Nostratic and Monogenetic Theories in Linguistics in the Epoch of Digital Technologies

Abstract

The greatest soviet Slavic linguist made a revolutionary discovery in linguistics, especially in Indo-European linguistics, proving the distant kinship of the more explored macro-families of languages at that time. The merit of V.M. Illich-Svitych is that he gave the scientific form to the Nostratic hypothesis, i.e. he established systemic patterns between reconstructions. Further research in Nostratic linguistics should lead linguists to prove the theory of language monogenesis. Many linguists have not accepted this hypothesis, including most of the Western scholars. The main burden of proving the distant relationship of macro-families falls on the shoulders of the Moscow School of Comparative Studies and the like-minded collegues of V.M. Illich-Svitych. Today, when the Moscow School of Comparative Studies created several Internet projects and websites to expand etymological and linguistic databases, everything is in favor of the monogenesis hypothesis.