V. M. Illich-Svitych’s paper on «Kartvelian vocalism in light of external comparison»: an up-to-date commentary

Anna Dybo (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences / Russian State University for the Humanities / National University Higher School of Economics (Moscow); adybo@mail.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 20/1-2, 2022 - p.126-138

Abstract: The analyzed paper by V. M. Illich-Svitych, which was written in 1965, has hitherto remained unpublished by the author. The Nostratic (more accurately, Kartvelian — Eastern Nostratic) comparanda included therein have mostly been included or planned for inclusion into the author’s subsequent publications on Nostratic etymology. In the meantime, over the past decades many of the supposed cognates in daughter languages have received different etymological interpretations. In this up-to-date commentary (print version) we list some of the more obvious examples of such changes that invalidate Illich-Svitych’s etymologies, as well as present certain general results of comparison between the system of phonological reconstruction as presented in Illich-Svitych’s Nostratic dictionary and the modern day reconstructions of the relevant stems in daughter families, to see how this reflects on the established correspondences between vocalic systems in Proto-Kartvelian and in the families that make up «Eastern Nostratic» (Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian).

Keywords: Proto-Kartvelian language, Nostratic hypothesis, reconstruction of vocalic systems, phonological reconstruction

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