ABSTRACT
The coverage of this chapter is defined geographically with certain ethnolinguistic
considerations. In broad terms, it includes languages spoken in Europe (including
Malta and Cyprus), Anatolia, Caucasia, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria and Siberia.
The exact border line is drawn so that the contiguous areas of Turkic and Mongolic
languages are included in this chapter while Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages
spoken on the border regions belong to adjacent chapters. This means, for instance,
that languages spoken in Tajikistan are not represented here insofar as they are Ira-
nian, even though Tajikistan is one of the Central Asian countries. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and Inner Mongolia are largely included in this chapter while Tibet is not.
Enclaves of Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages within the above-mentioned geo-
graphical boundaries are, however, dealt with here, and Turkic and Mongolic lan-
guages spoken inside the areas of other chapters are found there. All Eskimo-Aleut
languages, including those spoken in Siberia, are dealt with in Chapter 1 on North
America, and the entry on Ainu is found in Chapter 5 on East and Southeast Asia.
The special cases as well as the overall contents of the chapter are explained in the
following list of language families, which also serves as an index to the subsequent survey of linguistic history and diversity of the area:
