Kirja-arvio: eskimo-urali ja dene-jenisei -hypoteesit

[merimaa]

Juha Janhusen arvio Michael Fortesquen ja Edward Vajdan kirjasta, joka käsittelee kirjoittajien esittämiä hypoteesejä kielikuntien etäsukulaisuuksista:
https://brill.com/view/journals/jeal/5/ ... p143_7.xml

"This joint volume authored by Michael Fortescue and Edward Vajda contains [...] two separate sections, each of which deals with a hypothesis of distant relationships between the various language families of North Asia. The first section, by Michael Fortescue (pp. 11–234), is focused on the so-called Uralo-Siberian Hypothesis, according to which the Uralic languages might be linked with one or several Siberian language families, including Kolymic (Yukaghir), Kamchukotic (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), and Eskaleutic (Eskimo-Aleut). The second section, by Edward Vajda (pp. 235–480), deals in a similar way with the Dene-Yeniseian Hypothesis, which concerns the possibility of a connection between the Yeniseic language family of western Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of North America."

[Jaska]

Janhunen:
"Even so, the critical reader cannot avoid seeing problems in the entire Uralo-Siberian etymological corpus. These problems are also obvious in the narrower context of Uralo-Yukaghir comparisons, which even some of those who do not accept the idea of common descent are willing to view as traces of language contact. In the title of his paper on this topic, Ante Aikio (2014) mentions three alternative explanations: inheritance, contact, or chance. The critical reader can only accept the last option, for all the items quoted in the comparisons involve too many open questions, the problems being of both the linguistic (phonology, semantics) and contextual (geography, chronology) types."