Karasuk languages

Karasuk
Karasuk
(controversial)
Geographic; distribution	Central Siberia and northern Pakistan
Linguistic classification	Proposed language family
Subdivisions	Yeniseian; Burushaski;
Glottolog	None
	Modern distribution of Karasuk languages

Karasuk is a hypothetical language family that links the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia with the Burushaski language of northern Pakistan.

History of proposals

Hyde Clarke (1870) first noted a possible connection between the Yeniseian and Burushaski languages.[1]

The name Karasuk was proposed by George van Driem of the University of Leiden.[2] The family is named after the Karasuk culture, which existed in Central Asia during the Bronze Age in second millennium BCE. Van Driem postulates the Burusho people took part in the Indo-Aryan migration out of Central Asia and into the northern part of the Indian sub-continent, while other Karasuk peoples migrated northwards to become the Yeniseians. These claims have been picked up by anthropologist and linguist Roger Blench (1999).[3]

Václav Blažek (2019) places the linguistic homeland of Proto-Yeniseian close to where Burushaski is now spoken today. He argues that based on hydronomic evidence, Yeniseian languages were originally spoken on the northern slopes of the Tianshan and Pamir mountains before dispersing downstream via the Irtysh River.[4]

Morphological evidence

The evidence for Karasuk is mostly in the verbal and nominal morphology. For example, the second-person singular prefixes on intransitive verbs are [ɡu-, ɡó-] in Burushaski and [ku-, ɡu-] in Ket. Ket has two verbal declensions, one prefixed with d- and one with b-, and Burushaski likewise has two, one prefixed with d- and one without such a marker. However, neither the Burushaski nor the Yeniseian verbal morphology has been rigorously analysed,[5] and reviewers have found the evidence to be weak.[6] While Yeniseian has been proposed to be related to the Na-Dené languages of North America, as part of a newly named Dené–Yeniseian family, the relevant morphological correspondences between Na-Dene and Yeniseian have not been found in Burushaski.

Lexical cognates

Below is a list of possible cognates:[7][8]

Suggested cognates
Proto-Yeniseian	Burushaski	English
*binč	melc	chin/jaw
*siː	si/su	eat
*seŋ	sán	liver/spleen
*ʔig	yek	name
*qoʎ	qʌt	armpit
*təga	ʔ(r)ək	breast/chest
*pʌx	pak	clean
*dʌr	thɛr	dirt/dirty

Kassian and Starostin (2017) list the following potential cognates between Proto-Yeniseian and Proto-Burushaski.[9]

gloss	Proto-Yeniseian	Proto-Burushaski
‘dry’	*qɔɢ-	*qaq-
‘to eat’	*siː-	*ʂi-
‘to give’	*=o	*=u-
‘to kill’	*xeːy	*=s=ʁa-
‘name’	*ʔiɢ	*ek
‘that’	ʔu, ʔa	*i-
‘eye’	*de-s	*=l-ɕi
‘I’	*ʔaʒ	*ʓa
‘leaf’	*yəːpe	*ƛap
‘root’	*ciːǯ	*cʰereʂ
‘thou’	*ʔaw	*un

References

Clarke, Hyde. 1870. ‘Response to Leitner´s verbal presentation (November 23rd, 1869)’. Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, New Series II: 32-34.
George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas. An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayas, p 1144 ff
Roger Blench (1999) "Language phyla of the Indo-Pacific region: Recent research and classification", in Bellwood & Lilley, eds., Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin, 18:59–76, Australian National University
Blažek, Václav. 2019. Toward the question of Yeniseian homeland in perspective of toponymy. 14th Annual Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative-Historical Linguistics. Moscow: RSUH.
Van Driem 2001:1146
Roland Bielmeier (review, 2003), "On the Languages of the Himalayas and their Links (nearly) around the World", EBHR 24:96
Starostin, Sergei A., and Merritt Ruhlen. (1994). Proto-Yeniseian Reconstructions, with Extra-Yeniseian Comparisons. In M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 70–92. [Partial translation of Starostin 1982, with additional comparisons by Ruhlen.]
Bengtson, John D. (2010). Burushaski and Yeniseian and the Karasuk Culture. 14th Harvard Round Table on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia. Harvard University.
А. С. Касьян, Г. С. Старостин. Автоматическое сравнение енисейско-буришской базисной лексики и вероятностная оценка схождений. XII традиционные чтения памяти С. А. Старостина. РГГУ, 23-24 марта 2017 г. (Abstract) (in Russian)

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[1] Clarke, Hyde. 1870. ‘Response to Leitner´s verbal presentation (November 23rd, 1869)’. Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, New Series II: 32-34.

[2] George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas. An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayas, p 1144 ff

[3] Roger Blench (1999) "Language phyla of the Indo-Pacific region: Recent research and classification", in Bellwood & Lilley, eds., Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin, 18:59–76, Australian National University

[4] Blažek, Václav. 2019. Toward the question of Yeniseian homeland in perspective of toponymy. 14th Annual Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative-Historical Linguistics. Moscow: RSUH.

[5] Van Driem 2001:1146

[6] Roland Bielmeier (review, 2003), "On the Languages of the Himalayas and their Links (nearly) around the World", EBHR 24:96

[7] Starostin, Sergei A., and Merritt Ruhlen. (1994). Proto-Yeniseian Reconstructions, with Extra-Yeniseian Comparisons. In M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 70–92. [Partial translation of Starostin 1982, with additional comparisons by Ruhlen.]

[8] Bengtson, John D. (2010). Burushaski and Yeniseian and the Karasuk Culture. 14th Harvard Round Table on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia. Harvard University.

[9] А. С. Касьян, Г. С. Старостин. Автоматическое сравнение енисейско-буришской базисной лексики и вероятностная оценка схождений. XII традиционные чтения памяти С. А. Старостина. РГГУ, 23-24 марта 2017 г. (Abstract) (in Russian)