Proposed language families

The following is a list of proposed language families, which connect established families into larger genetic groups; support for these proposals varies; the Dené–Yeniseian languages for example, are a recent proposal which has been generally well received, whereas reconstructions of the Proto-World language are often viewed as fringe science; proposals which are themselves based on other proposals have the likelihood of their parts noted in parentheses.

Under considerations
This table is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Proposed name Description Agree Disagree Doubt Ref.
Alarodian Northeast Caucasian with extinct Hurro-Urartian
Ibero-Caucasian Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, and Kartvelian
Karasuk Yeniseian and Burushaski
Kongo–Saharan Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan
Macro-Pama–Nyungan Several Australian language families.
Miao–Dai Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai Ryuichi Kosaka (initiator) ? ? [1]
Nilo-Saharan Many families of central Africa.
Nivkh–Kamchukotic Nivkh and Chukotko-Kamchatkan
North Caucasian Northwest Caucasian and Northeast Caucasian
Uralic–Yukaghir Uralic and Yukaghir
Proposed name Description Agree Disagree Doubt Ref.
Austric Austroasiatic and Austronesian Wilhelm Schmidt (initiator), La Vaughn H., Lawrence Reid, G. Diffloth, Paul Sidwell, Paul K. Benedict (later rejected), Sergei Starostin, John Bengtson, ASJP - Robert Blust, Paul K. Benedict [2][3][4]
Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Japanese Wilhelm Schmidt (initiator) -
Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, and Kra-Dai Paul K. Benedict (initiator, later rejected), Sergei Starostin, John Bengtson -
Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Kra-Dai, Nihali, and Ainu John Bengtson (initiator) -
Austro-Tai Austronesian and Kra–Dai Paul Benedict (initiator, also including Japanese), Ostapirat, Smith Thurgood Sagart [5]
Greater North Borneo Malayic, Chamic, Land Dayak, Sundanese, Rejang, Kayanic, and others. Blust (initiator) and Smith ? ? [6]
Malayic, Chamic, Land Dayak, Sundanese, Rejang, Kayanic, and others (including Moklenic) Blust (initiator) Smith - [7]
Malayo-Sumbawan Malayic, Chamic, Sundanese, Madurese, and Bali–Sasak–Sumbawa K. Alexander Adelaar (initiator) and Nikolaus Himmelmann Blust and Smith - [8]
Sino-Austronesian Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and Kra–Dai Laurent Sagart (initiator), Stanley Starosta Weera Ostapirat, Alexander Vovin, George van Driem Paul Jen-kuei Li and Robert Blust [9][10]
Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Kra–Dai, Austroasiatic and Hmong–Mien Stanley Starosta (initiator) [11]
Proposed name Description Agree Disagree Doubt Ref.
Daco-Thracian Dacian and Thracian Russu, Georg Solta, Vraciu, Crossland, Trask, McHenry, Mihailov, Crossland Vladimir I. Georgiev - [12]
Graeco-Armenian Hellenic and Armenian Holger Pedersen (initiator), Antoine Meillet, Eric Hamp, James Clackson, Luay Nakhleh, Tandy Warnow, Donald Ringe and Steven N. Evans ? G. R. Solta, Hrach Martirosyan [13]
Graeco-Aryan Hellenic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian Wolfram Euler, A. C. Renfrew, James Clackson ? ? [14][15]
Graeco-Phrygian Hellenic and Phrygian Claude Brixhe, Neumann, Matzinger, Woodhouse, Ligorio, Lubotsky, and Obrador-Cursach ? ? [16][17][18][19][20][21]
Italo-Celtic Italic and Celtic Frederik Kortlandt, Peter Schrijver, Schrijver Calvert Watkins - [22][23]
Indo-Hittite The split of Anatolian languages from Indo-European ? ? Hans Holm [24]
Indo-Uralic Indo-European and Uralic Holger Pedersen (initiator), Kortlandt, Hannes Sköld, Alwin Kloekhorst, and Nikolai Dmitrievich Andreev Christian Carpelan, Asko Parpola, Petteri Koskikallio, Angela Marcantonio, and Johan Schalin - [25]
Indo-European and Uralic–Yukaghir Kortlandt (initiator) - [26]
Pontic Northwest Caucasian and Indo-European Émile Benveniste, Winfred P. Lehmann, Aert Kuipers , and John Colarusso ? ? [27]
Thraco-Illyrian Thracian and Illyrian Ion Russu, Sorin Paliga Vladimir Georgiev, Ivan Duridanov, Eric Hamp - [28]
This table is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Proposed name Description Agree Disagree Doubt Ref.
Aztec–Tanoan Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan.
Gulf Muskogean with four extinct isolates on US gulf.
Hokan A dozen languages on west coast of North America
Je–Tupi–Carib Macro-Jê (likely), Tupian and Cariban of South America.
Macro-Chibchan Lencan, Misumalpan and Chibchan merge into one language family. (probably also Xincan)
Macro-Jê 11 language families of South America
Macro-Panoan Pano–Takanan (likely) and Moseten–Chonan (likely)
Macro-Siouan Siouan, Iroquoian, Caddoan, and Yuchi.
Mataco–Guaicuru Matacoan, Guaicuruan, Mascoian, and Charruan of South America
Penutian Some languages in western North America
Quechumaran Quechuan and Aymaran
Totozoquean Totonacan and Mixe–Zoque in Mesoamerica.
Yuki–Wappo Yuki and Wappo, both extinct.

Trans Eurasia-America languages
Proposed name Description Agree Disagree Doubt Ref.
Dene–Yeniseian Na-Dené and Yeniseian Alfredo Trombetti (initiator), Merritt Ruhlen, Edward Vajda, Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, Heinrich Werner, Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, Eric Hamp, Bill Poser, and Paul Kiparsky George Starostin (Vajda's proposal) - [29]
Uralo-Siberian Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskimo–Aleut Michael Fortescue (initiator), Frederik Kortlandt ? ? [30]
Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskimo–Aleut, and Nivkh Frederik Kortlandt (initiator) ? ? [31]

Widely rejected

Below are language families that are already rejected by most linguists. Since it's widely rejected, only linguists who agreed will be shown.

This table is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Proposed name Description Status Agree Ref.
Almosan Algic, Kutenai and Mosan Widely rejected
Amerind All languages in the Americas which do not belong to the Eskimo–Aleut or Na–Dene families Widely rejected
Altaic Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic (and possibly Ainu) Widely rejected; generally considered a Sprachbund
Austronesian–Ongan Ongan and Austronesian Widely rejected Juliette Blevins (initiator) [32]
Borean All families except in sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, Australia, and the Andaman Islands Widely rejected
Coahuiltecan Native languages of modern Texas Sprachbund
Dene–Caucasian Na-Dené, North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, and others. Widely rejected
Dravido-Korean Dravidian and Koreanic Obsolete
Elamo-Dravidian Elamite and Dravidian Widely rejected
Eurasiatic Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic Widely rejected
Indo-Pacific Several Pacific families. Widely rejected
Indo-Semitic Indo-European languages and Semitic languages or Afroasiatic languages Widely rejected
Khoisan African click-consonant languages that do not belong to any other macrophyla Widely rejected
Macro-Mayan Mayan with Totonacan, Mixe–Zoque, and Huave Widely rejected
Mosan Salishan, Wakashan, and Chimakuan languages of Pacific Northwest North America Sprachbund
Nostratic Afroasiatic, Kartvelian, Dravidian and Eurasiatic Widely rejected
Proto-World Reconstructed common ancestor of all living languages Widely rejected Alfredo Trombetti (initiator)
Ural–Altaic Uralic and Altaic Obsolete; considered a linguistic convergence zone

See also

References
  1. Kosaka, Ryuichi (2002). "On the affiliation of Miao-Yao and Kadai: Can we posit the Miao-Dai family?" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 32: 71–100.
  2. Grierson, G. A. (January 1907). "Die Mon-Khmer-Völker, Ein Bindeglied Zwischen Völkern Zentralasiens und Austronesiens. By P. W. Schmidt, S.V.D. Reprinted from Archiv für Anthropologie, Neue Folge, Band v, Heft 1 u. 2. (Brunswick, 1906.)". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland. 39 (1): 187–191. doi:10.1017/s0035869x00035711. ISSN 0035-869X. S2CID 163114228.
  3. "Alphabetisches Verzeichnis der vorkommenden Sprachen und Dialekte", Die westlichen Sudansprachen und ihre Beziehungen zum Bantu, Berlin, Boston: DE GRUYTER, 1927, doi:10.1515/9783111390192-003, ISBN 9783111390192, retrieved 2023-01-09
  4. Benedict, Paul K. (1942-10-12). "Thai, Kadai, and Indonesian: A New Alignment in Southeastern Asia". American Anthropologist. 44 (4): 576–601. doi:10.1525/aa.1942.44.4.02a00040.
  5. Smith, Alexander (2022-01-28). Alves, Mark; Sidwell, Paul (eds.). "More Austro-Tai Comparisons and Observations on Vowel Correspondences". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society: Papers from the 30th Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2021). 15 (3): 112–134. doi:10.5281/zenodo.5781307. ISSN 1836-6821. Retrieved 2022-02-14.
  6. Blust, Robert (2010). "The Greater North Borneo Hypothesis". Oceanic Linguistics. 49 (1): 44–118. JSTOR 40783586.
  7. Smith, Alexander D. (2017b). "The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem". Oceanic Linguistics. 56 (2): 435–490. doi:10.1353/ol.2017.0021.
  8. K. Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus Himmelmann, The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. Routledge, 2005
  9. Sagart, L. (1990) "Chinese and Austronesian are genetically related". Paper presented at the 23rd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, October 1990, Arlington, Texas.
  10. Sagart, Laurent (2016). "The wider connections of Austronesian: A response to Blust (2009)". Diachronica. 33 (2): 255–281. doi:10.1075/dia.33.2.04sag.
  11. Starosta, Stanley (2005). "Proto-East Asian and the origin and dispersal of languages of east and southeast Asia and the Pacific". In Sagart, Laurent; Blench, R.; Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia (eds.). The peopling of East Asia : putting together archaeology, linguistics and genetics. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-203-34368-9. OCLC 61716604.
  12. Vladimir Georgiev (Gheorghiev), Raporturile dintre limbile dacă, tracă şi frigiană, "Studii Clasice" Journal, II, 1960, 39-58.
  13. Pedersen, Holger (1924). "Armenier Sprache". In Ebert, Max (ed.). Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte (in German). Vol. 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 219–226.
  14. Renfrew, Colin (1998). Archaeology and language : the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6612-5. OCLC 39714447.
  15. Gamkrelidze, Thomas V.; Ivanov, V. V. (1990). "The Early History of Indo-European Languages". Scientific American. 262 (3): 110–17. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0390-110. JSTOR 24996796.
  16. Brixhe, Claude (2008). "Phrygian". In Woodard, Roger D (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-521-68496-5. "Unquestionably, however, Phrygian is most closely linked with Greek."
  17. Woodhouse 2009, p. 171:This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative.
  18. Ligorio & Lubotsky (2018), p. 1816: "Phrygian is most closely related to Greek. The two languages share a few unique innovations [...] It is therefore very likely that both languages emerged from a single language, which was spoken in the Balkans at the end of the third millennium BCE.
  19. Obrador-Cursach 2018, p. 102:Furthermore, if Phrygian were not so-poorly attested perhaps we could reconstruct a Proto-Greco-Phrygian stage of both languages.
  20. Obrador-Cursach 2020, pp. 238–239:To the best of our current knowledge, Phrygian was closely related to Greek. This affirmation is consistent with the vision offered by Neumann (1988: 23), Brixhe (2006) and Ligorio and Lubotsky (2018: 1816) and with many observations given by ancient authors. Both languages share 34 of the 36 features considered in this paper, some of them of great significance:…The available data suggest that Phrygian and Greek coexisted broadly from pre-historic to historic times, and both belong to a common linguistic area (Brixhe 2006: 39–44).
  21. Obrador-Cursach 2020, p. 243:With the current state of our knowledge, we can affirm that Phrygian is closely related to Greek. This is not a surprising conclusion: ancient sources and modern scholars agree that Phrygians did not live far from Greece in pre-historic times. Moreover, the last half century of scientific study of Phrygian has approached both languages and developed the hypothesis of a Proto-Greco-Phrygian language, to the detriment to other theories like Phrygio-Armenian or Thraco-Phrygian.
  22. Watkins, Calvert, "Italo-Celtic Revisited". In: Birnbaum, Henrik; Puhvel, Jaan, eds. (1966). Ancient Indo-European dialects. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 29–50. OCLC 716409.
  23. Kortlandt, Frederik H.H., "More Evidence for Italo-Celtic", in Ériu 32 (1981): 1-22.
  24. Holm (2008) used a digital version of the most up to date and acknowledged Indo-European dictionary, the "Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben" (Rix et al. 2002, second edition)- referred to as "LIV-2" - capitalizing on the linguistic commonplace that verbs are borrowed to a much lesser degree than nouns.
  25. Aikio, Ante (January 2022). "Proto-Uralic". In Bakró-Nagy, Marianne; Laakso, Johanna; Skribnik, Elena (eds.). Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  26. Kortlandt, Frederik (2004). "NIVKH AS A URALO-SIBERIAN LANGUAGE". researchgate.net.
  27. Colarusso, John (1997). "Proto-Pontic: Phyletic links between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Northwest Caucasian". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 25: 119–51.
  28. Russu, Ion I. (1969). Limba traco-dacilor (in Romanian). Bucharest: Editura Stiintifica.
  29. Starostin, George (2012). "Dene-Yeniseian: a critical assessment". p. 137
  30. Fortescue, Michael (2011). "The relationship of Nivkh to Chukotko-Kamchatkan revisited". Lingua. 121 (8): 1359–1376. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.03.001. I would no longer wish to relate CK directly to [Uralo-Siberian], although I believe that some of the lexical evidence [...] will hold up in terms of borrowing/diffusion.
  31. Kortlandt, Frederik (2004). "NIVKH AS A URALO-SIBERIAN LANGUAGE". researchgate.net.
  32. van Driem, George (2011). "Rice and the Austroasiatic and Hmong-Mien homelands". In N.J Enfield (ed.). Dynamics of human diversity: the case of mainland Southeast Asia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
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