossible to reasonably present an overview of what the concept is without going over some of the lexicon for it too

but this is a case for the small table below, not a big list of words that the majority of linguists don’t accept as related, because Wikipedia’s general interest nature means we shouldn’t really be expecting the average reader to understand what may very much look like related word pairs aren’t accepted as such.

you don’t need to make the case against Indo-Uralic to say they’re false cognates when the linguistic mainstream typically doesn’t accept the macrofamily proposal, not accepting and an affirmative rejection are distinct things. Unless that big table contains explicit pairs from WP:RS sourcing it should probably be fully excised from the article Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 13:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Warren here. Less is more when it comes to controversial proposals. Massive tables have suggestive power and might insinuate to a reader unfamiliar with the topic: "hey, with so much substantial evidence at hand, Indo-Uralic can't be wrong after all".

Indo-Uralic is a notable topic, so there must be secondary sources that talk about it (otherwise the topic wouldn't be notable). Why not get guidance from what they do when presenting the proposed evidence for Indo-Uralic. For instance, in both Aikio's OUP chapter and Georg's chapter in the 2nd edition of the Routledge Handbook, small lists of comparanda between PIE and PU are given, without reflexes in the daughter languages. I suggest we do the same; for those who are interested in what's behind these reconstructions, we can add transwiki-links to Wiktionary.

As for the choice of examples, again, secondary sources are preferable for many reasons. And there is no lack of them (cf. Aikio's and Georg's chaptera), so I see little reason to cite e.g. Paasonen (1907) directly. –Austronesier (talk) 19:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)