A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (September 2023) |
Allan R. Bomhard is an American independent scholar publishing in the field of comparative linguistics. He is part of a small group of proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis, according to which the Indo-European languages, Uralic languages, Altaic languages, and Afroasiatic languages would all belong to a larger macrofamily.[1] The theory is widely rejected by mainstream linguists as a fringe theory.[1][2] Among Nostratists, he has been described as "a maximalist who casts his nets as widely as possible" among far-flung languages not generally believed to be related.[3]
Russian linguists Georgiy Starostin, Mikhail Zhivlov, and Alexei Kassian have criticized his work as imprecise and "historically unrealistic".[4]
Postulated remote relationships such as Amerind, Nostratic and Proto-World have been featured in newspapers, magazines and television documentaries, and yet these same proposals have been rejected by most mainstream historical linguistics