Proto-Pontic and The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis Part One (Pre-Indo-European?)

Ready for another poorly edited journey into a language lumper's dreamland? Well, stay tuned because you’re sure to love today’s video.

In this video, we discuss how Colarusso took his knowledge of the Northwest Caucasian languages and managed to piece together a macrolanguage family hypothesis, which posits a potential relationship between Indo-European and the NWC languages, suggesting they may have shared a common ancestor termed 'proto-Pontic'- which he (partially) reconstructs. Despite initial skepticism, Colarusso's work reveals compelling parallels between the phonological systems, grammatical elements, and lexical correspondences of these language families. There is even a nice parallel from IE myth.

Of course, there are many weaknesses – some of the cognates seem far-fetched and minimal in number, and many of the grammatical similarities aren’t unique to NWC. Interesting, though, is how NWC might have influenced PIE phonology with regard to laryngeals and the stop system.
So is the Proto-Pontic hypothesis any better than say Blevins’ Proto-Indo-European Euskarian?

Maybe not, BUT!

Colarusso's hypothesis, I believe, was the catalyst for discussions within the linguistic community, drawing attention to the complex interplay between language families in the Caucasus region – particularly with regard to the proposed Indo-Uralic hypothesis. He often isn’t given enough credit for his work – and his proposals do seem to solve some of the nagging questions regarding the earliest forms of PIE and actually with the Indo-Uralic hypothesis too. Of course, he wasn’t the first person to point out similarities between the two language families, but he was the first to put together the real groundwork of correspondences.

We also explore the perspectives of linguists such as Eric Hamp and Allan Bomhard, the latter of the two offers alternative interpretations and expands upon Colarusso's ideas – and again doesn’t seem to get much credit for his work despite that fact that many scholars now seem to accept some form of Caucasian influence in Indo-European.

Part 2 of this series will explore the idea of Northwest Caucasian influence on Indo-European rather as a substrate – and not a sibling. Interesting stuff so stay tuned!

Also, for those who are interested, the very first person to notice similarities between PIE and the Caucasian languages was Uhlenbeck here:
Uhlenbeck, C. C. (1933). Eine Bemerkung zur Frage nach der Urverwandtschaft der uralischen und indogermanischen Sprachen. In Liber Semisaecularis Societatis Fenno-Ugrica. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.

Selected sources (additional sources will be in-screen)
Colarusso, J. (1988). The Northwest Caucasian Languages: A Phonological Survey. In J. Hankamer (Ed.), Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. Garland Publishing.

Colarusso, J. (1992). Phyletic Links between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Northwest Caucasian. In H. I. Aronson (Ed.), The Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR, Linguistic Studies: University of Chicago, Chicago Linguistic Society.

Colarusso, J. (2003). More Pontic: Further Etymologies between Indo-European and Northwest Caucasian. In D. A. Holisky & K. Tuite (Eds.), Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner Asian Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Howard Aronson (pp. 41-60). Amsterdam: E. J. Brill.

(1981, a) Typological Parallels between Proto-Indo-European and the Northwest Caucasian Languages. Bono Homini Donum: Essays in Historical Linguistics in Memory of J. Alexander Kerns, Y. Arbeitman and A. R. Bomhard (eds.), vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Colarusso (2019), "Thoughts on Bomhard’s Work," Journal of Indo-European Studies.

Puhvel, J. (1987). Comparative mythology. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hamp, E. P. (1967). On Maya-Chipayan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 33(1).

Hamp, E. P. (1971). On Mayan-Araucanian Comparative Phonology.

Ruhlen, M. (1994). Is Proto-Indo-European Related to Proto-Northwest Caucasian?. Mother Tongue May, 11-12.

Bengtson, J.D. (1994). Comment on Colarusso 1994. Mother Tongue May, 11-12.

Bomhard, A.R. Comments on Colarusso's Paper "Phyletic Links between Proto-IndoEuropean and Proto-Northwest Caucasian. Mother Tongue May, 11-12.

Bomhard, A. R. (1994). Comments on Colarusso's Paper "Phyletic Links between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Northwest Caucasian." Mother Tongue: Newsletter of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory.

Bjørn, R. G. (2017). Foreign Elements in the Proto-Indo-European Vocabulary: A Comparative Loanword Study. University of Copenhagen.

Bjørn, R. G. (2019). "Chapter 3 Pronouns and Particles: Indo-Uralic Heritage and Convergence". In The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill

Starostin, S. A. (2009). Indo-European—North Caucasian Isoglosses (translated by R. W. Thornton). Mother Tongue, 14. (Original work published in Russian in 1988, that version is the one cited in-screen in the video).