Vasco-Caucasian languages
Vasco-Caucasian is a hypothetical language family or phylum whose extant members are Basque, Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe), Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestani) and Burushaski, but not Kartvelian (South Caucasian). Although first proposed by John Bengtson, it had a precedent in the "Asianitic" group proposed by the Polish geographer Bogdan Zaborski c. 1970.
Extinct languages such as Hurro-Urartian, Hattic, Minoan, Etruscan and Iberian have also been proposed to belong to this phylum, which would be an extension of Sergei Starostin's North Caucasian family (which groups together NEC and NWC) and at a same time part of a larger Dene-Caucasian group also including Sino-Tibetan and Yeniseian. The so-called "Mediterranean substrate" in Southern European languages also contains Vasco-Caucasian loanwords, mostly related to local flora and fauna.
Octavià Alexandre is an adherent of this hypothesis, but (as in the case of Nostratic) many historical linguists do not consider the evidence sufficient. That doesn't mean that the Vasco-Caucasian hypothesis is wrong; but if these languages are related to each other, the time depth probably exceeds the range of the current comparative method.
See also
External link
- Vasco-Caucasian - Octavià Alexandre's blog
