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2014:004
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Lexical Matches between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian: Possible Historical Scenarios

Abstract
The paper deals with lexical matches between two ancient Near Eastern languages: Sumerian and Hurrian (Hurro-Urartian); namely, several basic terms (like ‘hand,’ ‘rain,’ etc.), that demonstrate phonetical similarities in both languages, are discussed. Four possible scenarios are evaluated from the typological, etymological and statistical points of view: (1) chance coincidences; (2) lexical borrowings from Sumerian into Hurro-Urartian or vice versa; (3) genetic relationship between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian; (4) prehistoric language shift: adoption by a Hurro-Urartian (or closely related) group of the Sumerian language or vice versa. Out of these four, two scenarios—lexical borrowings and genetic relationship—are typologically unlikely. The statistical probability of chance coincidences is low, although formally this explanation cannot be excluded. The fourth scenario—language shift—fits linguistic evidence and does not contradict archaeological data.

§1. Introduction
§1.1. The Languages
§1.1.1. Sumerian is a language spoken in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Its earliest cuneiform attestations date from the late 4^th or early 3^rd millennium BC, and it functioned as a living language until the late 3^rd or early 2^nd millennium BC. Later, until the late 1^st millennium BC, Sumerian was widely used by Babylonians as a language of scholarship and cult. The genealogical affiliation of the Sumerian language is unclear. Sumerian readings and meanings adduced below are quoted from the Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD), the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), as well as from Jagersma 2010.

§1.1.2. The Hurro-Urartian (in the following: HU) linguistic family consists of two closely related languages: Hurrian (with several dialects) and Urartian. Historical Hurrian was spoken in the southeast of present-day Turkey, in northern Syria and northern Iraq at least from the 2^nd half of the 3^rd millennium to the end of 2^nd millennium BC.^[1] Urartian is attested in the 1^st millennium BC as a language of the Urartian empire (present-day Armenia and neighboring areas).^[2] For the preliterate period, it is natural to associate the HU people with the Kura-Araxes (Early Trans-Caucasian) archaeological culture (Kassian 2010: 423-428 with further references). The HU languages are poorly documented as compared with Sumerian. The genealogical affiliation of the HU languages is likewise uncertain, although I suspect that it is possible to treat HU as a separate branch of the hypothetical Sino-Caucasian (Dene-Caucasian) macro-family, that is, that the HU group is a distant relative of the North Caucasian, Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan protolanguages; see Kassian 2011 for discussion.

§1.2. Preliminary Methodological Remarks
§1.2.1. I will not discuss in detail what kind of facts can prove the genetic relationship between the two lects. The modern view is that two languages can be considered genetically related if there exist (1) an appreciable number of etymological matches between their basic vocabularies,^[3] and (2) an appreciable number of etymoloical matches between their main grammatical exponents (number, case, person); see Campbell & Poser 2008: 4, Burlak & Starostin 2005: 7-24. Following Burlak & Starostin 2005, pace Campbell & Poser 2008, I believe that condition (1) is essential, while condition (2) can serve as additional proof. Empirically, any pair of languages conventionally assumed to be genetically related at a reasonable time depth possesses a significant number of etymological matches with identical meanings between the basic vocabularies of these languages, most importantly, between words of their core vocabularies, summarized as the Swadesh wordlist.^[4] That is, lexicostatistics is a reliable tool for language relationship tests and, moreover, the presence of etymological matches with coinciding semantics between Swadesh wordlists of two languages (or protolanguages) is a necessary condition of recognizing a genetic relationship between them.

§1.2.2. As stated in G. Starostin 2010a, classical and preliminary lexicostatistics are two very different procedures. The former should be used in a situation when a group of genetically related languages is sorted out, and regular phonetic correspondences between the languages are established. In such a case, classical lexicostatistics helps to determine the internal genealogical classification of the linguistic group in question. On the other hand, preliminary lexicostatistical verification/falsification is used when genealogical affiliation of the examined language is not yet established. This means that, lacking knowledge of regular phonetic correspondences, we are compelled to resort to the phonetic similarity between the semantically corresponding lexical items of the compared languages.

§1.2.3. Phonetic similarity can be formalized as the method of consonant classes, which was proposed by A. Dolgopolsky (1964; English version: 1986) and successfully tested by various authors, e.g., Baxter 1995; Baxter & Manaster Ramer 2000; Kessler 2007; G. Starostin 2008; Turchin, Peiros & Gell-Mann 2010. This method implies that the phonetic alphabet used in our studies can be divided into several non-intersecting subsets (classes) so that phonetic mutations between the sounds of one class during the natural language development are typologically more normal than mutations between sounds of different classes. Typology of sound changes is not sufficiently advanced yet (but cf. Brown, Holman & Wichmann 2013 for progress in this area), therefore such a division can only be based on the intuition and experience of individual linguists. Below, I operate with classes currently accepted in the Global Lexicostatistical Database project (GLD)^[5]:

P-class (labials): p b ɓ f v ɸ β ⱱ
T-class (dentals): t d ɗ θ ð ʈ ɖ
S-class (front affricates & fricatives): c ʒ č ǯ ɕ ʓ s z š ž
Y-class (palatal glides): y
W-class (labial glides): w ʍ
M-class (labial nasals): m ɱ
N-class (non-labial nasals): n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ
Q-class (lateral affricates): ƛ ᴌ
R-class (liquida): r ɹ ɾ ɽ ɻ ʀ l ɬ ɭ ʎ ʫ ɫ
K-class (velars & uvulars): k g ɠ ɰ q ɢ x ɣ χ ʁ
zero-class or H-class: ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ʡ h ɦ ʔ and any vowels.

Using this simplified transcription system (P T S Y W M N Q R K H) we can code any real wordforms or morphemes included into comparison. Note that elements of the zero-class and such features as coarticulation, prosody and phonation are deleted from the structure. Vocalic or laryngeal onsets and vocalic or laryngeal finals, however, are coded as H. Thus both hypothetical forms tasa and dʰüʒo are coded as TSH; alaq and ʡärx = HRK; na and ŋoʔ = NH; pkʰot and baqʼaθ = PKT; wahat and ʍad = WT. Non-initial Y and W (weak glides) are treated as H, thus ka, kay, kawa = KH, whereas kat and kayat = KT.

§1.2.4. As follows from the above, two forms from compared languages possessing identical simplified transcriptions have a better chance of appearing to be etymological cognates than forms whose simplified transcriptions differ.^[6]

§2. The Problem of the Genealogical Affiliation of Sumerian
A great number of hypotheses about genetic relationship between Sumerian and various languages of Eurasia have already been proposed and will be proposed in the future. Among those, two deserve special attention in my opinion: I. Diakonoff’s Sumerian-Munda comparison and J. Bengtson’s Sumerian–Sino–Caucasian comparison.

§2.1.Diakonoff’s Sumerian-Munda hypothesis (Diakonoff 1997)^[7]
§2.1.1. The Munda linguistic family consists of ca. 20 languages currently spoken in eastern and central India and Bangladesh (apparently Munda and Mon-Khmer are to be treated as two separate branches of the Austro-Asiatic (macro)family; see Sidwell 2010 with references). Diakonoff proposed a theory that the Sumerian and Munda languages could have been fairly close relatives and offered a convincing historical scenario for a prehistoric migration of the Sumerians from India.

§2.1.2. Implicitly using the same consonant classes method as described above, Diakonoff offers 34 Sumerian-Munda CVC-root etymologies and several grammatical parallels. A priori, the main problem of Diakonoff’s theory is that the author normally restricts himself to two Munda languages, Santali and Mundari, that form a separate group within the North Munda branch (Anderson 2008).

§2.1.3. Below, I apply the lexicostatistical test to Diakonoff’s data, that is, I single out Sumerian roots with Swadesh meanings and compare them to the corresponding Swadesh terms that could be reconstructed for proto-Munda. A general proto-Munda reconstruction is not completed yet, so I am guided by the Munda data collected in Pinnow 1959 and some other publications. My general criterion for the reconstruction of proto-Munda Swadesh meanings is the distribution of individual roots within the Munda family. Phonetic shapes of the reconstructed proto-Munda forms below are approximate.

§2.1.4. Formally, the best Sumerian-Munda match among Diakonoff’s etymologies is:

1) Sum. ku or kua ⟨KU₆⟩ ‘fish.’^[8] In seems that the main candidate for the status of the proto-Munda term for ‘fish’ is *qa (Pinnow 1959: 77, 199).

The next etymology could also be very convincing, although formally it does not answer the principle of consonant classes:

2) Sum. ŋe- ⟨ĜE₂₆⟩ ‘I.’ Cf. the proto-Munda personal pronoun *iŋ ~ *iɲ ‘I’ (Pinnow 1959: 186, 208).

The next two etymologies are more problematic.

3) Sum. gaʒ ⟨GAZ⟩, with polysemy ‘to kill, strike dead, slaughter / to beat / to grind, grate / to thresh (grain) / to break.’ The main candidate for the status of the proto-Munda term for ‘to kill’ is the labile verb *goǯ- ‘to die / to kill’ (Pinnow 1959: 203, 258). The Sumerian-Munda comparison is phonetically, but not semantically likely, because Sumerian polysemy ‘to kill / to beat’ should point to the original proto-Sumerian meaning ‘to beat.’^[9]

4) Sum. mu ⟨MU⟩ ‘name’ (Diakonoff groundlessly reads it as ŋu ⟨ĜU₁₀⟩). Cf. proto-Munda *ỹimu (~ *yimu ~ *ɲimu) ‘name’ (Pinnow 1959: 141, 187, 189, 253; Sidwell 2010: 125).^[10] The comparison is possible if one assumes the reduction of the first syllable in Sumerian.

The rest of Diakonoff’s Sumerian words with Swadesh meanings demonstrate no semantic or phonetic matches with Munda:

5) Sum. gal ⟨GAL⟩ ‘big,’ compared by Diakonoff to Munda forms with the meaning ‘10.’ One of the possible candidates for the status of the proto-Munda term for ‘big’ is *maraŋ, which is well attested in North Munda (Pinnow 1959: 73).

6) Sum. giggi or gig ⟨GE₆⟩ ‘black,’ incorrectly read by Diakonoff as ŋi(g) and compared to some North Munda forms with the meaning ‘night.’ One of the possible candidates for the status of the proto-Munda term for ‘black’ is *Kende ~ *hende, which is attested in North Munda (Pinnow 1959: 103, 201, 294).

7) Sum. ŋiri ⟨ĜIRI₃⟩ ‘foot / leg,’ compared by Diakonoff to Munda ‘to run.’ The best candidate for the status of the proto-Munda term for ‘foot’ is *ʒVŋ (Pinnow 1959: 169, 218, 223; Sidwell 2010: 126; Anderson 2004: 163).^[11]

8) Sum. ur ⟨UR⟩ ‘dog,’ incorrectly read by Diakonoff as sur ⟨SUR_x⟩^[12] and compared to some Munda forms that originate from proto-Munda *sV ‘dog’ (normally attested with suffixes or as an element in compounds; see Pinnow 1959: 112, 210, 242, 242, 350; Anderson 2004: 163).

Thus, the preliminary lexicostatistical test yields rather poor results: Diakonoff’s data fail to provide a substantial number of matches between Sumerian and Munda basic vocabularies. Intuitively, it seems that the two best Sumerian-Munda matches (‘fish’ and ‘I’) can be coincidental from the statistical point of view. Does it mean that Diakonoff’s Sumerian-Munda hypothesis failed? The answer is no. First, the full Swadesh 100- or 110-item wordlists for Sumerian and proto-Munda should be compiled and compared. Statistical tests (one of which is described below) are also necessary. Second, phonetic correspondences between Sumerian and Munda could actually be less trivial than the consonant classes described above. Third, Sumerian could theoretically represent a separate branch of the Austro-Asiatic (macro)family, and a Sumerian-Mon-Khmer comparison might yield better results.

§2.2. Bengtson’s Sumerian–Sino–Caucasian Hypothesis (Bengtson 1997)
§2.2.1. In its current state, the theory of the Sino-Caucasian macro-family has been partially substantiated by the late S. Starostin. According to the modern view of the Moscow school, the Sino-Caucasian (or Dene-Caucasian) macro-family consists of three main branches: North Caucasian-Basque, Yeniseian-Burushaski and Sino-Tibetan-Na-Dene. For a brief sketch of the history of Sino-Caucasian studies, see now G. Starostin 2010b and esp. Bengtson & G. Starostin forthcoming. For the comparative phonetics of the Sino-Caucasian macro-family, see Starostin n.d. (this work was not finished and therefore remains unpublished). The highly preliminary Sino-Caucasian etymological dictionary by S. Starostin is available as Sccet.dbf (see the list of abbreviations below for references to all online database files). Some other papers by the same author, dedicated to the Sino-Caucasian problem, can be found in S. Starostin 2007 (in both Russian and English). A comparative grammar overview of the Sino-Caucasian macro-family can now be found in Bengtson & G. Starostin forthcoming. A formal (lexicostatistical) verification of the Sino-Caucasian theory is currently in preparation for publication as part of the Moscow-based Global Lexicostatistical Database (GLD) and Tower of Babel projects, and the broader Evolution of Human Language project, centered around the Santa Fe Institute. For comparative data of individual Sino-Caucasian branches, see the following publications: North Caucasian – NCED; Caucet.dbf. Yeniseian – S. Starostin 1982/2007 and Yenet.dbf (the latter is based on S. Starostin 1995; Werner 2002 with additions and corrections). Sino-Tibetan – Stibet.dbf, based on Peiros & Starostin 1996, but seriously emended. Basque – Basqet.dbf and corresponding sections in Bengtson 2008. Burushaski – Buruet.dbf and such recent publications as, e.g., Bengtson 2008a; Bengtson & Blažek 2011. Proto-Na-Dene reconstruction is not completed (or not published) yet; cf. some rather preliminary publications on the supposed Sino-Caucasian affiliation of the Na-Dene family: Nikolaev 1991; Bengtson 2008b.^[13] It is also possible that two ancient Near Eastern languages belong to this macro-family as additional branches: Hattic (Kassian 2010) and Hurro-Urartian (Kassian 2011).

§2.2.2. Bengtson’s (1997) hypothesis is that Sumerian could be a separate member of the Sino-Caucasian macro-family.^[14] Besides some typological similarities, Bengtson proposes various Sino-Caucasian cognates for 41 Sumerian words of basic vocabulary (mostly of the Swadesh list). Below, I quote Sumerian words etymologized by Bengtson fulfilling the following conditions: (a) they belong to the Swadesh 100-item wordlist, i.e., indeed represent default expressions for the corresponding basic meanings in Sumerian; (b) their transcription corresponds to modern views; (c) they are connected by Bengtson to the roots that can be reconstructed as Swadesh items at least for one of the protolanguages of the linguistic families included in Sino-Caucasian macro-family (i.e., proto-North Caucasian, proto-Yeniseian, and so on). Of four such Sumerian words extracted from Bengtson’s list, at least two are etymologized quite convincingly, since they represent Common Sino-Caucasian roots:^[15]

1) Sum. ŋa- ⟨ĜA₂-⟩ ‘I.’ Comparison to Sino-Cauc. *ŋV ‘I’ suggests itself readily. *ŋV is one of the two Common Sino-Caucasian stems of the pronoun of the 1^st p. sg., see G. Starostin 2010b: 112-113.

2) Sum. uʒu ⟨UZU⟩ ‘meat,’^[16] that is compared to Yeniseian *ʔise ‘meat.’ In turn, the Yeniseian form could be compared to Sino-Tibetan *sʸa (*śa) ‘meat’—one of the two equivalent candidates for the proto-Sino-Tibetan term for ‘meat.’^[17] In sum, the Yeniseian-Sino-Tibetan match should yield the proto-Sino-Caucasian root for ‘meat,’ which is phonetically compatible to Sum. uʒu.

Two other Sumerian etymologies offered by Bengtson are less convincing:

3) Sum. naŋ ⟨NAĜ⟩ ‘to drink,’ compared to Na-Dene *naN ‘to drink,’ which is indeed a Common Athapaskan-Eyak-Tlingit verb (cf. Athapaskan *naːŋ₂ ~ *naːŋʷ~ *naːm ~ *naːw̃ ‘to drink,’ Krauss & Leer 1981: 21, 39, 70, 133, 139, 151), but note that the final nasal in the Athapaskan root can be a fossilized (perfective?) suffix, because the Eyak (la ‘to drink’) and Tlingit (naː ‘to drink’) cognates demonstrate no traces of nasality and/or labiality. Sino-Caucasian etymology of Na-Dene *na(N) is unclear, but formally this is one of the several equivalent candidates for the Sino-Caucasian verb ‘to drink’ in absence of appropriate etymological matches between various root for ‘to drink’ in other Sino-Caucasian daughter families. Nevertheless, the Sumerian – Na-Dene comparison is formally acceptable.

4) Sum. iʒi ⟨IZI⟩ ‘fire,’ compared to North-Caucasian *cʼăyɨ ‘fire’ and Basque *sʸu (*śu) ‘fire.’ The North-Caucasian-Basque root is indeed one of the several equivalent candidates for the Sino-Caucasian term for ‘fire,’ but the Sumerian – Sino-Caucasian comparison is formally problematic, because the initial syllable in Sum. iʒi is inexplicable.

One must conclude that available lexicostatistical evidence for the Sumerian – Sino-Caucasian hypothesis is not stronger than arguments for the above-discussed Sumerian-Munda relationship. It goes without saying, however, that further research may provide more data in support of Bengtson’s theory.

§3. Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian
§3.1. The Wordlist
§3.1.1. Surprisingly, the best formal results are achieved when comparing the Sumerian 110-item wordlist to the Hurro-Urartian data.^[18] Due to the scantiness of known HU vocabulary, only ca. 65 slots of the HU 110-item wordlist are filled; one of them does not have a Sumerian counterpart (the original Sumerian personal pronoun of the 1^st p. pl. ‘we’ seems unknown). My Sumerian list presented below is tentative; it is possible that further detailed research will enable us to define some positions more exactly (cf., e.g., the problematic item ‘blood’), but it is not likely that such changes would seriously affect the overall statistics. The 65 slots filled for both Sumerian and Hurrian (the poorly attested Urartian, naturally, plays a minor role here) are as follows:

§3.1.2. Out of these 65 pairs, we see five or six cases where the Sumerian CC-structure^[22] is phonetically compatible with its Hurrian counterpart (these are shadowed in the above table):

1) Sum. ur ⟨UR⟩~ Hur. ervi ‘dog’ = HR.
No appropriate Sino-Caucasian etymology for the HU term (Kassian 2011: 393).

2) Sum. šu ⟨ŠU⟩~ HU *su- ‘hand’ (Hur. su-ni ⟨šu-ni⟩, Urart. su- ⟨šu-⟩) = SH.
No appropriate Sino-Caucasian etymology for the HU term (Kassian 2011: 399).

3) Sum. ur ⟨UR₅⟩~ Hur. ur-mi ‘liver’ = HR.
No appropriate Sino-Caucasian etymology for the HU term (Kassian 2011: 402).

4) Sum. uʒu ⟨UZU⟩~ Hur. uʒi ⟨uzi⟩ ‘meat’ = HS.
Can be compared to Yenis. *ʔise ‘meat’ and Sino-Tib. *sʸa ‘meat’ (the main candidate for the basic Sino-Caucasian term for ‘meat’), see §2.2 above and Kassian 2011: 405.

5) Sum. šeŋ ⟨ŠEĜ₃⟩~ Hur. isena ⟨išena⟩ ‘rain’ = SN. Note that, formally speaking, the Hurrian CC-structure is to be analyzed as HS (is[ena]), but in our situation it seems safe to eliminate the initial i- from the Hurrian form ([i]sena). In any case, below I double all calculations for Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena as both positive (SN = SN) and negative (SN ≠ HS) pairs.
As noted in Kassian 2011: 410 f., the Hurrian word can be compared to Sino-Caucasian *HˈǝːrčʷVŋ ‘to be cloudy, to rain (vel sim.)’; North Cauc. *HǝːrčːʷVn ‘to become cloudy (of weather)’;
Basque *ɦorci / *ɦosʸti ‘sky; storm; thunder; Thursday; rainbow; cloud’;
Sino-Tib. *ʒʸaːŋ ‘shower, rain.’^[23]

6) Sum. aba ⟨A-BA⟩~ Hur. ab-i ~ av-i ‘who?’ = HP.
No appropriate Sino-Caucasian etymology for the HU term (Kassian 2011: 425).

Strictly speaking, there exists a seventh match:

7) Sum. ŋen ⟨ĜEN⟩, which is phonetically compatible with the Urartian verb nun ‘to come’ = NN. The difficulty is that the Hurrian verb for ‘to come’ is un and the etymological and morphological relationship between Urart. nun and Hur. un is unclear (a unique reduplication pattern *un-un > nun?). Note that Hur. un ‘to come’ may be compared to Sino-Caucasian *=VʔʷˈVŋ, which is a possible candidate for the status of the Common Sino-Cauc. verb for ‘to go’ (Kassian 2011: 392-393). Because of this and because my formal statistical comparison is actually Sumerian-Hurrian, I prefer to exclude the Urartian verb from consideration. Note that treating ŋen ~ nun as a positive pair will not contradict my general conclusions; to the contrary, it would seriously improve the statistical results.

§4. Explanation of the Sumerian-Hurrian Matches
In this section, I discuss four possible explanations of the aforementioned Sumerian-Hurrian lexicostatistical matches: null hypothesis (§4.1), lexical borrowings (§4.2), genetic relationship (§4.3), language shift (§4.4).

§4.1. Null Hypothesis
§4.1.1. It is obvious that the phonetic similarity of six (or five) Sumerian-Hurrian matches in question can actually be coincidental. The question is, what is the probability of such a scenario? Two valid algorithms for calculation of the probability of phonetic matches between formalized wordlists are known.^[24] One of them was described by Ringe (1992); see especially Baxter & Manaster Ramer’s (1996) review for a summary and important amendments (further, see Ringe 1998 and Baxter 1998). The second one—the so-called permutation test—was outlined and tested by W. Baxter & A. Manaster Ramer (2000) and some other authors.^[25] Below, the Sumerian-Hurrian lexicostatistical matches will be tested with the help of Baxter & Manaster Ramer’s (2000) algorithm, that is currently implemented as a plug-in for the StarLing software. The principle of the permutation test is simple and elegant. If we have two bi-unique and uniformly transcribed wordlists with X lexical phonetic matches, we can start to shuffle one of the lists, checking the number of matches for each new configuration. If the number of random configurations is great enough, it is possible to establish how many matches are statistically normal and, additionally, to calculate the probability of X and more than X matches between our original lists.

§4.1.2. For my statistical test, the Sumerian and Hurrian 65-item wordlists have been transcribed according to the simplified notation of consonant classes, as described in §1.2. Two forms constitute a positive pair if the first two consonants (CC) of the Sumerian form are identical to those of the Hurrian form. 1,000,000 random (strictly speaking, pseudorandom) trials have been performed in each case described below. If we consider Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’ a positive pair (= SN), there are 6 CC-matches between the original lists (see above). The results of the test are given in figure 1.

Figure 1: Sumerian-Hurrian permutation comparison: GLD consonant classes (see §1.2), šeŋ~isena is a positive pair

§4.1.3. The most statistically common values are 1 match, 2 matches and 3 matches—their probability P is 0.234262, 0.277375 and 0.210287, i.e., 23.4262%, 27.7375% and 21.0287%, respectively. The total number of trials with 6 or more matches is 16,058 + 4,282 + 1,034 + 189 + 32 + 8 + 1 = 21,604. This means that the probability P of getting at least six matches (as we have in the case of the original Sumerian-Hurrian list) is 0.021604, i.e., slightly higher than 2%.

§4.1.4. The most frequently accepted level of statistical significance is 5% (it means that the null hypothesis should be rejected if the P-value is less than 0.05); another popular significance level, used for more precise calculations, is 1% (P = 0.01). The probability of the Sumerian-Hurrian matches (0.021604 = 2.1604%) is lower than the 5% level, although higher than the 1% level. The picture certainly changes if we treat Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’ as a negative pair (SN ≠ HS), that is, if we only proceed with 5 Sumerian-Hurrian matches (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Sumerian-Hurrian permutation comparison: GLD consonant classes (see §1.2), šeŋ~isena is a negative pair

§4.1.5. The total number of trials with 5 or more matches is 47,851 + 15,866 + 4,345 + 1,006 + 176 + 31 + 5 = 69,280. This means that the probability P of getting at least five matches is 0.06928 = 6.928%. It is indeed higher than the 5% level, that is, the five Sumerian-Hurrian matches can formally be treated as coincidental. It must be noted, however, that the six (or five) Sumerian-Hurrian matches in question demonstrate very precise phonetic correspondences—not only consonantal, but even vocalic; cf. Sum. ur ~ Hur. ur-mi ‘liver,’ Sum. uʒu ~ Hur. uʒi ‘meat,’ Sum. aba ~ Hur. ab-i ‘who?.’ The correspondence Sum. š ~ Hur. s (Sum. šu ~ HU *su- ‘hand’; Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’) is easily explained by the fact that Hurrian, as well as proto-HU, apparently possessed the only sibilant row s^[26] (as opposed to the Sumerian language, that discriminated between s ~ š phonologically). The same concerns the correspondence Sum. ŋ ~ Hur. n—there was no n ~ ŋ opposition in Hurrian and proto-HU, as opposed to Sumerian. The main vocalic discrepancies are Sum. ur ~ Hur. ervi ‘dog’ (but even so, the Hurrian form demonstrates the labial element) and the different onsets in Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain.’

§4.1.6. This suggests that the simplified transcription described in §1.2 might be too rough for our purposes. The S-class can be divided into the S-class proper (front fricatives: s z š ž …) and the Ʒ-class (front affricates: c ʒč ǯ…); in turn, the R-class can be divided into the R-class proper (r ɾ…) and the L-class (l ɭɫ…). After that, the consonant classes run as follows (new classes are marked with an asterisk *):

P-class (labials): p b ɓ f v ɸ β ⱱ
T-class (dentals): t d ɗ θ ð ʈ ɖ
S-class (front fricatives): s z š ž
*Ʒ-class (front affricates): c ʒ č ǯ ɕ ʓ
Y-class (palatal glides): y
W-class (labial glides): w ʍ
M-class (labial nasals): m ɱ
N-class (non-labial nasals): n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ
Q-class (lateral affricates): ƛ ᴌ
R-class: r ɹ ɾ ɽ ɻ ʀ
*L-class: l ɬ ɭ ʎ ʫ ɫ
K-class (velars & uvulars): k g ɠ ɰ q ɢ x ɣ χ ʁ
zero-class or H-class: ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ʡ h ɦ ʔ and any vowels.

§4.1.7. If we use the above transcription, the permutation test will yield the results given in figure 3 (Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’ is considered a positive pair = SN; in total, there are 6 CC-matches between the original lists). The total number of trials with 6 or more matches is 2,953 + 562 + 80 + 9 = 3,604. It means that the probability P of getting at least six matches is 0.003604 = 0.3604% (lower than the 1% level).

Figure 3: Sumerian-Hurrian permutation comparison: more precise consonant classes, šeŋ~isena is a positive pair

§4.1.8. If Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’ is considered a negative pair (SN ≠ HS), i.e., in total there are 5 CC-matches between the original lists, the results are as given in figure 4. The total number of trials with 5 or more matches is 12361 + 2646 + 468 + 66 + 9 + 1 + 1 = 15552. It means that the probability P of getting at least five matches is 0.015552 = 1.5552% (lower than the 5% level, although higher than the 1% level).

Figure 4: Sumerian-Hurrian permutation comparison: more precise consonant classes, šeŋ~isena is a negative pair

§4.1.9. The next logical step should be to include vowels in the simplified transcription (e.g., as the following classes: {o, u}, {i, e}, {a, ǝ} and so on) and compare not the CC chains, but the CVC ones. Due to technical difficulties, I have not performed this test, but it is obvious that Sumerian-Hurrian CVC-comparison will additionally decrease the probability of coincidences.

§4.1.10. Summing up, the statistical probability that the observed Sumerian-Hurrian matches are chance similarities varies from 0.069280 = 6.9280% (a rough approach) to 0.003604 = 0.3604% or lesser (a more sophisticated approach). This means that the null hypothesis is not very plausible.

§4.2. Lexical Borrowings
§4.2.1. Theoretically, the aforementioned Sumerian-Hurrian matches can be considered relatively late Sumerian loanwords in proto-HU or, vice versa, Hurrian loanwords in Sumerian.^[27] Such an assumption, however, seriously contradicts the typology of language contacts.

§4.2.2. The general rule says that, among lexical items, cultural vocabulary is always borrowed first, whereas basic vocabulary is generally more resistant to borrowing (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 74-76; Thomason 2001: 70-71). More precisely, this maxim is complied with in all cases where the sociolinguistic history of relevant peoples and languages is known to us. Traditionally, the Swadesh 100-item wordlist^[28] is regarded as a core of basic vocabulary, that is, the Swadesh words are expected to be not only the most stable during natural language development, but also the most resistant to borrowing. It is intuitively likely, however, that it would be necessary to substitute certain, more stable and resistant words for a couple of Swadesh items (e.g., such Swadesh terms as ‘seed’ or ‘person, human being’ seem very dubious to me). Nevertheless, it is hardly possible to reform the Swadesh wordlist at the current stage of research.^[29]

§4.2.3. If a language has foreign items in its Swadesh wordlist, this language is bound to have borrowings from the same source in other parts of basic vocabulary, and especially a great number of loanwords of the same origin in its cultural vocabulary (cf., e.g., modern English lexified by French and Scandinavian, or various Lezgian languages lexified by Azerbaijani). This is not the case of Sumerian–Hurro–Urartian contacts, because there are virtually no candidates for lexical or grammatical borrowings between these languages besides the six (of five) discussed Swadesh words. In addition to these, I can only quote one Hurrian cultural term possibly borrowed into Sumerian: Hur. tab‑i-ri ‘caster, (copper)smith’ > Sum. tibira, tabira ‘sculptor,’ scil. ‘metal furniture-maker / craftsman working in metal and wood’^[30] and a couple of dubious similarities such as Sum. ur ⟨UR₂⟩ ‘root, base; limbs; loin, lap’ ~ Hur. uri (suffixed ur-ni) ‘foot; leg’^[31] and the Sum. verb ⟨NUD = NU₂ = NA₂⟩ ‘to lie, lie down (intr., subj. = person)’ with the zero-derived substantive ⟨^ĝešNUD = ^ĝešNU₂ = ^ĝešNA₂⟩ ‘bed’ ~ Hur. natxi ⟨natḫi⟩ ‘bed.’^[32] There are also a number of Hurrian cultural terms of Sumerian origin (see, e.g., Diakonoff 1971: 77 ff.; Wilhelm 2008: 103), but all of them seem to be borrowed via Akkadian (Kassian 2011: 435 with further references).^[33] Thus, the absence of a substantial number of cultural borrowings between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian makes the hypothesis of loanwords very unlikely.

§4.3. Genetic Relationship
§4.3.1. If we observe a number of phonetically similar words between basic vocabularies of two languages, it is reasonable to hypothesize that these languages are genetically related. Thus one could suppose that Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian are linguistic relatives, which means they are descendants of a Sumerian–Hurro-Urartian protolanguage and the discussed lexical matches represent a common heritage. In a sense, any pair of human languages are indeed genetically related (if we accept the monoglottogenesis conception); the question is, what is the date of split of the protolanguage assumed for this pair?

§4.3.2. The current version of the StarLing software (May 2012) generates 12,000 BC as the approximate glottochronological date of the Sumerian-Hurrian split, proceeding from the 65 available Sumerian-Hurrian Swadesh pairs (for convenience, I date the Sumerian list to 2000 BC and the Hurrian one to 1500 BC). This is extremely distant dating—ten millennia separate attested Sumerian from its hypothetical ancestor.^[34] Of course, such a large gap between empirical data and a reconstructed protolanguage makes further discussion rather vague, but, nevertheless, some conclusions can be proposed.

§4.3.3. First, as one can see, five of the six Sumerian-Hurrian Swadesh matches fall within the most stable half of the Swadesh 100-item wordlist:^[35] ‘dog,’ ‘hand,’ ‘liver,’ ‘rain,’ ‘who?.’ Only the sixth item—‘meat’—falls within the second half, although its stability index is, at 61, still high. The probability of such a distribution (5 : 1) is relatively low: 0.1478 = 14.78% (here and below, the binomial distribution is used). If we treat Sum. šeŋ ~ Hur. isena ‘rain’ as a negative pair, the probability of the 4 : 1 distribution is 0.2239 = 22.39%.^[36] The fact that the majority of our potential Sumerian-Hurrian cognates occur among the most stable Swadesh items can be due to chance (both probability values are greater than 0.05) or can be an argument in favor of the hypothesis of Sumerian-Hurrian genetic relationship: the weak items have been eliminated during separate development of proto-Sumerian and proto-Hurro-Urartian, whereas the most stable ones have survived. But it must be emphasized that such a distribution can be alternatively treated as an equally strong argument in support of a very different scenario discussed in the next section—language shift (see §4.4 below).

§4.3.4. Second, there are two objections to the hypothesis of a Sumerian-Hurrian protolanguage:

1) Despite the assumed substantial time gap (ten millennia) between the attested languages and their hypothetical Sumerian-Hurrian ancestor, one could expect a number of cognates (in our case, phonetic consonant matches) between Sumerian and Hurrian basic vocabularies outside the Swadesh 100-item wordlist. I am not aware, however, of appropriate candidates for such inherited retentions in the known Sumerian and Hurrian lexicon, except for a couple of dubious cases like Sum. ur ‘root, base; limbs; loin, lap’ ~ Hur. uri ‘foot; leg’ and Sum. ⟨NUD = NU₂ = NA₂⟩ ‘to lie (down),’ ⟨^ĝešNUD = ^ĝešNU₂ = ^ĝešNA₂⟩ ‘bed’ ~ Hur. nat-xi ‘bed,’ discussed in §4.2.

2) It is reasonable to suppose that both proto-Sumerian and proto-Hurro-Urartian languages underwent heavy sound mutations during the millennia of their separate development, and that true Sumerian-Hurrian etymological cognates are currently invisible to the “unaided eye.” Such a supposition, however, sharply contrasts with the fact noted in §4.1 above: six (or five) discussed Sumerian-Hurrian Swadesh matches are almost identical phonetically (with š & ŋ present in Sumerian and absent from Hurrian), and even vocalic segments normally coincide. Linguistic typology is aware of language families with ultra-stable consonant systems: the best instance known to me is Semitic. Glottochronologically, the split of the Semitic protolanguage occurred in the early 4^th millennium BC,^[37] i.e., the time gap between a modern Semitic language and its ancestor constitutes ca. 6 millennia. Despite this, a simple browse through the first volume of SED shows that it is fairly easy to find a substantial number of phonetically similar roots that are in fact etymological cognates, e.g., between Modern South Arabian and Modern Ethiopian languages.^[38] This is certainly not the Sumerian-Hurrian case. If one advocates for a Sumerian-Hurrian genetic relationship, it is necessary to make a methodologically impossible supposition that several inherited Sumerian-Hurrian basic terms were preserved phonetically intact, whereas the rest of basic vocabulary has mutated and lost visible phonetic similarity between the two languages.

§4.3.5. Summing up, the hypothesis of a common Sumerian-Hurrian protolanguage appears to be very unlikely, first, due to virtual absence of a substantial number of appropriate etymologies between basic vocabularies of the languages in question (not necessarily with direct semantic matches), and, second, due to the suspicious phonetic similarity of the discussed Sumerian-Hurrian Swadesh pairs.^[39]

§4.4. Aborted Language Shift
§4.4.1. The fourth scenario to be discussed is an aborted language shift. As noted above, cultural vocabulary is always borrowed first among lexical items, whereas the Swadesh wordlist (the core of basic vocabulary) is generally most resistant to borrowing. It is reasonable to suppose that this rule concerns not only trivial language contacts, but is also applicable to certain situations of language shift when the culturally dominated group gives up its language and shifts to the language of the dominant group. If language shift is not an abrupt process (in 1-2 generations), but a gradual replacement of the inherited linguistic material by the borrowed one, it would be reasonable to expect that, at the penultimate stage, the vocabulary of the shifting nondominant group retains only some Swadesh (or similar) items as a remnant of the original language. Theoretically, if the contact between the dominant and subordinate groups is lost (for some historical reasons), the language of the subordinate group should stabilize in a very unusual state: grammatically and lexically, it represents the language of the dominant group, whereas some retained basic terms synchronically look like loanwords.

§4.4.2. Such an aborted or simply unfinished language shift is poorly documented among the world’s languages due to natural enough reasons: first, a language shift is normally completed, second, the early history of many tribes or ethnic groups around the world is unknown to us. Nevertheless some probable instances of aborted/unfinished language shift, when basic vocabulary is fragmentarily retained, can be uncovered. Two of them are treated below.

1) As described by D. C. Laycock (1973: 252) and M. D. Ross (1991: 124), the Malol language (< Oceanic < Austronesian) is very close to the Sissano language spoken in the same or neighboring coastal villages (usually both lects are considered to be dialects). Oral history, however, indicates that the Malol people were originally one of the One clans (non-Austronesian languages of the Torricelli family) that fled from the One territory to the coast during a communal dispute in the first half of the 19^th century. Currently, vocabularies of Sissano and Malol generally coincide, with the exception of a few lexical items, for which old One terms are retained in Malol. Two such words are documented by Laycock and Ross: ‘dog’ (a Swadesh item) and ‘coconut’ (belongs to the basic vocabulary in this region).

2) Another instance can be the language of the Polynesian island Niuafo’ou. According to Collocott 1922, Dye 1980, Belikov 1989: 49, synchronically, Niuafo’ou can be considered a dialect of the Tongan language (< Tonga < Polynesian < Austronesian), that is the dominant lect in the region, but some peculiarities of the pronominal system (such as non-Tongan personal pronouns ‘we [excl.],’ ‘you [du.],’ ‘you [pl.],’ and the interrogatives ‘when, where’) and of basic vocabulary point out that, historically, Niuafo’ou is a Nuclear Polynesian language (another branch of the Polynesian group), almost completely been supplanted by Tongan. Collocott provides the following Niuafo’ou lexical items, that are cognate to the corresponding Tongan words, but demonstrate Nuclear Polynesian phonetic development: ‘to come,’ ‘road,’ ‘what?’ (together with the aforementioned pronoun ‘we,’ these are Swadesh items), ‘sea’ and also such function words as ‘up,’ ‘down.’ As noted by Collocott (1922: 189), “[t]he dialectal peculiarities of Niua Fo’ou are fast disappearing before the political and cultural authority of Tonga.” In his turn, Dye (1980: 350) reports that at least some of the aforementioned Niuafo’ou words have already shifted towards Tongan phonology within the last decades.

§4.4.3. Probably such “intertwining” languages as Ainu/Ejnu (an Iranian language dominated by Uyghur) or Mbugu/Ma’a (a Cushitic language dominated by Bantu) are following suit, although they still retain the major portion of inherited basic vocabulary (Persian and Cushitic, respectively).

§4.4.4. As one can see, the symptoms of aborted or unfinished language shift are very similar to the Sumerian-Hurrian situation, where we have two languages with very different grammars and very different lexica, but with several similar phonetically Swadesh items shared by both lects. In other words, the correlation between the historical Sumerian and Hurrian languages is formally the same as, e.g., between One (Torricelli family) and modern Malol (Austronesian family), treated above.

§4.4.5. Another case of the retention of a certain specific part of an inherited lexicon is retention of the so-called native cultural vocabulary. Such a scenario is typically to be expected in the situation of a language shift unaccompanied by a cultural shift. Two instances are treated below.

1) As described by Dimmendaal (1989: 21-22, 27) and Heine (1980: 175-178), El Molo, or Elmolo, is a small tribe of fishermen in Kenya heavily dominated by the neighboring Nilotic-speaking pastoralists. In the first half of the 20^th century, the El Molos still spoke their own language, that belongs to the Cushitic family, but subsequently they have shifted to the Samburu language (< Nilotic < Nilo-Saharan). Currently, El Molo represents a dialect of Samburu. This newborn dialect, however, retains the original El Molo vocabulary concerned with lake bio-nomenclature and fishing.

2) Another probable example is provided by two pygmy tribes—Yaka (Aka) and Baka—that live in the rainforests of Central Africa. Yaka and Baka are neighbors, although there is minimal interaction between the two peoples. The languages in question belong to very different linguistic groups: Yaka is Bantu C10, Baka is Ubangian. Despite this, Yaka and Baka are close not only physiologically, but also culturally and economically: both tribes are hunter-gatherers, as opposed to the neighboring non-pygmy farmer tribes. As described by S. Bahuchet (1992; 1993; 2012: 28-31), Yaka and Baka share more than 20% of their vocabulary, concerning especially food-gathering and other specific rain-forest activity (some shared terms are also related to society, music and religion). An important fact is that these words are apparently unetymologizable within Bantu or Ubangian languages. The rest of the lexicon of Yaka and Baka (including the majority of basic terms), however, differs according to its genetic affiliation (Bantu C10 and Ubangian). There are also some grammatical elements and features of neither Bantu nor Ubangian origin shared by Yaka and Baka, e.g., specific demonstrative pronouns (Duke 2001: 74-78). In such a situation, the most tempting solution is to treat these specific cultural terms as the remains of the pygmy protolanguage (the so-called proto-Baakaa) that were retained due to socio-economic factors after the Yaka and Baka tribes had shifted to the languages of the neighboring farmers (thus Bahuchet). An alternative solution, which seems less likely, is to assume that Yaka and Baka originally spoke Bantu and Ubangian languages, respectively, whereas the discussed common words represent parallel borrowings from a language of extinct rain-forest dwellers into Yaka and Baka. The third, more complex, solution is discussed by Blench (1999; 2006: 173-175).

§4.4.6. Despite typological interest of the El Molo and Yaka-Baka instances, such a scenario is certainly not the case of Sumerian and Hurrian due to the virtual absence of cultural lexical matches between the two languages in question.

§5. Conclusions
§5.1. The Sumerian and Hurrian languages demonstrate several Swadesh items that are phonetically very similar, but no lexical matches of the same level of phonetic similarity in other parts of vocabulary and no striking grammatical parallels. Four possible explanation of such a situation are discussed above. Two of them—lexical borrowing (§4.2) and genetic relationship (§4.3)—are unlikely and should be rejected due to typological objections.

§5.2. The null hypothesis that the observed Sumerian-Hurrian matches are chance coincidences (§4.1) is problematic. According to the described permutation test, the probability of such coincidences ranges from 0.069280 = 6.9280% (a rough approach) to 0.003604 = 0.3604% or less (a more sophisticated approach). In my opinion, the most correct value is 0.015552-0.003604, i.e., 1.5552%-0.3604% (with the more precise consonant classes used; see §4.1, figs. 3-4), but, in any case, the majority of the obtained probabilistic values are less than the most popular significance level 0.05.

§5.3. Does it mean that the null hypothesis must be rejected? Certainly not, because nature is actually full of various phenomena the probability of whose emergence is low. The current version of the Global Lexicostatistical Database project (GLD) provides us with a substantial number of high-quality 110-item wordlists of various languages from around the world.^[40] Most pairs of unrelated lects successfully pass the permutation test, i.e., the amount and probability of phonetic matches between two lists appear to be statistically expected. On the other hand, one can observe a couple of pairs of definitely unrelated languages with a high number of phonetic matches and a low probability of such a configuration. I am currently aware of two such instances.

1) The first pair is Abidji (< Kwa < Niger-Congo, Africa)^[41] and Maidu (< Penutian, USA)^[42]. The 110-item wordlists of the two aforementioned languages possess 7 CC-matches, if we proceed from the GLD consonant classes described in §1.2 (the first form cited is Abidji, the second one is Maidu):

• tì ~ ɗˈo- ‘to bite’ = TH
• hí ~ ʔɨ-yˈe- ‘to come’ = HH
• ínè ~ ʔonˈo ‘head’ = HN
• pì ... été ~ ɓɨ-ɗˈoy- ‘to sit’ = PH
• bɔ̀-dí ~ pɨ-yˈeto- ‘to swim’ = PH
• ĩ́né ~ ʔˌen-ˈi ‘tongue’ = HN
• ʔà ~ ʔɨ-kʼˈoy- ‘to go’ = HH

The probability that these Abidji-Maidu CC-matches are due to chance is 0.036136, i.e., 3.6136% (1,000,000 random trials have been performed). The picture does not materially change if the more precise consonant classes (see §4.1) are used: we have the same 7 matches whose probability is 0.032043 = 3.2043%.

2) The second case is more interesting: Modern English (< Germanic < Indo-European) and Ari (< South Omotic < Omotic, Africa)^[43] yield 8 CC-coincidences in the 110-item wordlist:

• [daɪ] ~ deʔ- ‘to die’ = TH
• [händ] ~ ʔaːni ‘hand’ = HN
• [aɪ] ~ ʔi ‘I’ = HH
• [neɪm] ~ naːmˈi ‘name’ = NM
• [gəu] ~ kay- ‘to go’ = KH
• [wiː, wi] ~ woʰ, woːʰ ‘we’ = WH
• [huː] ~ aʰy ‘who?’ = HH
• [šɔːt] ~ cʼeːdˈi ‘short’ = ST

The probability that these English-Ari CC-matches are due to chance is extremely low: 0.00044 = 0.044% (1,000,000 random trials have been performed). Again, the picture does not seriously change if the more precise consonant classes (see §4.1) are used: we only have 7 matches ([šɔːt] ~ cʼeːdˈi is now a negative pair), but the total probability is 0.000945 = 0.0945%.

§5.4. Nevertheless, despite such unique instances as Abidji-Maidu or English-Ari, the low probability of the Sumerian-Hurrian matches impel us to search for more appropriate explanations.

§5.5. The fourth solution is the hypothesis of aborted language shift (discussed in §4.4), that implies one of two equivalent scenarios.

1) In the preliterate or early literate epoch (say, the second half of the 4^th millennium BC), a tribe that spoke a language of the Hurro-Urartian family (not necessarily the Hurro-Urartians proper) migrated from the southern Caucasus to southern Mesopotamia, where it entered into interaction with the Sumerian community. The Sumerians appeared to be the dominant group and the Hurro-Urartian newcomers began gradually to give up their language. At the penultimate stage of that language shift, the process was for unknown reasons interrupted, whereas the Sumerians proper were eliminated. If so, the historical Sumerians were actually a Hurro-Urartian-like people that shifted to the Sumerian language, having retained several Swadesh terms of Hurro-Urartian origin.^[44]

2) The second scenario mirrors the first one. A Sumerian-like tribe migrated to the southern Caucasus and then learned the proto-Hurro-Urartian language. If so, the historical Hurrians and Urartians are actually a Sumerian (or related) people that shifted to the Hurro-Urartian language, having retained several Swadesh terms of Sumerian origin.

§5.6. I am aware of no historical or archaeological counterevidence for the theory of aborted language shift between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian peoples in the preliterate or early literate epoch, as described above. It should be noted that if Hurro-Urartian can indeed be considered a separate branch of the Sino-Caucasian macro-family (see Kassian 2011 for a lexicostatistical discussion) and if such terms as ‘meat’ and ‘rain,’ shared by Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian, are indeed etymologically Sino-Caucasian (see §3), the first scenario (the Hurro-Urartian language superseded by Sumerian) is preferable. Since the Kura-Araxes (Early Trans-Caucasian) archaeological culture seems the best counterpart of the proto-Hurro-Urartian language (and, vice versa, the proto-Hurro-Urartian language seems the best counterpart of the Kura-Araxes culture; see Kassian 2010: 423-428 with further references), the hypothetical migration of a Hurro-Urartian-like group to southern Mesopotamia should be connected to the rapid spread of the Kura-Araxes culture along the eastern slopes of the Zagros at least as far as west central Iran in the last centuries of the 4^th millennium BC (for which see Kohl 2009: 245-246, 252-255).^[45] On the other hand, the sound correspondences like Sum. ŋ—HU n and Sum. š—HU s are more easily explainable under the assumption of the second scenario (Sumerian superseded by Hurro-Urartian).

Abbreviations

Basqet.dbf = Basque etymological database by John Bengtson. Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

Buruet.dbf = Burushaski etymological database by S. Starostin (based on H. Berger’s data). Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

Caucet.dbf = North Caucasian etymological database by S. Starostin and S. Nikolayev (published as NCED). Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

CDLI = Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. Available at: http://cdli.ucla.edu/ [last visited 25.12.2013].

CdTU = Salvini 2008.

ePSD = Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project. Available at: http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html [last visited 25.12.2013].

ETCSL = The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Available at: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk [last visited 25.12.2013].

GLD = G. Starostin, ed., The Global Lexicostatistical Database. Available online at: http://starling.rinet.ru/new100/main.htm [last visited 25.12.2013].

KUKN = Harouthiounyan 2001.

NCED = Nikolayev & Starostin 1994.

Sccet.dbf = Sino-Caucasian etymological database by S. Starostin. Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

SED = Militarev & Kogan 2000-.

Stibet.dbf = Sino-Tibetan etymological database by S. Starostin (= Peiros & Starostin 1996, but with serious improvement). Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

WOLD = M. Haspelmath & U. Tadmor, eds., The World Loanword Database. Available online at: http://wold.livingsources.org/ [last visited 25.12.2013].

Yenet.dbf = Yenisseian etymological database by S. Starostin (= S. Starostin 1995; Werner 2002, with additions and corrections). Available online at the Tower of Babel project: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl [last visited 25.12.2013].

Version: 3 December 2014