| Karasuk | |
|---|---|
| Burusho-Yeniseian | |
| (controversial) | |
| Geographic distribution | CentralSiberia and northernPakistan |
| Linguistic classification | Proposed language family |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
 Modern distribution of Karasuk languages[image reference needed] | |
Karasuk is a hypotheticallanguage family that links theYeniseian languages of central Siberia with theBurushaski language of northern Pakistan.
Hyde Clarke (1870) first noted a possible connection between the Yeniseian and Burushaski languages.[1]
The nameKarasuk was proposed byGeorge van Driem of theUniversity of Leiden.[2] The family is named after theKarasuk culture, which existed inCentral Asia during theBronze Age in second millennium BCE. Van Driem postulates theBurusho people took part in theIndo-Aryan migration out of Central Asia and into the northern part ofPakistan, while other Karasuk peoples migrated northwards to become theYeniseians. These claims have been picked up by anthropologist and linguistRoger Blench (1999).[3]
Václav Blažek (2019) places thelinguistic homeland ofProto-Yeniseian close to where Burushaski is now spoken today inPakistan. He argues that based onhydronomic evidence,Yeniseian languages were originally spoken on the northern slopes of theTianshan andPamir mountains before dispersing downstream via theIrtysh River.[4]
The evidence for Karasuk is mostly in the verbal and nominal morphology. For example, thesecond-person singular prefixes on intransitive verbs are[ɡu-,ɡó-] in Burushaski and[ku-,ɡu-] inKet. Ket has two verbal declensions, one prefixed withd- and one withb-, and Burushaski likewise has two, one prefixed withd- and one without such a marker. However, neither the Burushaski nor the Yeniseian verbal morphology has been rigorously analysed,[5] and reviewers have found the evidence to be weak.[6]While Yeniseian has been proposed to be related to theNa-Dené languages of North America, as part of a newly namedDené–Yeniseian family, the relevant morphological correspondences between Na-Dené and Yeniseian have not been found in Burushaski.[citation needed]
Below is a list of possible cognates:[7][8]
| Proto-Yeniseian | Burushaski | English |
|---|---|---|
| *binč | melc | chin/jaw |
| *siː | si/su | eat |
| *seŋ | sán | liver/spleen |
| *ʔig | yek | name |
| *qoʎ | qʌt | armpit |
| *təga | ʔ(r)ək | breast/chest |
| *pʌx | pak | clean |
| *dʌr | thɛr | dirt/dirty |
Kassian and Starostin (2017) list the following potential cognates between Proto-Yeniseian and Proto-Burushaski.[9]
| gloss | Proto-Yeniseian | Proto-Burushaski |
|---|---|---|
| ‘dry’ | *qɔɢ- | *qaq- |
| ‘to eat’ | *siː- | *ʂi- |
| ‘to give’ | *=o | *=u- |
| ‘to kill’ | *xeːy | *=s=ʁa- |
| ‘name’ | *ʔiɢ | *ek |
| ‘that’ | *ʔu, *ʔa | *i- |
| ‘eye’ | *de-s | *=l-ɕi |
| ‘I’ | *ʔaʒ | *ʓa |
| ‘leaf’ | *yəːpe | *ƛap |
| ‘root’ | *ciːǯ | *cʰereʂ |
| ‘thou’ | *ʔaw | *un |