Is Burushaski an Indo-European Language? On a series of recent publications by Professor Ilija Casule

In a series of recent works, Prof. Ilija Casule claimed that Burushaski is not a linguistic isolate, as usually believed, but rather an Indo-European language of Balkan origin and, more specifically, a creolized form of Phrygian or of a closely related North-Western IE language (Thracian, Illyrian, etc.). This claim has raised some discussion among specialists. The present paper, therefore, aims at reviewing the evidence on which Casule’s view is based from a traditional, comparative perspective and concludes that Burushaski can be classified as a linguistic isolate that at some point in history experienced interference and partial relexification with one or more layers of Indo-European materials, whose origin cannot be ascertained with certainty, rather than as an Indo-European language in traditional sense.