The Indo-European language family is the most widespread in the world. Its related languages are spoken by more than 2.5 billion people. It includes modern Slavic, Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian language groups.
Many ancient Indo-Europeans (Indo-Iranians, for example) were nomads and could graze their herds over vast areas, passing on their language to local tribes. After all, it is known that the language of nomads often becomes a kind of Koine in the places of their nomads.
Slavic peoples
The largest ethno-linguistic community of Indo-European origin in Europe is the Slavs. Archaeological evidence points to the formation of the early Slavs in the area between the Upper Dniester and the basin of the left tributaries of the Middle Dnieper. In this region, the earliest monuments (III-IV centuries) were found, which were recognized as authentically Slavic. The first references to the Slavs are found in Byzantine sources of the 6th century. Retrospectively, these sources mention the Slavs in the 4th century. When the Proto-Slavic people stood out from the common Indo-European (or intermediate Balto-Slavic) people is not known for certain. According to various sources, this could happen in a very wide time range - from the 2nd millennium BC. until the first centuries A.D. As a result of migrations, wars and other kinds of interactions with neighboring peoples and tribes, the Slavic linguistic community broke up into eastern, western and southern ones. Mostly Eastern Slavs are represented in Russia: Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Rusyns. At the same time, Russians make up the absolute majority of the population of the Russian Federation, Ukrainians are the third largest people in the country.
Eastern Slavs were the main population of medieval Kievan Rus and Ladoga-Novgorod land. On the basis of the East Slavic (Old Russian) nationality by the 17th century. formed the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. The formation of the Belarusian people was completed by the beginning of the 20th century. The question of the status of the Rusyns as a separate people is still controversial. Some researchers (especially in Ukraine) consider Rusyns to be an ethnic group of Ukrainians, and the word "Rusyns" itself is an outdated name for Ukrainians used in Austria-Hungary.
The economic basis on which the East Slavic peoples historically formed and developed over the centuries was agricultural production and trade. In the pre-industrial period, these peoples developed an economic and cultural type, which was dominated by arable agriculture with the cultivation of cereals (rye, barley, oats, wheat). Other economic activities (domestic animal husbandry, beekeeping, gardening, gardening, hunting, fishing, collecting wild plants) were important, but not of paramount importance in ensuring life. Until the 20th century almost everything necessary in the peasant economy of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians was produced independently - from houses to clothes and kitchen utensils. Commodity orientation in the agricultural sector accumulated gradually, and primarily at the expense of landowners. Crafts existed both in the form of ancillary household crafts and in the form of specialized industries (iron-making, blacksmithing, pottery, salt-working, cooperage, charcoal, spinning, weaving, lace, etc.).
A very important element of the economic culture of the East Slavic peoples was traditionally otkhodnichestvo - the earnings of peasants in a foreign land, far from their native village: it could be work in large landowner farms, in craftsmen's artels, in mines, in logging, work as wandering stove-makers, tinkers, tailors and etc. It was from otkhodniks that the human resources of urban industrial production were gradually formed. With the development of capitalism in the late XIX - early XX century. and further, in the process of Soviet industrialization, the outflow of people from the countryside to the city increased, the role of industrial production, non-productive spheres of activity, and the national intelligentsia grew.
The predominant type of traditional dwelling among the Eastern Slavs varied depending on the locality. For Russian, Belorussian, North Ukrainian dwellings, the main material was wood (logs), and the type of building was a log cabin ground five-walled hut. In the north of Russia, log houses were often found: courtyards in which various residential and outbuildings were combined under one roof. The combination of wood and clay is typical for South Russian and Ukrainian rural dwellings. A common type of building was a hut: a mud hut - made of wattle, smeared with clay and whitewashed.
The family structure of the East Slavic peoples until the beginning of the 20th century. characterized by the spread of two types of families - large and small, with a partial predominance of one or the other in different areas in different historical eras. Since the 1930s there is almost universal disintegration of the extended family.
An important element of the social structure of the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples during their stay in the Russian Empire was the class division. Estates differed in specializations, privileges, duties, property status.
And although in some periods there was a certain inter-class mobility, in the general case, staying in the estate was hereditary and lifelong. Some estates (for example, the Cossacks) became the basis for the emergence of ethnic groups, among which now only the memory of the estate of their ancestors is preserved.
The spiritual life of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Rusyns is rich and varied. Orthodoxy with elements of folk rituals plays a special role. Catholicism is also widespread (mainly of the Greek rite - among Ukrainians and Rusyns), Protestantism, etc.
The southern Slavs were formed mainly on the Balkan Peninsula, closely interacting with the Roman Byzantines, then with the Turks. The current Bulgarians are the result of a mixture of Slavic and Turkic tribes. The modern South Slavs also include Macedonians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Gorans.
The religion of the majority of the South Slavs is Orthodoxy. Croats are predominantly Catholic. Most of the Bosnians (Muslims, Bosniaks), Gorani, as well as Pomaks (ethnic group) and Torbeshi Allegory of Russia (ethnic group) are Muslims.
The area of modern residence of the southern Slavs is separated from the main Slavic area by non-Slavic Hungary, Romania and Moldova. In Russia at present (according to the 2002 census), Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins live from the southern Slavs.
Western Slavs are Kashubians, Lusatian Sorbs, Poles, Slovaks and Czechs. Their homeland is in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and certain regions of Germany. Some linguists also refer to the West Slavic dialect of the Pannonian Rusyns living in the Serbian region of Vojvodina.
The majority of believing Western Slavs are Catholics. There are also Orthodox, Protestants.
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks live in Russia from the Western Slavs. There are quite large Polish communities in the Kaliningrad region, St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Komi Republic, and the Krasnodar Territory.
Armenians and Hemshils
The Armenian language stands apart in the Indo-European family of languages: only it and several of its dialects are included in the Armenian language group. The formation of the Armenian language and, accordingly, the Armenian people, took place in the 9th-6th centuries. BC. within the state of Urartu.
The Armenian language is spoken in Russia by two peoples: the Armenians and the kindred Hemshils (Hamshens). The latter come from the Armenian city of Hamshen (Khemshin) in the Pontic Mountains.
Hemshils are often called Muslim Armenians, but the northern Hamshens, who settled in the territory of the present Krasnodar Territory and Adygea before the Islamization of their fellow tribesmen, belong, like most Armenians, to the Christian (pre-Chalcedonian) Armenian Apostolic Church. The rest of the Hemshils are Sunni Muslims. There are Catholics among the Armenians.
Germanic peoples
The peoples of the Germanic language group in Russia include Germans, Jews (conditionally) and Englishmen. Inside the West German area in the 1st century. AD three groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveon, Istveon and Erminon. Migration in the V-VI centuries. parts of the Ingvaeonic tribes to the British Isles predetermined the further development of the English language.
German dialects continued to form on the continent. The formation of literary languages was completed in England in the 16th–17th centuries, in Germany in the 18th century. The emergence of the American version of the English language is associated with the colonization of North America. Yiddish originated as the language of Ashkenazi Jews in Central and Eastern Europe in the 10th-14th centuries. based on Middle German dialects with extensive borrowings from Hebrew, Aramaic, as well as from Romance and Slavic languages.
Religiously, Protestants and Catholics predominate among Russian Germans. Most Jews are Judaists.
Iranian peoples
The Iranian group includes at least thirty languages spoken by dozens of peoples. At least eleven Iranian peoples are represented in Russia. All the languages of the Iranian group in one way or another go back to the ancient Iranian language or a group of dialects spoken by the Prairanian tribes. About 3–2.5 thousand years BC dialects of the Iranian branch began to separate from the common Indo-Iranian root. The pra-Iranians in the era of pan-Iranian unity lived in the space from modern Iran to, probably, the south and southeast of the present European part of Russia. So, the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans spoke the Iranian languages of the Scythian-Sarmatian group. Today, the only living language of the Scythian subgroup is spoken by the Ossetians. This language has retained certain features of the ancient Iranian dialects. The Persian and Tajik languages belong to the Persian-Tajik subgroup proper. Kurdish language and Kurmanji (Yazidi language) - to the Kurdish subgroup. Pashto - the language of the Pashtun Afghans - is closer to the Indian languages. The Tats language and the Dzhugurdi language (a dialect of Mountain Jews) are very similar to each other. In the process of formation, they were significantly influenced by the Kumyk and Azerbaijani languages. The Talysh language was also influenced by Azerbaijani. Actually, the Talysh language goes back to Azeri - the Iranian language, which was spoken in Azerbaijan before its capture by the Seljuk Turks, after which most of the Azerbaijanis switched to the Turkic language, which is now called Azerbaijani.
There is almost no need to talk about common features in the traditional economic complex, customs and spiritual life of different Iranian peoples: they have been living far from each other for too long, they have experienced too many very different influences.
Romance peoples
The Romance languages are called so because they go back to Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Of the Romance languages in Russia, the most widespread is Romanian, or rather, its Moldavian dialect, which is considered an independent language. Romanian is the language of the inhabitants of ancient Dacia, on the lands of which modern Romania and Moldova are located. Before the Romanization of Dacia, tribes of the Getae, Dacians, and Illyrians lived there. Then for 175 years this area was under Roman rule and was subjected to intensive colonization. The Romans went there from all over the empire: someone dreamed of retiring and occupying free lands, someone was sent to Dacia as an exile - away from Rome. Soon, almost all of Dacia spoke the local vernacular Latin. But from the seventh century most of the Balkan Peninsula is occupied by the Slavs, and for the Vlachs, the ancestors of the Romanians and Moldavians, the period of Slavic-Romance bilingualism begins. Under the influence of the Bulgarian kingdom, the Vlachs adopted Old Church Slavonic as their main written language and used it until the 16th century, when the proper Romanian writing finally appeared based on the Cyrillic alphabet. The Romanian alphabet based on the Latin alphabet was introduced only in 1860.
Residents of Bessarabia, which was part of the Russian Empire, continued to write in Cyrillic. Until the end of the XX century. the Moldavian language was strongly influenced by Russian.
The main traditional occupations of Moldovans and Romanians - until the 19th century. cattle breeding, then arable farming (corn, wheat, barley), viticulture and winemaking. Believing Moldovans and Romanians are mostly Orthodox. There are Catholics and Protestants.
The homeland of other Romance-speaking peoples, whose representatives are found in Russia, is far abroad. Spanish (also called Castilian) is spoken by the Spaniards and Cubans, French by the French, and Italian by the Italians. Spanish, French and Italian were formed on the basis of vernacular Latin in Western Europe. In Cuba (as in other countries of Latin America), the Spanish language was entrenched in the process of Spanish colonization. Most of the believers among the representatives of these peoples are Catholics.
Indo-Aryan peoples
Indo-Aryan is a language that goes back to ancient Indian. Most of these are the languages of the peoples of Hindustan. The so-called Chib novels, the language of Western gypsies, also belong to this group of languages. Gypsies (Roma) are natives of India, but their language developed in isolation from the main Indo-Aryan area and today differs significantly from the Hindustani languages proper. In terms of their way of life, the gypsies are closer not to their linguistically related Indians, but rather to the Central Asian gypsies. The latter include the ethnic groups Lyuli (Jugi, Mugat), Sogutarosh, Parya, Chistoni and Kavol. They speak dialects of Tajik in half with "lavzi mugat" (a special slang based on Arabic and Uzbek languages interspersed with Indo-Aryan vocabulary). The Parya group, in addition, retains its own Indo-Aryan language for internal communication, which differs significantly from both the Hindustani languages and the Gypsy. Historical data suggests that the Lyuli probably came to Central Asia and Persia from India during the time of Tamerlane or earlier. Part of the Lyuli moved directly to Russia in the 1990s. Western gypsies from India ended up in Egypt, then for a long time were subjects of Byzantium and lived in the Balkans, and came to Russia in the 16th century. through Moldova, Romania, Germany and Poland. Roma, Lyuli, Sogutarosh, Parya, Chistoni and Kavol do not consider each other to be kindred peoples.
Greeks
A separate group within the Indo-European family is the Greek language, it is spoken by the Greeks, but conditionally the Greek group also includes the Pontic Greeks, many of whom are Russian-speaking, and the Azov and Tsalk Greeks-Urums, who speak the languages of the Turkic group. The heirs of the great ancient civilization and the Byzantine Empire, the Greeks got into the Russian Empire in different ways. Some of them are the descendants of the Byzantine colonists, others emigrated to Russia from the Ottoman Empire (this emigration was almost continuous from the 17th to the 19th centuries), others became Russian subjects when some lands that previously belonged to Turkey went to Russia.
Baltic peoples
The Baltic (Letto-Lithuanian) group of Indo-European languages is related to Slavic and at one time, probably, was a Balto-Slavic unity with it. There are two living Baltic languages: Latvian (with a Latgalian dialect) and Lithuanian. Differentiation between the Lithuanian and Latvian languages began in the 9th century, however, they remained dialects of the same language for a long time. Transitional dialects existed at least until the 14th-15th centuries. Latvians migrated to Russian lands for a long time, fleeing the German feudal lords. From 1722 Latvia was part of the Russian Empire. From 1722 to 1915, Lithuania was also part of Russia. From 1940 to 1991, both of these territories were part of the USSR.
Indo-European taxon: family Ancestral home: Indo-European ranges of Kentum (blue) and Satem (red). The estimated original area of satemization is shown in bright red. Range: the whole world ... Wikipedia
A set of languages of late forms of one language (derived from one language), for example, Indo-European S. Ya., Ural S. Ya. etc. There is a tradition of using the term “S. I." only in relation to isolated groups of related ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
A set of groups (branches) of languages, the similarity of which is explained by a common origin. Indo-European family of languages. Finno-Ugric (Finnish-Ugric) family of languages. Turkic family of languages. Semitic family of languages... Dictionary of linguistic terms
language family- a group of related languages. The main families of languages with a written tradition are: a. Indo-European (Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Romance, Iranian, Indian, Hetto Luvian, Tocharian, Armenian languages); b. Euskero… … Grammatological Dictionary
Language systematics is an auxiliary discipline that helps to organize the objects studied by linguistics - languages, dialects and groups of languages. The result of this ordering is also called the taxonomy of languages. The taxonomy of languages is based on ... ... Wikipedia
language family- The whole set of languages of a given kinship. The following families of languages are distinguished: 1) Indo-European; 2) Sino-Tibetan; 3) Niger Kordofanian; 4) Austronesian; 5) Semito Hamitic; 6) Dravidian; 7) Altai; 8) Austro-Asian; 9) Thai; ... ... Dictionary of linguistic terms T.V. Foal
Indo-European taxon: family Ancestral home: Indo-European ranges of Kentum (blue) and Satem (red). The estimated original area of satemization is shown in bright red. Range: the whole world ... Wikipedia
Indo-Germanic language family- 1. name, previously used instead of the international term "Indo-European family of languages"; sometimes used and now in it. linguistics. 2. Includes, along with about 15 languages and groups of languages, also Greek. and lat... Dictionary of antiquity
- the most common family of related languages, one of more than 20 language families in the world. The belonging of individual languages and language groups to the family of Indo-European languages is determined on the basis of the similarity of their structure, studied using the comparative historical method and is explained as a result of their origin from the only Indo-European proto-language in the past.
According to signs of close relationship, the Indo-European languages are divided into groups of languages and individual languages at the level of groups.
There are 7 groups of living Indo-European languages and 3 separate languages, which also include dead languages known from history that are closely related to them, which were previous stages in the development of modern languages or belonged to the corresponding groups as independent languages.
The largest group of living Indo-European languages are Indian languages - 96, which are spoken by more than 770 million people. These include the Hindi and Urdu languages (2 varieties of a single literary language in India and Pakistan), Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Assami, Sindhi, Gypsy, etc., as well as dead languages - Vedic and Sanskrit, in which many written records.
The group of Iranian languages includes living languages - Persian, Tajik, Dari (Farsi-Kabul), Afghan (Pashto), Ossetian, Yagnob, Kurdish, Baloch, Talysh, a number of Pamir languages, etc. (Total 81 million speakers) and dead languages - Old Persian, Avestan, Pahlavi, Median, Parthian, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Scythian, Alanian, Saks (Khotanese). On the basis of a number of common structures, features, the Iranian languages are united with the Indian languages in the Indo-Iranian languages: there is an assumption regarding their origin from the former linguistic unity.
The Slavic group of languages (see Slavic languages) is divided into 3 subgroups (more than 290 million speakers): eastern (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian; see East Slavic languages), western (Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper, Lower) and southern ( Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian); the western subgroup also included the Polabian language, which disappeared at the beginning of the 18th century.
The group of Baltic languages consists of living languages - Lithuanian and Latvian (4.3 million people) and dead ones - Prussian, Yatvingian, Curonian and others. proto-language, origin from close Indo-European dialects, long-term contact).
The group of Germanic languages (about 550 million speakers) includes living languages: English - the second (after Chinese) most common in the world, German, Dutch, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and the dead - Gothic, Burgundian, barbarian, Gepid, Herulian.
The Romance group of languages (576 million people) is represented by living languages - French, Provencal (Occitan), Italian, Sardinian (Sardinian), Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian (Romanian and Moldavian speech), Aromunian, Romansh, a number of Creole languages. All Romance languages developed from Latin, the literary form of which is now known from numerous written sources and is still used today as the language of the Catholic liturgy and (to a limited extent) as the international language of science. The Latin language, together with the dead languages Oscan and Umbrian, formed a group of Italian languages.
The Celtic group of languages consists of rare living languages - Irish, Gaelic (Scottish), Welsh, Breton and the dead - Manx, Cornish, Celtiberian, Lepontian, Gaulish. In the past, the Celtic languages were spread over a vast area of Europe - from present-day Great Britain to the Carpathians and the Balkans. In the structure of the Celtic languages there are a number of common features with the Italian languages, with which they are usually combined into a more common Italo-Celtic group.
The Greek language (12.2 million people) occupies a separate place among the Indo-European languages at the level of the language group. In its history, ancient Greek (Ancient Greek) and Middle Greek (Byzantine) periods are distinguished.
The Albanian language (4.9 million people) is genetically related to the dead Illyrian and Messapian languages.
The Armenian language (over 6 million people) is considered the successor of the former Hayas-Armeni language as part of the state of Urartu.
Numerous written sources represent two groups of completely extinct Indo-European languages - Anatolian, or Hittite-Luvian (languages Hittite cuneiform, or Nesitska, Luvian cuneiform, Palai, hieroglyphic Hittite, Lydian, Lycian, Carian, sitetska, Pisidian) and Tocharian (languages Tocharian A, or Karasharska or Turpanskaya, and Tocharian B, or Kuchanskaya). Less information has been preserved about other dead Indo-European languages - Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian, Messapska, Venetsky.
During the long development after the collapse of the proto-language, which had a highly developed structure of a synthetic type, the Indo-European languages subjected to significant structural differentiation - from synthetism (better preserved in the Baltic and Slavic languages) to analyticism (all developed in Afrikaans), from the fusionism of many ancient Indo-European languages to agglutination in new Indian and Iranian languages. Significant differences also appeared in the phonetics of the Indo-European languages. There is an opinion (in particular, it was substantiated in detail by the Russian linguist V. Ilyich-Svitych) that the Indo-European languages, along with the Afro-Asiatic, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian and Kartvelian languages, belong to a wide “supersimy” of the so-called. Nostratic languages.
Indo-European family consists of Indian group, Iranian group, Slavic group (divided into eastern subgroup, western, southern), Baltic group, Germanic group (divided into northern or Scandinavian subgroup, western, eastern or east Germanic), Romanesque group, Celtic group, Greek group Indian group, Hindi, Urdu, Gypsy, Bengali (dead - Vedic, Sonskrit, Pali, Prakrit).
Iranian group, Persian (Farsi), Afghan (Pashto), Tajik, Ossetian (dead - Old Persian, Avestan, Khorezmian, Scythian).
Slavic group. Eastern subgroup (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian). Western subgroup (Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian), dead - Popabian, Pomfian dialects. Southern subgroup (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian; Macedonian, Slovenian), dead - Old Church Slavonic.
Baltic group. Latvian, Lithuanian (dead - Prussian).
German group. Northern (Scandinavian) subgroup (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese). Western subgroup (English, German, Frisian, Yiddish, Afrikaans). Eastern (East Germanic) subgroup, only the dead - Gothic (divided into Visigothic and Ostrogothic), Burgunian.
Roman group, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Moldavian, Romanian, Macedonian-Romanian, Romansh, Provencal, Sardinian, Galician, Catalan, Dead - Latin, Medieval Vulgar Latin. Celtic group, Irish, Scottish, Welsh (Welsh), Cornish, Breton.
Greek group, only the dead - Ancient Greek, Middle Greek, Modern Greek.
Albanian group- Albanian.
Armenian group- Armenian.
Analytical languages- this is the name in their classification of languages, the brothers Friedrich and August Schlegel gave the new Indo-European languages.
In the ancient world, most of the languages were of a strong synthetic nature, for example. lang. Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, etc. From the history of the development of languages, it is clear that all languages tend to acquire an analytical character over time: with each new era, the number of characteristic features of the analytical class increases.
The new Indo-European languages experienced significant simplifications in their grammatical system. Instead of a large number of forms, replete with all sorts of anomalies, simpler and more standard forms appeared.
Comparing the old Indo-European languages with the new ones, O. Jespersen (a Danish linguist) found a number of advantages in the grammatical structure of the latter. Forms have become shorter, requiring less muscular tension and time to pronounce them, there are fewer of them, memory is not overloaded with them, their formation has become more regular, the syntactic use of forms shows fewer anomalies, the more analytical and abstract nature of the forms makes them easier to express, allowing for the possibility of multiple combinations and constructions that were previously impossible, the cumbersome repetition known as agreement has disappeared, a fixed word order provides clarity and unambiguity of understanding.
The so-called synthetic structure characteristic of ancient Indo-European languages (where grammatical meanings are expressed within the word itself, affixation, internal inflection, stress) in many modern Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bwas replaced by an analytical system (grammatical meanings are mainly expressed outside the word, about the sentence, the order of the layer in the sentence , service words, intonation). O. Jespersen argued that these processes mean the victory of a higher and more perfect linguistic form. Independent particles, auxiliary words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs), in his opinion, are a higher technical means of expressing thought than the old inflection.
The new languages took on an analytic character; Most of the European languages moved in this direction, the language of English, which left only small remnants of declensions and conjugations. There are almost no declensions in French either, but there are still conjugations that are also quite strongly developed in German, where the declension is preserved on a wider scale than in the Romance languages. However, two groups of new languages differ from all of them: Slavic and Baltic. Synthetic character traits still prevail here.
5. Macrocomparatives. Macrofamilies of world languages (Nostratic, Sino-Caucasian, Amerindian, etc.). Macrocomparative studies * The theory of distant relationship of languages.
At present, discussions on the issue of the distant relationship of languages (macro-comparative studies) are beginning to play an increasingly important role in comparative studies. The successful development and application of the comparative historical method has led to the fact that the vast majority of taxonomic units have already been identified, and attempts to deepen comparisons seem quite natural. The definition of linguistic kinship, in principle, does not depend on the time of the collapse of the proto-language. It is clear, however, that with very small proportions of coincidences (that is, with very distant kinship), it is difficult to establish regular correspondences in comparison.
The scientific stage of the development of the Nostratic theory began in the 60s with a series of articles by our scientists - V.M. Illich-Svitych and A.B. Dolgopolsky. Illich-Svitych established a detailed system of correspondences between the proto-languages of six language families of the Old World - Semitic-Hamitic, Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic, Dravidian and Altaic. According to the generally accepted opinion, the main core of the Nostratic family is the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic languages. The similarity of pronominal systems is especially significant, as well as a large number of parallels in the basic vocabulary.
Another macrofamily, the existence of which was revealed by S.A. Starostin, - the so-called Sino-Caucasian. The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis suggests the existence of an ancient genetic relationship between rather geographically distant language families: North Caucasian, Yenisei and Sino-Tibetan. A rather complex system of correspondences was also established here and a large number of parallels were found in the basic vocabulary. It is possible that before the speakers of the Nostratic languages settled in the territory of Eurasia, the Sino-Caucasian languages were much more widespread. The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis is still at the beginning of development, but this direction seems to be very promising.
Hypotheses about the existence of other macrofamilies have been developed to an even lesser extent.
The Austrian hypothesis suggests a relationship between the Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Thai, and Miao Yao languages. There are a number of parallels between these language families in the field of basic vocabulary.
The Khoisan macrofamily includes all the languages of Africa in which there are special clicking sounds ("klixes") and which, at the same time, do not belong to other language families, i.e. the languages of the Bushmen, Hottentots, and also, possibly, San-Dave, Hadza and the (extinct) Quadi.
There are also a number of assumptions by J. Greenberg (American linguist) regarding the existence of other macrofamilies: Amerindian, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian and Indo-Pacific. However, unlike those hypotheses that I have already mentioned, these assumptions are based mainly on the "mass comparison" method, and therefore are still much more hypothetical.
The Amerindian hypothesis assumes the kinship of all American aboriginal languages, except for the languages of the Dene (Indian languages of North America) and the Eskimo-Aleutian (Arctic belt of North America). This hypothesis does not have a sufficiently rigorous linguistic justification, but it correlates well with anthropological data. In addition, there are some similarities in the field of grammar between the Amerindian languages.
The Niger-Kordofanian family includes the languages of Africa that have conciliatory classes, the Nilo-Saharan family includes other African languages that are not included in either the Afro-Asiatic, or the Khoisan, or the Niger-Kordofanian macrofamily. A hypothesis has been put forward about the special proximity of the Saharan languages \u200b\u200bto Afroasian.
It has been suggested that all the languages of Australia are related (Australian macrofamily). Almost all other languages of the world are united by J. Greenberg into the Indo-Pacific macrofamily (this hypothesis, apparently, is the least substantiated).
The chronological depth of each of these families is about 11 13 thousand years. The proto-language, to which they all go back, dates back to about 13-15 millennia BC. Naki;.,.eno has enough material to get a detailed picture of the formation and settlement of the majority of the ethnic groups of Eurasia and North America.
The hypothesis of two ancestral homelands for the Indo-Europeans on the territory of the Armenian Highlands and in the steppes of Eastern Europe was formulated by Miller as early as 1873 on the basis of the proximity of the Indo-European proto-language with the Semitic-Hamitic and Caucasian languages.
In 1934, Professor Emil Forrer of Switzerland opined that the Indo-European language was formed by crossing two unrelated languages. N. S. Trubetskoy, K. K. Ulenbek, O. S. Shirokov, and B. V. Gornung suggest that this crossing took place between a Ural-Altaic-type language and a Caucasian-Semitic-type language.
Indo-European migrations should not be viewed as a total ethnic "expansion", but as a movement, first of all, of the Indo-European dialects themselves, together with a certain part of the population, layering on various ethnic groups and passing on their language to them. The latter provision shows the inconsistency of hypotheses based primarily on anthropological criteria in the ethnolinguistic attribution of archaeological cultures.
