Indo-europeanist

The Nostratic hypothesis was postulated for the first time by the Danish Indo-Europeanist, Holger Pedersen, at the beginning of the 20th century. Today we suppose a Nostratic origin for Afroasiatic (Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic), with perhaps a rather independent position; Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic (Fenno-Ugric and Samoyed), Dravidian (probably together with the extinct Elamite) and Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusian, Korean, Japanese).

It had been assumed that the two series merged by the time of Common Balto-Slavic until the Indo-Europeanist Werner Winter proposed in the 1970s that the distinction had persisted for longer, at least between *dh and *d.

The vast majority of Indo-Europeanists posit either three or four laryngeals for the Indo-European parent language, while Dolgopolsky posits a multitude of controversial phonemes here, most conveniently subsumed under cover symbols, without further explanation as to their phonetic make-up, their vowel-coloring or lengthening effects, or their development in the Indo-European daughter languages.