Kurds and Georgians [and Basques]

[Larry Trask]

Geoffrey Summers writes:

[quoting]

>> The
>> genetic analysis points only to minor differences between the Georgians
>> and Kurds and the rest of the European populations and very different
>> from the Basque population (which Georgians are often linked to).  Their
>> conclusion is the linking of European mtDNA with the Indo-European
>> languages is seriously questioned.

> This came from the Archaeology and Theory list. There have been several
> responses on that list, including an objection to the position that
> Georgian and Basque are related.

Indeed.  A possible link between Basque and Kartvelian was pursued vigorously
during the period 1930-1960, and more feebly until about 1980.  The big name
here is Karl Bouda, though Georges Dumezil, Rene Lafon and Jan Braun also did
a lot of work on the topic.  All but Braun in fact tried to relate Basque not
just to Kartvelian, but to *all* the Caucasian languages -- even though the
several Caucasian families have never been shown to be related to one
another.

All this work was a hopeless failure.  Nothing of interest ever turned
up.  We have only the odd chance resemblance, like Basque <gu> 'we' and
Old Georgian <gw->, the first-plural agreement prefix in verbs.  Beyond
this, we find only laughers, like Georgian <kordzi> 'callus' and the
17th-century Basque hapax <ikorzirin> 'calluses on the hands of
workmen'.

Even the tiny handful of people still doggedly pursuing a Basque-
Caucasian link have given up on Kartvelian, and are now confining
their attention to North Caucasian -- still with no interesting results.

So far as I know, the only people still trying to relate Kartvelian to
anything at all are the Nostraticists, or some of them, who want to
put Kartvelian -- but not Basque -- into their Nostratic super-family.
Greenberg has so far committed himself to nothing with Kartvelian,
and appears to be reserving judgement, though he does suggest that
Kartvelian might be a distant relative of his Eurasiatic grouping,
though not a member of it.

The Basque-Kartvelian comparisons are all deeply flawed.

First, all are ahistorical.  They work with the modern languages,
and not with reconstructions.  In the Basque case, this was inevitable,
since Dumezil, Bouda and Lafon all did their work before Pre-Basque
was reconstructed.  Braun worked later, but ignored the reconstruction.
As a result, the "cognates" on offer are frequently ridiculous.

Second, they are all based squarely on miscellaneous resemblances,
with no phonological rhyme or reason.  A partial exception here is
Lafon, who really did try to set up some systematic correspondences
between Basque and Georgian, but without success.

In 1950, the great Basque linguist Luis Michelena, who was in fact
deeply sympathetic to a possible Basque-Caucasian link, published
a brief but scathing dismissal of the work of Bouda, the chief
malefactor here.  Michelena, in his usual terse and dry style,
demonstrated that Bouda's "comparisons" were strictly comic-book
stuff, underpinned by no linguistics at all.  An English translation
of this article will be appearing in a volume of English translations
of Michelena's articles on Basque, probably in late 2001, from John
Benjamins.  I commend it to anyone who is interested in seeing how
real linguistics differs from the accumulation of miscellaneous
resemblances.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)