This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 26 Sep 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages christopher moseley Europe and North Asia Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203645659.ch3 Tapani Salminen Published online on: 01 Mar 2007 How to cite :- Tapani Salminen. 01 Mar 2007, Europe and North Asia from: encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages Routledge Accessed on: 26 Sep 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203645659.ch3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 3 Europe and North Asia Tapani Salminen An outline of the chapter The coverage of this chapter is defined geographically with certain ethnolinguistic considerations. In broad terms, it includes languages spoken in Europe (including Malta and Cyprus), Anatolia, Caucasia, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria and Siberia. The exact border line is drawn so that the contiguous areas of Turkic and Mongolic languages are included in this chapter while Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages spoken on the border regions belong to adjacent chapters. This means, for instance, that languages spoken in Tajikistan are not represented here insofar as they are Ira- nian, even though Tajikistan is one of the Central Asian countries. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and Inner Mongolia are largely included in this chapter while Tibet is not. Enclaves of Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages within the above-mentioned geo- graphical boundaries are, however, dealt with here, and Turkic and Mongolic lan- guages spoken inside the areas of other chapters are found there. All Eskimo-Aleut languages, including those spoken in Siberia, are dealt with in Chapter 1 on North America, and the entry on Ainu is found in Chapter 5 on East and Southeast Asia. The special cases as well as the overall contents of the chapter are explained in the following list of language families, which also serves as an index to the subsequent survey of linguistic history and diversity of the area: 1 the Basque language; 2 the Uralic (or Finno-Ugrian) language family; 3theIndo-European language family except the Indo-Iranian branch (see Chapter 4); the Romani and Lomavren languages of the Indic subbranch as well as the Ossete language and the Tat languages of the Iranian subbranch are, however, included in this chapter; 4 the Cypriot Arabic and Maltese languages of the Arabic branch of the Semitic language family (see Chapters 4 and 7 for the other Semitic languages); 5 the Kartvelian language family; 6 the Abkhaz-Adyge language family; 211 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 19:41 26 Sep 2021; For: 9780203645659, chap3, 10.4324/9780203645659.ch3 TAPANI SALMINEN 7 the Nakh-Daghestanian language family; 8 the Turkic language family except the Khalaj and Kashkay languages (see Chapter 4) and the Salar and Saryg Yugur languages (see Chapter 5); 9 the Mongolic language family except the Mogol language (see Chapter 4) and the Shira Yugur language and the Monguor branch (see Chapter 5); 10 the Tungusic language family except the Manchu branch (see Chapter 5); 11 the Nivkh language; 12 the Yeniseian language family; 13 the Yukagir language family; 14 the Chukotkan language family; 15 the Kamchatkan language family. Languages belong to the same language family, if the similarities among them, as formulated by Watkins in The Indo-European languages (1998: 26), ‘require us to assume they are the continuation of a single prehistoric common language’. Watkins is dis- cussing Indo-European, but obviously, any group of languages must meet this defini- tion to be called a language family. The above classification can be regarded as very firm in this respect, none of the families being in any way controversial. Notably, the genetic connection between the Nakh languages and the Daghestanian languages, that is, their belonging to a single Nakh-Daghestanian language family, has been definitively demonstrated (see Nichols 2003). On the other hand, no solid evidence has been presented for the genetic affinity between Abkhaz-Adyge and Nakh-Daghestanian, although such a ‘North Caucasian’ family is propagated by people involved in long-range comparisons and frequently quoted in general handbooks. Another alleged macro-family, typically included in overall classifications, often even without a question mark, is, of course, ‘Altaic’, con- sisting of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic, and extending to Korean and Japanese in more extreme versions. Furthermore, a ‘Chukotko-Kamchatkan’ family, incorporating Chukotkan and Kamchatkan, is often taken for granted, and other combinations such as Uralic plus Yukagir are occasionally called language families as well. In all of these cases, it is possible and indeed plausible to explain the shared features on the basis of areal influence and typological similarity rather than genetic affinity, and the extant material rather supports the idea of ancient contacts between genetically unrelated languages. The basic issue here is that these groups contrast markedly with established language families such as Uralic and Indo-European which, although internally diverse, can only be explained as deriving from a single proto-language. For a recent attempt to establish a genetic connection between Chukotkan and Kamchatkan, see Fortescue 2005. In the particular case of Altaic, the best recent elaboration of the plausibility of the areal rather than genetic explanation actually comes from a firm supporter of the genetic hypothesis. Dybo in the entry on the ‘altajskie jazyki’ in the Jazyki Rossijskoj Federacii i sosednih gosudarstv I (1997: 79–86) presents a large number of lexical comparisons which according to her represent cognate words inherited from Proto- Altaic. Two things are, however, conspicuously missing. First, while there are several words related to fundamental concepts such as body parts in the Altaic corpus, the most basic words in the relevant semantic fields remain restricted to a single family without cognates in the other Altaic families. Second, the material in the Altaic corpus shows only shallow phonological differentiation of shared lexicon, which cannot be the case of words deriving from Proto-Altaic, as the alleged proto-language, if valid, 212 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 19:41 26 Sep 2021; For: 9780203645659, chap3, 10.4324/9780203645659.ch3 EUROPE AND NORTH ASIA must have gone through a drastic series of changes not only in morphology and lex- icon but also in its sound system. Scho¨nig in the chapter on ‘Turko-Mongolic rela- tions’ in The Mongolic languages (2003) discusses the matter further. While ‘North Caucasian’, ‘Altaic’ and ‘Chukotko-Kamchatkan’ appear in literature both as presumed genetic and factual areal units, there are other labels that only have a conventional meaning. For instance, it is a matter of consensus that the term ‘Cau- casian languages’ only refers to a geographic group including the Kartvelian (South Caucasian), Abkhaz-Adyge (Northwest Caucasian) and Nakh-Daghestanian (North- east Caucasian) languages, as apparently no one would suggest that the Kartvelian family was related to the others. Similarly, ‘Paleoasiatic (or Paleosiberian) languages’ is only used as a cover term for Chukotkan, Kamchatkan, Nivkh, Yeniseian and Yukagir, because they simply represent languages not belonging to any larger family in Siberia. The one and only language in the area that can be called genuinely mixed, Copper Island Aleut, based on Aleut and Russian, as explained by Golovko in the Mixed languages (1994: 113–21), in its mixed nature second only to Michif, described by Bakker in the same volume (13–33), is dealt with in Chapter 1. There are several other languages that can be called mixed with regard to their lex- icon, although their grammar derives from a single language. Examples are Town Frisian, which can be described as a variety of Dutch heavily influenced by West Fri- sian, and A¨ ynu in Sinkiang, which is an in-group language whose speakers use it besides their native Uygur (see Wurm 1997). A whole group of languages are those with Romani lexicon incorporated into the grammar of local languages, including, in Europe, Angloromani, Scandinavian Traveller languages, Calo´ or Hispanoromani, Dortika or Hellenoromani, and Sˇatrovacˇki in the central Balkans. The earlier English, Scandinavian, Iberian and Greek dialects of Romani appear to be extinct but their lexical resources serve to form these special varieties. Bosha, in Caucasia, is similarly based on Armenian, with influences from Lomavren, an extinct language closely rela- ted to Romani. Furthermore, there are a number of secret or in-group languages such as Hantyrka, Rotwelsch and Yeniche in Central Europe, Polari and Shelta (Cant) or Yola in the British Isles, and Quinqui in Spain. A few pidgin languages such as Taymyr Pidgin (Govorka) that is still spoken on Taymyr peninsula, or the extinct Russenorsk and Russian-Chinese Pidgin, are also known from the area. Since all of the languages mentioned in this paragraph are typically used as second languages, they are not further discussed in this presentation as it is difficult to characterise lan- guages without native speakers as endangered. Case studies on most of these and several other similar languages are presented in the Mixed languages (1994).