Friday 21 November 2025, 5pm
Seminar Room 63, Schwarzman Centre
All welcome
Hurrian and the Caucasian languages: a view from the other side
Gilles Authier (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris)
More than forty years after its publication, Diakonoff and Starostin's 1984 booklet, which combines the former's expertise on Hurrian and the latter's on East Caucasian vocabulary, deserves a review in light of the considerable advances in our knowledge of the Caucasian (in particular, smaller East Caucasian) languages. Contrary to their confident assertions, the proposed kinship between Hurrian and Caucasian, while not absurd, remains far from proven, and their arguments msut be re-assessed. In this talk, Prof. Authier critically revisits the case for a genetic relation, examining a representative sample of the lexical and grammatical evidence Diakonoff and Starostin's presented as Hurrian–East Caucasian isoglosses.
Ancient Anatolia Network , TORCH Networks
