Was cruising the interwebs for a "next
project", when I stumbled upon the wikipedia page for Tsezic. My
oh my! There're some intriguing resemblances between Tsezic and the
IndoEuropean languages (though the other Northeast Caucasian
languages as well):
Regarding case endings
|
ProtoIndoEuropean |
Tsezic |
||||||
|
Khwarshi |
Tsez |
Hunzib |
|||||
|
Nom.Sg |
-s, -Ø
|
Abs. Sg.
|
-∅
|
Abs. Sg.
|
-∅
|
Abs.Sg. |
-∅
|
|
Ins. Sg. |
-(e)h₁
|
Erg. Sg.
|
-(j)i
|
Erg. Sg.
|
-ā
|
Erg. Sg. |
-y
|
|
Gen. Sg.
|
-s,-os, -es
|
Gen. sg. 1 |
-s
|
Gen.Sg.1 |
-(e)s
|
Gen. Sg. |
-s
|
|
|
|
Ins. Sg. |
-z
|
GenSg.2 |
-(e)z
|
|
|
|
Voc. Sg. |
-Ø, -ĕ
|
Voc. Sg. |
-ju
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ins. Sg.
|
-d1 / -do2
|
Quite a neat resemblance, eh? Well,
that's nothing. Not only is this mirrored pretty much acrossed
Northeast Caucasian, you can expand this to ProtoUralic, and you'll
find even more similarities. This isn't just limited to nominal
endings, but extends to similarities between their pronominal systems
as well. Likely, these features seem to have been borrowed in one
direction or another. Given the degree of similarities between these
obviously, otherwise unrelated languages:
|
PIndoEuropean |
Tsezic |
ProtoUralic |
|||||||
|
Khwarshi |
Tsez |
Hunzib |
|||||||
|
NomSg |
-s, -Ø
|
Abs. Sg.
|
-∅
|
Abs. Sg.
|
-∅
|
Abs.Sg. |
-∅
|
Nom.Sg. |
-∅
|
|
Ins.Sg. |
-(e)h₁
|
Erg. Sg.
|
-(j)i
|
Erg. Sg.
|
-ā
|
Erg. Sg. |
-y
|
|
|
|
Gen.Sg.
|
-s,-(o/e)s
|
Gen. sg. |
-s
|
Gen.Sg.1 |
-(e)s
|
Gen. Sg. |
-s
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ins. Sg. |
-z
|
GenSg.2 |
-(e)z
|
|
|
|
|
|
Voc.Sg. |
-Ø, -ĕ
|
Voc. Sg. |
-ju
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Abl. Sg.
|
-(e)d |
|
|
|
|
Ins. Sg.
|
-d/-do
|
Abl. sg. |
-ta |
|
Acc. Sg. |
-m |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Acc. Sg. |
-m |
There are also similarities with the
pronominal endings, and between pronominal endings and nominal
endings. These aren't dealt with here. There's also similarities
between numeral endings. While ProtoIndoEuropean is primarily
inflectional, it has no true means of forming new plurals, outside
adding the nominative -es, many of its endings do seem to exhibit a
plural -s, and a dual -h1 (which was most likely a glottal stop).
ProtoUralic had -k- in the dual, and
-j-/-t in the plural.
Northeast Caucasian seems to have had
some variation on a postalveolar -s- or -z- just before the case
(like we see in ProtoUralic, but unlike what we see in
Protoindoeuropean.
Similarities of this sort aren't
uncommon between unrelated languages. Though there are alot of them
in this general area, too many in fact, to just brush off the
similarities. In my own view, it seems as if, alongside the
prepositions of ProtoIndoEuropean, seem to have been borrowed from a
common source. Or that there was alot of contact between these
languages, that they became more similar with time at some point in
recent prehistory.
