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Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2 vols) Series: Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, Volume: 6 Author: Allan Bomhard This book is a comprehensive comparison of Proto-Indo-European, in all its stages of development and in all its aspects, with various other language families of Northern Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. It is an attempt to show that Proto-Indo-European is not genetically isolated but, rather, belongs to a larger linguistic grouping, namely, the Nostratic macrofamily. For the first time, all aspects of the putative proto-language are discussed in detail: phonology, morphology, vocabulary, syntax, and homelands. Copious references are given throughout to the relevant literature and the book ends with an English-Nostratic index. Also for the first time, a sizable amount of material has been included from Eskimo-Aleut and Chukchi-Kamchatkan. This book is, therefore, the most important contribution to Nostratic linguistics to appear to date. Copyright Year: 2008 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-90-04-16853-4 Publication date: 25 Jun 2008

In the second half of the 20th century, were presented many studies devoted to demonstrate a genetic relationship among some indigenous linguistic families of northern and central Eurasia, Near East and Northern Africa; the postulated macro-family was called Nostratic, a term created in 1903 by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen (from the Latin word ''nostras'', meaning 'our fellow-countryman', plural: ''nostrates''). Evidence in favor of Nostratic is based on regular correspondences among proto-languages spread through the aforementioned areas, etymological forms referring to a basic lexicon, and reconstructed grammatical morphemes.