Indo-European nominal inflection in Nostratic perspective

Václav Blažek (Masaryk University, Brno, blazek@phil.muni.cz)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 11, 2014 - p.19-38

Abstract: The paper summarizes some of the current views on the history and origins of Indo-European nominal declension, including a brief comparison of several hypotheses on the mechanism of arisal of the “thematic” type of declension (o-stems). The reconstructed paradigmatic system is subsequently compared with the respective systems for other language families that form part of the hypothetical Nostratic macrofamily: Semitic (and Afro-Asiatic in general), Kartvelian, Uralic. It is concluded that, since most of the case endings of Proto-Indo-European are explainable either through internal derivation within Indo-European itself or through comparison with other Nostratic languages, the situation points strongly towards an analytic nature of Proto-Nostratic.

Keywords: historical linguistics, Indo-European languages, comparative morphology, Nostratic hypothesis

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