Kerns John C. Indo-European Prehistory

Centerstage one printing, 1985. — 190 p.As stated in the Foreword, this book is a sequel to a pamphlet I wrote in 1966, and privately printed and distributed in early 1967, entitled "The Eurasiatic Pronouns and the Indo-Uralic Question"; since it is not generally available, an edited and shortened reprint of it is included in this book. At the time, I was concerned mainly with comparing the pronominal roots and affixes of Common Indo-European with those of similar function in Common Uralic and Common Altaic, counting the number of cases where the forms agreed in sound and function, and comparing the number of these agreements with that to be observed when any one of these three languages is compared with each of several other languages then believed to be unrelated, both among themselves and to each of the three families in question. Implicit was a recognition of the existence of an Altaic unity comprising Turkic, Mongol and Manchu-Tungus (and probably Korean and Japanese), which since the work of Nikolaus Poppe and Karl Menges can be regarded as about as well established as any other. Also implicit was an acceptance of a Uralic unity comprising Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, and also an Indo-European unity which included Anatolian. For convenience, I referred to these three linguistic groups as the "Eurasiatic" families, initially not implying that they are "genetically" related.