Editing Joseph Greenberg (section)

==== The languages of northern Eurasia ====
{{main|Eurasiatic languages}}

Later in his life, Greenberg proposed that nearly all of the language families of northern [[Eurasia]] belong to a single higher-order family, which he termed [[Eurasiatic languages|Eurasiatic]]. The only exception was [[Yeniseian languages|Yeniseian]], which has been related to a wider [[Dené–Caucasian]] grouping, also including [[Sino-Tibetan languages|Sino-Tibetan]]. During 2008 [[Edward Vajda]] related Yeniseian to the [[Na-Dene languages|Na-Dené]] languages of North America as a [[Dené–Yeniseian]] family.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/docs/dy_vajda_perspective.pdf |title=Edward Vajda |access-date=2009-03-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080518115445/http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/docs/dy_vajda_perspective.pdf |archive-date=May 18, 2008 }}, University of Alaska Fairbanks</ref>

The Eurasiatic grouping resembles the older [[Nostratic languages|Nostratic]] groupings of [[Holger Pedersen (linguist)|Holger Pedersen]] and [[Vladislav Illich-Svitych]] by including [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]], [[Uralic languages|Uralic]], and [[Altaic languages|Altaic]]. It differs by including [[Nivkh language|Nivkh]], [[Classification of Japanese|Japonic]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Ainu language|Ainu]] (which the Nostraticists had excluded from comparison because they are single languages rather than language families) and in excluding [[Afroasiatic languages|Afroasiatic]]. At about this time, Russian Nostraticists, notably [[Sergei Starostin]], constructed a revised version of Nostratic. It was slightly larger than Greenberg's grouping but it also excluded Afroasiatic.

Recently, a consensus has been emerging among proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis. Greenberg basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern 'tier' (his Eurasiatic) and a southern 'tier' (principally Afroasiatic and Dravidian).

The American Nostraticist [[Allan R. Bomhard|Allan Bomhard]] considers Eurasiatic a branch of Nostratic, alongside other branches: Afroasiatic, [[Elamo-Dravidian languages|Elamo-Dravidian]], and [[Kartvelian languages|Kartvelian]]. Similarly, [[Georgiy Starostin]] (2002) arrives at a tripartite overall grouping: he considers Afroasiatic, Nostratic and Elamite to be roughly equidistant and more closely related to each other than to any other language family.<ref>Starostin, George S.. “[https://www.academia.edu/651262/On_the_Genetic_Affiliation_of_the_Elamite_Language On the Genetic Affiliation of the Elamite Language].” (2005).</ref> [[Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics|Sergei Starostin's school]] has now included Afroasiatic in a broadly defined Nostratic. They reserve the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping, which comprises the rest of the macrofamily. Recent proposals thus differ mainly on the precise inclusion of Dravidian and Kartvelian.

Greenberg continued to work on this project after he was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer and until he died during May 2001. His colleague and former student [[Merritt Ruhlen]] ensured the publication of the final volume of his Eurasiatic work (2002) after his death.