Talk:Yeniseian languages

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To-do list for Yeniseian languages: edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do:


    • Add more family features
    • Add regular correspondences
    • Add Dené-Yeniseic correspondences (some - or a separate article for Dene-Yeniseic???) (done or started)
    • Add some info on Proto-Yeniseian, verbal templates etc.
    • Morphosyntax, phonotactics, etc.
    • Basic vocabulary (ten representative items at least, could be quoted from Vajda, perhaps)
    Partial achievement at least (Numerals, some pronouns, a few etyma)
    • Add legends to the tables! (since 17th March 2008)
    • Improve the format of the tables! (since 17th March 2008)


    • Add other points you consider necessary:

    Does anyone here speak Ket?

    I wish! Actually there's not a lot of information available in or about Ket. Hopefully that will change. Maybe one day there'll be a Ket wikipedia... :) Chamdarae 02:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

    Big article about Yenisean languages (in Russian): http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/verner-97.htm

    good article, worth a link from the main page, I think.

    Contents

    [edit] Ket-Na-Dene note

    This is just a note that User:85.0.13.153 made an edit to this page about genetic evidence for Ket-Na-Dene link that is entirely wrong. The edit claims the article supports such a genetic or linguistic link, whereas the article states:

    These results suggest that the Na-Dene and Yeniseian populations are both genetically and linguistically unrelated, and the 36 cognates used by Ruhlen (1998) are insufficient evidence for a common recent origin of these two language families.

    I think this was made in bad faith (as well as in bad English) and may be something to watch in the future. I'm also suspicious of the amount of stuff here related to Edward Vajda, but seeing as it has been added by various unrelated wikipedians of good standing, I let most of it be. Marm(t) 10:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

    On the other hand, the statement that the DNA study by Rubicz et al. "which found no evidence for a close genetic relationship between the Ket people and several Na-Dene populations throws these connections further into doubt" is a complete misunderstanding of the relationship between languages and genes. After at least 8000 years of contacts with Amerind speakers on the Na-Dené side, and about the same time with Eurasiatic speakers on he Yeniseian side (especially Turkic and Tungusic), nobody can seriously be surprised by the heavy influence...look at the Turks, for instance - they are closer to the Etruscan mummies (uncovered in Rome) than to their Mongolic cousins. Afro-Americans in the USA speak (an) Indo-European language(s), which is another well-known example.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 14:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

    Sorry but peoples which are the closest to the Proto-Turks, such as Kyrgyz and Khakas and Altay Turks are NOTHING like ethrushchan mumies. Today in general Anthropologists state that Proto-Turks were Mongoloid. Note the difference between TURKIC and TURKISH. If you mean TURKISH people and not TURKIC peoples, well, only 30% of them have genetically link with TURKIC peoples in Central Asia. TURKISH people are in majority Greeks and Armenians who adopted TURKIC language. Spring01 17:27, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

    You don't have to apologize. ;-) I agree the Proto-Turks are NOT genetically (I'm using "genetically" for DNA relatedness and "genealogically" for linguistic relatedness) related to the Etruscans (or Etruscan mummies). And yes, I mean the modern Turks, the inhabitants of Turkey - did I not say "they ARE"? So, in fact, there is no disagreement between the two of us, is it? ;-) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 23:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Genetic relationships

    The section on the genetic relationships is erroneous and misleading. Vajda is not known as an expert on Haida, and he specifically excludes Haida from the hypothesis in question. The evidence for “Karasuk” is not “new”: it was known to Dulson (1968) and Toporov (1971), if not earlier. Worst of all, the article totally fails to mention the extensive work of S.A. Starostin on Yeniseian and its external relations. Therefore, I will try to rewrite the section.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 23:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

    Go for it! kwami (talk) 02:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
    Done. Your opinions are welcome! By the way, I haven't had time to use the complex citation templates. I'd be very very grateful if someone did this. ;-) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 15:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    Much better. BTW, it's standard HTML formatting to use "straight quotes". Like ligatures and proper diacritic placement, it's usually considered that 'smart quotes' should be a function of the browser, not hard coded into the document. kwami (talk) 18:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    OK. I've replaced the smart quotes by the straight ones. Thanks! --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 21:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    There are browsers that format quotes? Has Microsoft once again declared darkness the standard? – Anyway, I'll make a few little stylistic and formatting edits later today, such as keeping the Russian references in Cyrillic and then translating their titles. David Marjanović (talk) 11:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
    I don't know of any that do at present; I just remember admins reverting someone who was going through Wikipedia changing all the straight quotes to curly ones. At the time, there was no better solution, but they were anticipating that this was something that would eventually be automated. (Maybe they were expecting a change in coding within Wikipedia.) I've never heard otherwise since. kwami (talk) 11:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
    I see.
    I've made my edit. I think the family features should be expanded and then put in front of the relations. Are the Yeniseian languages ergative? This is not clear from the current text. David Marjanović (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
    The verbs have active-stative alignment; nouns do not have case. kwami (talk) 20:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Na-Dene Connection Demonstrated

    The connection to Na-Dene has been convincingly demonstrated. The article should be updated to note this. Additionally, I personally feel that the significance of the more speculative, long-range connections should be de-emphasized. --Peter Farago (talk) 01:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

    Yes, but notice that I put Na-Dené as the first item in the "Main articles" list ;-)
    I added a blurb to the DC article, but no-one's yet taken it further. I'll copy it here. kwami (talk) 04:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
    Good. Sorry for the delay. I'm still reading the Symposium papers. Anyway, I'll add a TO-DO list here soon. --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 11:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Ad "Contrary to all these claims..."

    Someone has added the following:

    Contrary to all these claims, some specialists remain extremely skeptical on any demonstrable genealogical links of Ket/Yeniseien with any other language family, thus maintaining that Ket/Yeniseian is still to be regarded as a true language isolate without any known relatives anywhere (cf. Georg 2007).

    • 1) User 212.79.166.21 seems to have no courage to sign his edits properly.
    • 2) S/He uses an argument from Georg 2007, but the Dene-Yeniseic Symposium was held on 26th-27th February 2008.
    • 3) The following "mainstream" linguists have reacted favourably: Michael Krauss (Na-Dene specialist), Jeff Leer (Na-Dene specialist), James Kari (Na-Dene specialist), Eric Hamp (historical linguist), Johanna Nichols (historical linguist), Bernard Comrie (linguist), Victor Golla (Athabaskanist), Michael Fortescue (Eurasianist), Heinrich Werner (Yeniseicist).
    • 4) It is somewhat illogical to put the 2007 information after the brand new 2008 one. Anyway, I have already asked Mr. Georg for his opinion and hope to get one soon.
    • 5) All these comments of mine don't necessarily mean that I fully subsribe to everything Vajda claims.
    • 6) "Contrary to all these claims" is a bad formulation anyway - who claims anything??? The section only informs the readers of the various proposals.
    • 7) I strongly suggest that we delete the last edit.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 09:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

    I agree. I think the wording speaks for itself - we say who made which claims. Also, at least Krauss, Kari, and Comrie are all careful linguists, and don't go around jumping on ideas like this. — kwami (talk) 09:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

    Actually, I take that back. I'd forgotten that we don't say that up front, as we should. Until Dene-Yeniseian, it was safest to assume Yeniseian was an isolate, and there hasn't been time for the linguistic community to properly evaluate DY, even if people like Comrie's first response is positive. — kwami (talk) 09:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
    Fine, but it should be reformulated anyway. Or put elsewhere. By the way, I'm reorganizing the references at the moment in order that any futher editing of this article is easy...easiear than now, I hope :-) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 10:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
    Oh, you've done so already. Fine. :-) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 10:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Stefan Georg's work

    Somebody is constantly removing the reference to Stefan Georg. Why??? He doesn't agree with the Dene-Yeniseic proposal of Vajda's (i.e. with the "superimposal of Na-Dene features on the Yeniseic data"), but it's irrelevant and it doesn't invalidate his work. He still IS a reknown expert in Yeniseian (and Vajda's friend, to someone's surprise). The reference should be kept! --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 07:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Changing the structure

    Hi. I've changed the footnotes (wow, that was exhausting! :-)), rearranged the genealogical section. I'm sure there will be some objections. You know, I haven't had time to work on the wording and style yet, so feel free to do so. Anyway, there are more important things to do, such as the morphology of the Yeniseic languages, examples from the basic vocabulary, phonology, etc. That's why I moved the features before the gen. section. --90.176.48.223 (talk) 14:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

    Damn! The system logged me out >: ... --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 14:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Separate Dene-Yeniseic article

    I suggest that we make a separate Dene-Yeniseic article, summarizing the proposal. If the Karasuk hypothesis has its own article, it is only fair to make a Dene-Yeniseic one. I've already began to summarize the correpondences. By the way, many of them agree rather well with the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. Authors like Nikolayev, Sergei Starostin and George Starostin should be given the proper credit, too. It is not true that they haven't compared the morphologies. Moreover, Edward Vajda's claim that there is no reconstruction of Proto-Yeniseic seems to contradict the facts - what about Sergei Starostin's Proto-Yeniseian? Anyway, Heinrich Werner and Edward Vajda are preparing an etymological dictionary of the Yeniseian languages and I wonder how and to what extent they will differ from the Muscovite scholars. Any comments? --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 11:46, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

    As the creator of the Karasuk article, I agree completely. I simply haven't had the time. — kwami (talk) 18:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
    Okay: Dené-Yeniseian languages. Currently it consists solely of an introduction. We need a summary of the morphological evidence from Vajda, but also a comparison with Sergei et al. — kwami (talk) 19:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
    such a comparison would be OR.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 06:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
    I'm in Prague now, but I'll be back tomorrow and have a look at that.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 14:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
    If reporting people's claims is OR, then we need to delete Wikipedia. — kwami (talk) 23:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
    Comparing Vajdas work with Starostins would be OR because it goes against WP:SYNTH.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    Okay, bad wording on my part. I meant that we should present both; the comparison would be implied by the presentation. ("A said X. However, B said Y" is not considered OR. I don't mean that we should evaluate them.) — kwami (talk) 09:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    Ok. Thats something else then.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 10:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    I'm still in Prague, but will return in about ten hours to do some work on the articles again. And yes, my understanding is the same as that of Kwami's. Presenting both concepts only shows how controversial this issue is (and nobody can claim it is uncontroversial), i.e. it shows the true state of the debate: the Dene-Yeniseic link, however promising, still needs to be evaluated (and acknowledged) by the linguistic community. Vajda himself admits some of the observations are mere speculations and may turn out to be wrong. This must and will be mentioned in the article, of course. I'm pretty sure the other Yeniseists will respond soon and we'll have other views to mention in the articles. There are many but's and if's and they mustn't be omitted. As for the Dene-Caucasian article, for instance, I'm sorry to admit I haven't had time to write the proper ctitical section yet, but I will, don't worry. One of the many problems is that when one of the two camps criticizes the other, the latter soon come up with their own response and this often repeats several times, so it's difficult to write something consistent and easy to read, especially when one side accuses the other side of factual errors and the former respond that they did not make any mistake, giving an explanation that sounds reasonable, and so on and so forth...it's difficult to choose what to use here...we cannot copy the whole passages and, at the same time, I feel it would not be enough to say simply "this matter is disputed", something that would have to be repeated many many times... ;-) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 12:14, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Genetic

    What Vajda has proposed is a genetic relation between yeniseian and na-dene. The only kind of relation that can be invesitgated with the comparative method is genetic relations. I fail to see what you don't like about that phrasing. The word "Genealogical" although it means the same is much less used in linguistics to describe family relations between languages.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    Because 'genetic' also means genetics, and there is no 'genetics' relationship. Linguists such as Comrie who work with archeology and genetics as well as pure linguistics prefer 'genealogical' when there is the potential for confusion. As an encyclopedia, we should also be concerned about such misunderstanding. — kwami (talk) 08:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    Well, from the factual point of view it doesn't really matter whether we use genetic, genealogical or phylogenetic. The former term is certainly more economical, being shorter and easier to pronounce, but the latter two clearly avoid ambiguity. We must keep in minds that Wikipedia is read by non-linguists, who much more often encounter the term "genetic" in connection with biology rather than with linguitics...well I don't mind anyway...when you use genetic, you should link its first instance to an explanatory article (such as Genetic relationship, but I'm surprised to learn that this article doesn't even mention the fact that two populations can speak genetically related languages without being related (bio)genetically - you see, and that's what ambiguity's about. Somebody should do something about it.) --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 12:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Dene-Caucasian or Sino-Caucasian?

    Sergei Starostin considered Sino-Caucasian a branch of Dene-Caucasian, but that was a preliminary assumption. Later the term was used geographically (i.e. the Eurasian part of Dene-Caucasian). Today, it's rather a synonym of Dene-Caucasian. Bengtson and others tend to consider the internal grouping as far from certain. The term Sino-Caucasian was used by Starostin, because Sino-Tibetan and Caucasian were the first two (plus Yeniseian) branches he compared and used in his hypothesis in the early 80s...only later did Nikolayev add Na-Dene.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 13:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    Aren't there any scholars who consider SC to be valid but not DC? That's why I added both. — kwami (talk) 18:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    No, there aren't, as far as I know. Vitaliy Shevoroshkin and Sergei Nikolayev consider Almosan a part of Dene-Caucasian, but Merritt Ruhlen disagrees, insisting on their Amerind affiliation; but that's another story. Hence, all those who consider SC to be valid also consider DC to be valid.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 22:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] The "main" template

    Sorry if I messed up the links. We should agree on how and to what extent to use the "main" template. I apologize for any inconvenience. --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 13:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    I decided to filter out some redundant links. Rather than use the "main" and "see also" templates, I now think it is enough to make one link only... --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 09:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] New tables, comments most welcome

    Hi, I have made three tables so far: Pronouns, Numerals and Etyma. Comments, criticisms (especially constructive) and questions welcome! Of course, there are no legends, which I'll make as soon as I'm less busy. --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 09:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)