Ket-Na-Dene affiliation?

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> My wife has just forwarded to me a Reuters story (posted on www.cnn.com)
> about an article by Merritt Ruhlen appearing this week in the
> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claiming an affiliation
> between Ket, the sole surviving Yeniseian language, and the Na-Dene
> family of North America.  The Reuters story begins with the (to a
 
This idea has been floating around for a while, among the usual suspects.
The proposal of a Yeniseian-Sino-Tibetan link was first made quite a few
years ago, I believe, though I don't know remember (if I ever knew) who
was the original proponent.  (I think this is something which Starostin
has endorsed, but I'm sure the original proposal is much older than
that).  And Na-Dene-Sino-Tibetan goes back to
Sapir, so it must be true.  So, by transitivity, Yeniseian-Na-Dene must
be true, too.  Simple logic.
 
Actually, though seeing Ruhlen's name attached to any proposal for
genetic grouping always makes me suspicious, I'd be very interested
to see these data.  I spent a couple of days several years ago straining
my almost nonexistent Russian and groaning through some Ket verb
paradigms, and one of the striking things about the language is
the existence of semantically obscure elements in the prefix string,
apparently lexically empty preverbs of some sort, which indeed reminded
me a lot of Athabaskan "thematic" prefixes.  Not the sort of resemblance
I'd be ready to hang a major proposal for trans-Pacific relationship
on, but it's a rather unusual typological feature.
 
> I'm wanting to know, does anybody subscribing to this EBB know anything
> about this?  Is there anything to this proposed affiliation?  And if
> not, is anybody doing anything about clarifying the issue for the
> general public?
 
Good question, but--does the general public really want to know better?
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html