Alarodian languages

File:13-Urartu-9-6mta.gif in the 9th to 6th centuries BCE]]

The term Alarodian is derived from Greek Ἀλαρόδιοι (Alarodioi), the name of an ethnic group mentioned by Herodotus that has often been equated with the people of the kingdom of Urartu, although this equation is considered doubtful by modern scholars. A leading Urartologist, Paul Zimansky, rejects a connection between the Urartians and the Alarodians.Zimansky, Paul "Urartian and Urartians." The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (2011): 556. [https://www.academia.edu/10023756/Urartian_and_the_Urartians] Almost nothing is known about the Alarodians except that they "were armed like the Colchians and Saspeires," according to Herodotus.[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/7b*.html Herodotus. Book VII: chapters 57‑137] The Colchians and Saspeires are generally associated with the Kartvelians and/or Scythians, neither of whom spoke a Hurro-Urartian or Northeast Caucasian language.

Historically, the term "Alarodian languages" was employed for several language family proposals of various size. Sayce (1880) employed the name for a small group that comprised Urartian (then called "Vannic") and the Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Laz, Mingrelian, and Svan).{{cite book |last=Sayce |first=A. H. |year=1880 |title=Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. 2 |location=London |publisher=C. Kegan Paul & Co. |url=https://archive.org/details/scienceoflang02sayc }} In 1884, the German orientalist Fritz Hommel further included all languages of the Caucasus and the ancient Near East which did not belong to the Indo-European, Semitic, and the now obsolete Ural–Altaic language families, e.g. Elamite, Kassite.{{cite journal |last=Hommel |first=Fritz |year=1884 |title=Die sumero-akkadische Sprache und ihre Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse |journal=Zeitschrift für Keilschriftforschung |volume=1 |pages=161–178, 195–221, 323–342 |language=de }} Later, he extended the Alarodian family to include the pre-Indo-European languages of Europe, e.g. Lemnian, Etruscan, Ligurian. Karel Oštir's (1921) version of Alarodian included all aforementioned languages, further Basque, Sumerian, Egyptian, the Cushitic and Berber languages.Oštir, Karel. (1921). Beiträge zur Alarodischen Sprachwissenschaft (a monograph), I, (in German){{cite journal |last=Čop |first=Bojan |year=1973 |title=Oštirs sprachwissenschaftliche Ideenwelt |journal=Linguistica |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=13–96 |publisher=Ljubljana University Press |doi=10.4312/linguistica.13.1.13-96 |doi-access=free }} The historical Alarodian proposal – especially Oštir's maximal extension – was not well-received by the majority of scholars ("Ce petit livre donne le vertige"—"This little book makes one dizzy", A. Meillet),{{cite journal |author-link=Antoine Meillet |last=Meillet |first=Antoine |year=1922 |title=Comptes rendus |journal=Bulletin de la Société de linguistique |volume=22 |pages=128–130 }} and eventually abandoned.

File:Northeast_Caucasus_languages_map_en.svg in the modern day.]]

The term "Alarodian languages" was revived by I. M. Diakonoff for the proposed language family that unites the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages.{{cite journal |last=Diakonoff |first=Igor M. |year=1995 |title=Long-Range Linguistic Relations: Cultural Transmission or Consanguinity? |journal=Mother Tongue |volume=24 |pages=34–40 |url=https://archive.org/download/MotherTongue10April1990/Mother%20Tongue%2024%20%28March%201995%29.pdf }} Work by I. M. Diakonoff and Starostin (1986) asserted the connection between "Nakh-Dagestanian" (NE Caucasian) and Hurro-Urartian on the basis of a comparison of their reconstruction to Proto-Nakh-Dagestanian, later published in 1994 with Nikolayev.Nikolayev, S. L. and Starostin, S. A. A North Caucasian etymological dictionary. Moscow: Asterisk, 1994

The inclusion of Etruscan and the related Tyrsenian languages has also been proposed, first by Orel and Starostin in 1990, on the basis of sound correspondences.Orël, Vladimir and Starostin, Sergei. Etruscan as an East Caucasian language. In Vitaly Shevoroshkin (ed.), Protolanguages and proto-cultures, Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1990. Facchetti has argued that there is a "curious" set of isoglosses between Etruscan and Hurrian,Facchetti, Giulio M. Appunti di morfologia etrusca. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2002 while Pliev proposed instead that Etruscan had a Nakh substrate.Pliev, R. S. Nakhskoetrusskie leksikheskie vstrekhi. Nalchik: Kabardino-Balkarskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet, 2000. In 2006, Robertson further developed the hypothesis of including Tyrsenian based on proposed Etruscan/Nakh sound correspondences and reconstructions for the numerals.{{cite journal|first=Ed |last=Robertson |title=Etruscan's genealogical linguistic relationship with Nakh–Daghestanian: a preliminary evaluation |year=2006 |url=http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(329)EGRWND.pdf |access-date=2009-07-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810021157/http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(329)EGRWND.pdf |archive-date=10 August 2011 }}

The validity of the Alarodian hypothesis remains fairly controversial.{{cite journal|author=Tuite, Kevin|s2cid=143379084|title=The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero‑Caucasian Hypothesis.|journal= Historiographia Linguistica|volume=35|issue=1|year=2008|pages=23–82|doi=10.1075/hl.35.1-2.05tui}} Many scholars doubt that the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages are related,Smeets, Rieks "On Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian language." Bibliotheca Orientalis XLVI (1989): 260-280. [https://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/315299]{{cite book |last=Nichols |first=Johanna |year=2003 |chapter=The Nakh-Daghestanian Consonant Correspondences |editor=Howard Isaac Aronson |editor2=Dee Ann Holisky |editor3=Kevin Tuite |title=Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner Asian Linguistics: Papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson |location=Amsterdam |publisher=John Benjamins |pages=207–264 |isbn=9789027247582 }}

Fournet, Arnaud "About the Vocalic System of Armenian Words of Substratic Origins" Archiv Orientální (2013): 1 [https://www.academia.edu/5551322/Arch%C3%ADv_Orientalni._2013._About_the_vocalic_system_of_Armenian_words_of_substratic_origin._81.2_207_22_] or believe that, while a connection is possible, the evidence is far from conclusive.Zimansky, Paul "Urartian and Urartians." The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (2011): 556.[http://www.academia.edu/10023756/Urartian_and_the_Urartians][https://www.britannica.com/topic/Caucasian-languages Gamkrelidze, Thomas V.; Gudava, T.E. (1998). "Caucasian Languages"]Kallio, Petri. "XXI. Beyond Indo-European". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthew (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 2285–2286. The Indo-Europeanist Allan R. Bomhard argues instead for a genetic relationship between Hurro-Urartian and Indo-European{{cite book |last1=Fournet |first1=Arnaud |last2=Bomhard |first2=Allan R. |year=2010 |title=The Indo-European Elements in Hurrian |location=La Garenne Colombes, Charleston |publisher=Self-published online study |url=https://www.academia.edu/7637643}}[https://www.academia.edu/40055347/PIE_roots_in_Hurrian Fournet, Arnaud "PIE Roots in Hurrian" (2019): 1] (most experts exclude a close genetic relationship between Northeast Caucasian and Indo-European, making the two hypotheses probably exclusive). The Caucasian language specialist Johanna Nichols grounds her skepticism about the Alarodian theory in that "neither Diakonoff and Starostin, nor Nikolayev and Starostin, take on the burden of proof and discuss whether the incidence of resemblances exceeds chance expectation, nor do they present examples of the kind of shared morphological paradigmaticity that would strongly support genetic relatedness".{{cite book|chapter=The Nakh Dagestanian consonant correspondences|author=Johanna Nichols|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KDaUezvjKfsC&pg=PA208|title=Current Trends in Caucasian, East European, and Inner Asian Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Howard I. Aronson|date=January 2003|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|editor=Dee Ann Holisky |editor2=Kevin Tuite|page=208|isbn=9027247587}}

Nevertheless, Petri Kallio, a Uralicist and Indo-Europeanist, argues that from the perspective of what relationships are most likely for Northeast Caucasian, the Alarodian theory is the most promising, more so than the attempts to link Northeast and Northwest Caucasian,{{cite book |last1=Kallio |first1=Petri |editor1-last=Klein |editor1-first=Jared |editor2-last=Joseph |editor2-first=Brian |editor3-last=Fritz |editor3-first=Matthew |title=Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |pages=2285–2286 |chapter=XXI. Beyond Indo-European}} let alone attempts to link Northeast Caucasian to Indo-European, Kartvelian, Etruscan, Burushaski, or "Dene-Caucasian". A major obstacle to progress on the question (and any other questions about relationships with or within Northeast Caucasian) is the lack of consensus about the reconstruction of Proto-Northeast Caucasian itself.

• Hurrian language
• Urartian language
• Caucasian Albanian language

• A. Svanidze. "Materials for history of Alarodian tribes" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1937 (in Russian)
• G.A. Melikishvili. Questions of the oldest population of Georgia, Caucasus and the Near East (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1965 (in Georgian, Russian summary)
• I. Diakonoff, S. Starostin. "Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language".- Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Beiheft, N.F., 12, 1986 (in English)
• Alarodian languages.- Encyclopedia "Sakartvelo", vol. I, Tbilisi, 1997, pp. 90 (in Georgian)

• [http://www.pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180924093729/https://pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf |date=2018-09-24 }} by V. V. Ivanov

{{Language families}}

{{Eurasian languages}}

Category:Proposed language families