Eurasiatic, a similar but not identical grouping, was proposed by Joseph Greenberg ( 2000 ) and endorsed by Merritt Ruhlen: it is taken as a subfamily of Nostratic by Bomhard ( 2008 ).

According to Greenberg, Eurasiatic and Amerind form a genetic node, being more closely related to each other than either is to " the other families of the Old World ".

Some linguists maintain that Uralic and Altaic are related through a larger family, such as Eurasiatic or Nostratic, within which Uralic and Altaic are no more closely related to each other than either is to any other member of the proposed family, for instance than Uralic or Altaic is to Indo-European ( e. g. Greenberg 2000: 17 ).

Part of the reason for this is that the Eurasiatic hypothesis rests on mass comparison of lexemes, grammatical formatives, and vowel systems ( see Greenberg 2000 – 2002 ) rather than on the prevailing view that regular sound correspondences, linked to a wide array of lexemes and grammatical formatives, are the only valid means to establish genetic relationship ( see for instance Baldi 2002: 2 – 19 ).

Other proposals, further back in time ( and proportionately less accepted ), link Indo-European and Uralic with Altaic and the other language families of northern Eurasia, namely Yukaghir, Korean, Japanese, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh, Ainu, and Eskimo – Aleut, but excluding Yeniseian ( the most comprehensive such proposal is Joseph Greenberg's Eurasiatic ), or link Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic to Afro-Asiatic and Dravidian ( the traditional form of the Nostratic hypothesis ), and ultimately to a single Proto-Human family.

Murray Gell-Mann, Ilia Peiros, and Georgiy Starostin maintain that the Austric hypothesis is less well supported than several other linguistic macrofamilies, including Sino-Caucasian, Eurasiatic, and Afroasiatic since " no detailed proto-Austric glossaries or equally detailed tables of correspondences between the various daughter branches of Austric have been produced.

Swadesh's Basque-Dennean thus differed from Dené-Caucasian in including ( 1 ) Uralic, Altaic, Japanese, Chukotian, and Eskimo-Aleut ( languages which are classed as Eurasiatic by the followers of Sergei Starostin and those of Joseph Greenberg ), ( 2 ) Dravidian, which is classed as Nostratic by Starostin's school, and ( 3 ) Austronesian ( which according to Starostin is indeed related to Dené-Caucasian, but only at the next stage up, which he termed Dené-Daic, and only via Austric ( see Borean languages )).

The Eurasiatic hypothesis is dismissed by many linguists, often on the ground that Greenberg relies in his research on mass comparison, a method he developed in the 1950s that remains extremely controversial and sometimes attracted considerable criticism ( i. a.

Merritt Ruhlen writes that Eurasiatic is supported by the existence of a grammatical pattern " whereby plurals of nouns are formed by suffixing-t to the noun root ... whereas duals of nouns are formed by suffixing-k ." Rasmus Rask noted this grammatical pattern in the groups now called Uralic and Eskimo – Aleut as early as 1818, but it can also be found in Altaic, Ainu, Gilyak, and Chukchi – Kamchatkan, all of which Greenberg placed in Eurasiatic.

According to Ruhlen, this pattern is not found in language families or languages outside Eurasiatic.

According to Greenberg, the language family that Eurasiatic is most closely connected to is Amerind.

Like Eurasiatic, Amerind is not a generally accepted proposal.

Dené – Caucasian is the older of the two groups, with the emergence of Eurasiatic being more recent.

Ruhlen argues that Eurasiatic is supported by stronger and clearer evidence than Dené – Caucasian, and that this also indicates that the spread of Dené – Caucasian occurred before that of Eurasiatic.

While it is perfectly true that the Uralic words for these things could be derived from the Indo-European ones ( or vice versa ), the Uralic words have apparent equivalents among other languages variously identified as " Uralo-Siberian " or " Eurasiatic ".

Various linguists have seen these North Eurasian languages as part of: < ul >< li > a Ural – Altaic language family ( popular until 1960s )</ li >< li > a Uralic and an Altaic family ( Anna V. Dybo | Dybo, Roy Andrew Miller | Miller, Nicholas Poppe | Poppe )</ li >< li > separate Uralic, Turkic languages | Turkic and Mongolian language | Mongolian families ( Gerard Clauson | Clauson, Gerhard Doerfer | Doerfer, Stefan Georg | Georg )</ li >< li > a Eurasiatic or Nostratic macrofamily ( Joseph Greenberg | Greenberg, Sergei Starostin | Starostin, Allan Bomhard | Bomhard )</ li ></ ul >

Later in his life, Greenberg proposed that nearly all of the language families of northern Eurasia belong to a single higher-order family, which he called Eurasiatic.

He posits that this ancestral language, together with Indo-European and Kartvelian, descends from a " Eurasiatic " protolanguage some 12, 000 years ago, which in turn would be descended from a " Borean " protolanguage via Nostratic.

Joseph Greenberg proposed a link between Ket and other Yeniseian languages and the Na-Dene language group of North America in his final study of Eurasiatic languages.

More recently Joseph Greenberg ( 2000 – 2002 ) suggested grouping Eskimo – Aleut with all of the language families of northern Eurasia, with the exception of Yeniseian, in a proposed language family called Eurasiatic.

He has studied the controversial hypotheses about the underlying unity among the proposed Nostratic and Eurasiatic language families.

Merritt Ruhlen and other supporters of the Eurasiatic proposal have held that the language families it includes have a distinctive grammatical pattern involving the use of a-t suffix to form plurals and a-k suffix to form duals.

Eurasiatic and Nostratic include many of the same language families.

Vladislav Illich-Svitych's Nostratic dictionary did not include the smaller Siberian language families listed in Eurasiatic, but this was only because protolanguages had not been reconstructed for them ; Nostraticists have not attempted to exclude these languages from Nostratic.

The points raised concerning the words for ' name ’, ' water ', and ' give ' require a glance at the possible relations of Indo-European and Uralic with other language families, in particular the languages hypothetically grouped as Uralo-Siberian by Fortescue, Eurasiatic by Greenberg, and Nostratic by Holger Pedersen and various successors of his.

He regarded " Korean-Japanese-Ainu " as forming a distinct subgroup within his proposed Eurasiatic language family.

They reserve the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping, which comprises the rest of the macrofamily.

In 1987 Joseph Greenberg proposed a similar macrofamily which he called Eurasiatic.

Sergei Starostin's school has now re-included Afroasiatic in a broadly defined Nostratic, while reserving the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping which comprises the rest of the macrofamily.

Joseph Greenberg identifies Chukotko-Kamchatkan ( which he names Chukotian ) as a member of Eurasiatic, a proposed macrofamily that includes Indo-European, Altaic, and Eskimo – Aleut, among others.

Examples of proposed macro-families range from relatively recent such as Macro-Jê, Macro-Waikurúan, Macro-Mayan, Macro-Siouan, Penutian, Na-Dene or Congo-Saharan ( Niger-Saharan ) to older ones such as Austric, Dené – Caucasian, Eurasiatic, Nostratic or Ural-Altaic.

The Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic and Korean-Japanese-Ainu groupings were also posited by Joseph Greenberg ( 2000 – 2002 ) who, however, treated them as independent members of a larger family, which he termed Eurasiatic.

The Eurasiatic grouping resembles the older Nostratic groupings of Holger Pedersen and Vladislav Illich-Svitych by including Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic.

While the Eurasiatic hypothesis has been well received by Nostraticists and some Indo-Europeanists, it remains very controversial.

Some proposals would group Eurasiatic with even larger macrofamilies such as Nostratic or Borean, but neither they nor Eurasiatic itself have been widely accepted, since they are not seen by the linguistic profession as being based on valid methodologies.

As laid out by Greenberg ( 2000: 279-81 ), the branches of Eurasiatic are:

The Eurasiatic expansion overwhelmed Dené – Caucasian, leaving speakers of the latter restricted mainly to isolated pockets ( the Basques in the Pyrenees mountains, Caucasian peoples in the Caucasus mountains, and the Burushaski in the Hindu Kush mountains ) surrounded by Eurasiatic speakers.

Greenberg basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern ' tier ' ( his Eurasiatic ) and a southern ' tier ' ( principally Afroasiatic and Dravidian ).

Greenberg basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern ' tier ' ( his Eurasiatic ) and a southern ' tier ' ( principally Afroasiatic and Dravidian ).

Greenberg also assigns Gilyak ( Nivkh ) and Yukaghir, sometimes classed as " Paleosiberian " languages, to the Eurasiatic family.

Harold C. Fleming includes Eurasiatic as a subgroup of the hypothetical Borean family, but this group does not have widespread acceptance in scholarship.