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Structural similarities between Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut languages were observed early. In 1746, the Danish theologian compared Greenlandic to Hungarian. In 1818, Rasmus Rask considered Greenlandic to be related to the Uralic languages, and presented a list of lexical correspondences. (Rask also considered Uralic and Altaic to be related to each other.) In 1959, published the paper The Eskimo-Uralic Hypothesis, in which he, like other authors before him, presented a number of grammatical similarities and a small number of lexical correspondences. In 1962, Morris Swadesh proposed a relationship between the Eskimo-Aleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan language families. In 1998, put all the strings together in his book, Language Relations across Bering Strait.

Evidence

Phonology

The consonant inventories of the reconstructed protolanguages of the four Uralo-Siberian families are very similar to each other. A common feature is that there are only voiceless and no voiced stops, while there is a set of voiced (but no voiceless) non-sibilant fricatives with the same places of articulation (labial, dental, palatal and velar; in Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut, also uvular). There are also nasals in the same places of articulation. In addition, there are three sibilants, and liquids and semivowels.

Morphology

Apparently shared elements of Uralo-Siberian morphology include the following:

*-t	plural
*-k	dual
*m-	1st person
*t-	2nd person
*ka	interrogative pronoun
*-n	genitive case

Lexicon

Fortescue (1998) lists 95 lexical correspondence sets with reflexes in at least three of the four language families, and even more shared by two of the languages. Examples are *ap(p)a 'grandfather', *kað'a 'mountain' and many others.

Sources

Knut Bergsland (1959) The Eskimo-Uralic hypothesis. Journal de la Societé Finno-Ougrienne, 61, 1-29.
Michael Fortescue (1998) Language Relations across Bering Strait. ISBN 0-304-70330-3.

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