Indo-Uralic is a linguistic hypothesis proposing a genealogical family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.

The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869 (Pedersen 1931:336),<!-- Per WP:PAREN, parenthetical references are deprecated --> though an earlier version was proposed by Finnish linguist Daniel Europaeus in 1853 and 1863. Neither has gained significant support. Since then, the predominant opinion in the linguistic community has remained that the evidence for such a relationship is insufficient to confirm a genetic relationship versus similarity due to language contact. Some linguists have always taken the contrary view e.g. Henry Sweet, Holger Pedersen, Björn Collinder, Warren Cowgill, Jochem Schindler, Eugene Helimski, Frederik Kortlandt and Alwin Kloekhorst.

The Indo-Uralic hypothesis has been evaluated by recent linguistic data, contradicting previous argued cognates, not finding a genealogical relationship between Uralic and Indo-European.

Geography of the proposed Indo-Uralic family

The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea, and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996). Alternatively, it has been proposed that the common protolanguage may have been located north of the Black Sea, with Proto-Uralic moving northwards with the climatic improvement of post-glacial times.

History of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis

A history of early Indo-Uralic studies can be found in Holger Pedersen's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century (1931:336-338). Vilhelm Thomsen first raised the possibility of a connection between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in 1869 (336), "he did not pursue the subject very far" (337). The next important statement in this area was that of Nikolai Anderson in 1879. Pedersen said the value of Anderson’s work was "impaired by its many errors" (337). The English phonetician Henry Sweet argued for kinship between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric in his semi-popular book The History of Language in 1900 (see especially Sweet 1900:112-121). Sweet's treatment awakened "[g]reat interest" in the question, but "his space was too limited to permit of actual proof" (Pedersen 1931:337). A somewhat longer study by K. B. Wiklund appeared in 1906 and another by Heikki Paasonen in 1908 (i.e. 1907) (ib.). Pedersen considered that these two studies sufficed to settle the question and that, after them, "it seems unnecessary to doubt the relationship further" (ib.).

Sweet considered the relationship to be securely established, stating (1900:120; "Aryan" = Indo-European, "Ugrian" = Finno-Ugric):

The short name "Indo-Uralic" (German ) for the hypothesis was first introduced by Hannes Sköld 1927.

Sound correspondences

Among the sound correspondences which Čop did assert were (1972:162):

  • Uralic = Indo-European .
  • Uralic = Indo-European .
  • Uralic sibilants (presumably ) = Indo-European .
  • Uralic word-initial voiceless stops (presumably ) = Indo-European word-initial voiced aspirates (presumably ) and voiceless stops (presumably ), also Indo-European followed by one of these stops.
  • Uralic = Indo-European and .

History of opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis

The history of early opposition to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis does not appear to have been written. It is clear from the statements of supporters such as Sweet that they were facing considerable opposition and that the general climate of opinion was against them, except perhaps in Scandinavia.

Károly Rédei, editor of the etymological dictionary of the Uralic languages (1986a), rejected the idea of a genetic relationship between Uralic and Indo-European, arguing that the lexical items shared by Uralic and Indo-European were due to borrowing from Indo-European into Proto-Uralic (1986b).

Perhaps the best-known critique of recent times is that of Jorma Koivulehto. Koivulehto's central contention, agreeing with Rédei's views, is that all of the lexical items claimed to be Indo-Uralic can be explained as loans from Indo-European into Uralic (see below for examples).

The linguists Christian Carpelan, Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio suggest that early Indo-European and Uralic stand in early contact and suggest that any similarities between them are explained through early language contact and borrowings.

In 2022, a group of scholars concluded that Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European do not share a genealogical relationship with each other, as "whether based on cognacy or loans the argument from lexical resemblances is flawed". According to them, "Uralic is distinctive in western Eurasia. A number of typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim". Previously proposed cognates can be largely explained via borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages. They concluded in regards to the Indo-Uralic hypothesis that "of what we take to be the two statistically soundest recent quantitative tests, Kessler and Lehtonen (2006), using a 100-item Swadesh-like wordlist, found no evidence for Indo-Uralic".

{| class="wikitable"

! Proto-Uralic !! Proto-Indo-European !! Indo-European example

|-

| *aja- ‘drive; flee’ || *h<sub>2</sub>aǵ- ‘drives’ || Sanskrit ájati ‘drives’

|-

| *kaja ‘dawn / sun’ || *h<sub>2</sub>ay-en/r- ‘day’ || Avestan aiiarǝ ‘day’

|-

| *kulki- ‘go, run, flow’ || *kʷelh<sub>1</sub>-e- 'moves, walks’ || Sanskrit cárati ‘moves, walks’

|-

| *teki- ‘do; put’ || *dʰeh<sub>1</sub>- ‘puts’ || Sanskrit dádhāti ‘puts’

|-

| *toxi- ‘bring’ || *doh<sub>3</sub>- ‘give’ || Sanskrit dádāti ‘gives’

|-

| *weti ‘water’ || *wed-en/r- ‘water’ || Hittite wedār ‘water’

|}

See also

  • Eurasiatic languages
  • Indo-Semitic languages
  • Laryngeal theory
  • Nostratic languages
  • Ural–Altaic languages
  • Uralic–Yukaghir languages
  • Uralo-Siberian languages

References