Nostratic languages

Nostratic is a hypothetical macrofamily proposed to link many of the language families of northern Eurasia, potentially including Indo-European, Uralic, the languages traditionally grouped as Altaic, Kartvelian and, in some versions, Afroasiatic, under one distant common ancestor. The idea was first suggested by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen in 1903, but it developed into a full comparative research program mainly through the work of Soviet linguists Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky from the 1960s onward, who compiled comparative dictionaries and attempted to reconstruct a Proto-Nostratic vocabulary and sound system. Today the hypothesis is generally regarded by mainstream historical linguists as a fringe theory with very limited support, criticized for methodological weaknesses in its proposed cognates and for typological inconsistencies in its reconstructions. A minority of linguists, disproportionately in the Russian tradition that produced its major proponents, continue to defend and develop the Nostratic framework, while most Western specialists in comparative linguistics remain unconvinced that the deep relationships it proposes can be demonstrated.