Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...
that would include the
Turkic,
Mongolic and
Tungusic language families and possibly also the
Japonic
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and ...
and
Koreanic languages
Koreanic is a small language family consisting of the Korean language, Korean and Jeju language, Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean, but is distinct enough to be considered a separate language. Alexander Vovin s ...
.
Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
north of
35° N and in some eastern parts of
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, extending in longitude from
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
to Japan. The group is named after the
Altai mountain range in the center of Asia.
The hypothetical language family has long been rejected by most
comparative linguists, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority.
The research on their supposedly common linguistics origin has inspired various comparative studies on the
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
and
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
among the
Turks
Turk or Turks may refer to:
Communities and ethnic groups
* Turkic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups who speak Turkic languages
* Turkish people, or the Turks, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
* Turkish citizen, a citizen of the Republic ...
,
Proto-Mongols
The proto-Mongols emerged from an area that had been inhabited by humans and predecessor hominin species as far back as 45,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic. The people there went through the Bronze and Iron Ages, forming tribal allianc ...
and
Tungus
Tungusic peoples are an ethno-linguistic group formed by the speakers of Tungusic languages (or Manchu–Tungus languages). They are native to Siberia and Northeast Asia.
The Tungusic phylum is divided into two main branches, northern (Evenic or ...
people.
The Altaic family was first proposed in the 18th century. It was widely accepted until the 1960s and is still listed in many encyclopedias and handbooks.
[ Since the 1950s, many comparative linguists have rejected the proposal, after supposed cognates were found not to be valid, hypothesized sound shifts were not found, and Turkic and Mongolic languages were found to be converging rather than diverging over the centuries. Opponents of the theory proposed that the similarities are due to mutual linguistic influences between the groups concerned.][Asya Pereltsvaig (2012) ''Languages of the World, An Introduction''. Cambridge University Press. Pages 211–216: " ..Tis selection of features does not provide good evidence for common descent" .."we can observe convergence rather than divergence between Turkic and Mongolic languages—a pattern than is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent"] Modern supporters of Altaic acknowledge that many shared features are the result of contact and convergence
Convergence may refer to:
Arts and media Literature
*''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen
*Convergence (comics), "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics:
**A four-part crossover storyline that ...
and thus cannot be taken as evidence for a genetic relationship, but they nevertheless argue that a core of existing correspondences goes back to a common ancestor.
The original hypothesis unified only the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic groups. Later proposals to include the Korean and Japanese languages into a "Macro-Altaic" family have always been controversial. The original proposal was sometimes called "Micro-Altaic" by retronym
A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...
y. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean, but fewer do for Japanese.[Roger Blench and Mallam Dendo (2008):]
Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology?
In Alicia Sanchez-Mazas et al., eds. ''Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence'', chapter 4. Taylor & Francis. Some proposals also included Ainuic but this is not widely accepted even among Altaicists themselves. A common ancestral Proto-Altaic language for the "Macro" family has been tentatively reconstructed by Sergei Starostin
Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...
and others.[
Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages, to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean, ]Jeju
Jeju may refer to:
* Jeju Island (Jejudo), an island near South Korea
* Jeju Province (formerly transliterated Cheju), a province of South Korea comprising Jejudo
**Jeju City, the biggest city on Jejudo
**Jeju dog, a dog native to Jejudo
** Jeju l ...
, Japanese, and the Ryukyuan languages
The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family.
Al ...
, for a total of about 74 (depending on what is considered a language and what is considered a dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
). These numbers do not include earlier states of languages, such as Middle Mongol, Old Korean, or Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Old Jap ...
.
Earliest attestations
The earliest known texts in a Turkic language are the Orkhon inscriptions, 720–735 AD.[ They were deciphered in 1893 by the Danish linguist ]Vilhelm Thomsen
Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Danish linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintsev in 1889.
Early life and ...
in a scholarly race with his rival, the German–Russian linguist Wilhelm Radloff
Vasily Vasilievich Radlov or Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Ра́длов; in Berlin – 12 May 1918 in Petrograd) was a German-born Russian founder of Turkology, a scientific study of Turkic peoples. ...
. However, Radloff was the first to publish the inscriptions.
The first Tungusic language to be attested is Jurchen, the language of the ancestors of the Manchus
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
. A writing system for it was devised in 1119 AD and an inscription using this system is known from 1185 (see List of Jurchen inscriptions
The list of Jurchen inscriptions comprises a list of the corpus of known inscriptions written in the Jurchen language using the Jurchen script. There are ten monumental inscriptions, mostly dating to the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), but the late ...
).
The earliest Mongolic language of which we have written evidence is known as Middle Mongol. It is first attested by an inscription dated to 1224 or 1225 AD, the Stele of Yisüngge, and by the ''Secret History of the Mongols
''The Secret History of the Mongols'' (Middle Mongol: ''Mongɣol‑un niɣuca tobciyan''; Traditional Mongolian: , Khalkha Mongolian: , ; ) is the oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language. It was written for the Mongol royal fa ...
'', written in 1228 (see Mongolic languages). The earliest Para-Mongolic text is the Memorial for Yelü Yanning, written in the Khitan large script
The Khitan large script () was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language (the other was the Khitan small script). It was used during the 10th–12th centuries by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in nor ...
and dated to 986 AD. However, the Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi, discovered in 1975 and analysed as being in an early form of Mongolic, has been dated to 604-620 AD. The Bugut inscription dates back to 584 AD.
Japanese is first attested in the form of names contained in a few short inscriptions in Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning
"literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning
"literar ...
from the 5th century AD, such as found on the Inariyama Sword
The iron or was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. Inariyama Kofun is a megalithic tomb located in Saitama Prefecture. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription that comprises at least 115 Chinese characters. This sword ...
. The first substantial text in Japanese, however, is the '' Kojiki'', which dates from 712 AD. It is followed by the '' Nihon shoki'', completed in 720, and then by the '' Man'yōshū'', which dates from c. 771–785, but includes material that is from about 400 years earlier.[
The most important text for the study of early Korean is the ]Hyangga
''Hyangga'' () were poems written using Chinese characters in a system known as '' hyangchal'' during the Unified Silla and early Goryeo periods of Korean history. Only a few have survived: 14 in the ''Samguk yusa'' and 11 by the monk Kyunyeo.
...
, a collection of 25 poems, of which some go back to the Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the West ...
period (57 BC–668 AD), but are preserved in an orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
that only goes back to the 9th century AD.[ Korean is copiously attested from the mid-15th century on in the phonetically precise ]Hangul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...
system of writing.[
]
History of the Altaic family concept
Origins
The earliest known reference to a unified language group of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages is from the 1692 work of Nicolaes Witsen
Nicolaes Witsen (8 May 1641 – 10 August 1717; modern Dutch: ''Nicolaas Witsen'') was a Dutch statesman who was mayor of Amsterdam thirteen times, between 1682 and 1706. In 1693 he became administrator of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). I ...
which may be based on a 1661 work of Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur '' Genealogy of the Turks''.
A proposed grouping of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...
, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War
The Great Northern War (1700–1721) was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swed ...
.[Nicholas Poppe (1965): ''Introduction to Altaic Linguistics.'' Volume 14 of ''Ural-altaische Bibliothek''. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.] However, he may not have intended to imply a closer relationship among those languages.Alexis Manaster Ramer
Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956) is a Polish-born American linguist (PhD 1981, University of Chicago).
Work
Ramer has published extensively on syntactic typology (esp. in relation to Australian, Eskimo, and Austronesian languages); on phonol ...
and Paul Sidwell
Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based in Canberra, Australia who has held research and lecturing positions at the Australian National University. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in forensic linguistics, is most notab ...
(1997): "The truth about Strahlenberg's classification of the languages of Northeastern Eurasia." ''Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne'', volume 87, pages 139–160.
Uralo-Altaic hypothesis
In 1844, the Finnish philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
Matthias Castrén
Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castré ...
proposed a broader grouping which later came to be called the Ural–Altaic family, which included Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus (=Tungusic) as an "Altaic" branch, and also the Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...
and Samoyedic languages
The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Urali ...
as the "Uralic" branch (though Castrén himself used the terms "Tataric" and "Chudic").[ The name "Altaic" referred to the Altai Mountains in East-Central Asia, which are approximately the center of the geographic range of the three main families. The name "Uralic" referred to the ]Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
.
While the Ural-Altaic family hypothesis can still be found in some encyclopedias, atlases, and similar general references, since the 1960s it has been heavily criticized. Even linguists who accept the basic Altaic family, such as Sergei Starostin
Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...
, completely discard the inclusion of the "Uralic" branch.[
The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone. Indeed, "Ural-Altaic" may be preferable to "Altaic" in this sense. For example, ]Juha Janhunen
Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on ...
states that "speaking of 'Altaic' instead of 'Ural-Altaic' is a misconception, for there are no areal or typological features that are specific to 'Altaic' without Uralic."[Stefan Georg (2017) "The Role of Paradigmatic Morphology in Historical, Areal and Genealogical Linguistics: Thoughts and Observations in the Margin of Paradigm Change in ''The Transeurasian languages and Beyond'' (Robbeets and Bisang, eds.)." ''Journal of Language Contact'', volume 10, issue 2, p.]
Korean and Japanese languages
In 1857, the Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
to the Ural–Altaic family.[Roy Andrew Miller (1986): ''Nihongo: In Defence of Japanese.'' .]
In the 1920s, G.J. Ramstedt and E.D. Polivanov advocated the inclusion of Korean. Decades later, in his 1952 book, Ramstedt rejected the Ural–Altaic hypothesis but again included Korean in Altaic, an inclusion followed by most leading Altaicists (supporters of the theory) to date.[Gustaf John Ramstedt (1952): ''Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft'' ("Introduction to Altaic Linguistics"). Volume I, ''Lautlehre'' ("Phonology").] His book contained the first comprehensive attempt to identify regular correspondences among the sound systems within the Altaic language families.
In 1960, Nicholas Poppe published what was in effect a heavily revised version of Ramstedt's volume on phonology[Nicholas Poppe (1960): ''Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen. Teil I. Vergleichende Lautlehre'', ('Comparative Grammar of the Altaic Languages, Part 1: Comparative Phonology'). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. (Only part to appear of a projected larger work.)] that has since set the standard in Altaic studies. Poppe considered the issue of the relationship of Korean to Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic not settled.[ In his view, there were three possibilities: (1) Korean did not belong with the other three genealogically, but had been influenced by an Altaic substratum; (2) Korean was related to the other three at the same level they were related to each other; (3) Korean had split off from the other three before they underwent a series of characteristic changes.
]Roy Andrew Miller
Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altai ...
's 1971 book ''Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages'' convinced most Altaicists that Japanese also belonged to Altaic.[Nicholas Poppe (1976):]
Review of Karl H. Menges, ''Altajische Studien II. Japanisch und Altajisch'' (1975)
. In ''The Journal of Japanese Studies'', volume 2, issue 2, pages 470–474.[Roy Andrew Miller (1971): ''Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages.'' University of Chicago Press. .] Since then, the "Macro-Altaic" has been generally assumed to include Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese.
In 1990, Unger advocated a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic languages, but not Turkic or Mongolic.[J. Marshall Unger (1990): "Summary report of the Altaic panel." In ]Philip Baldi
Philip Baldi (born 1946) is an American linguist and classical scholar specializing in Indo-European studies. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Classics at Pennsylvania State University.
Biography
Baldi was born in Scranton, Pennsylvan ...
, ed., ''Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology'', pages 479–482. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.
However, many linguists dispute the alleged affinities of Korean and Japanese to the other three groups. Some authors instead tried to connect Japanese to the Austronesian languages.[
In 2017, ]Martine Robbeets
Martine Robbeets is a Belgian comparative linguist. She is known for the Transeurasian languages hypothesis, which groups the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages together into a single language family.
Education
Robb ...
proposed that Japanese (and possibly Korean) originated as a hybrid language. She proposed that the ancestral home
An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, particularly the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations. The term can refer to an individual house or estate, or to a broader geographic area such as a ...
of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was somewhere in northwestern Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...
. A group of those proto-Altaic ("Transeurasian") speakers would have migrated south into the modern Liaoning province, where they would have been mostly assimilated by an agricultural community with an Austronesian-like language. The fusion of the two languages would have resulted in proto-Japanese and proto-Korean.[Martine Irma Robbeets (2017):]
Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal
. ''Language Dynamics and Change'', volume 7, issue 2, pages 201–251, [Martine Irma Robbeets (2015): ''Diachrony of verb morphology – Japanese and the Transeurasian languages''. Mouton de Gruyter.]
In a typological study that does not directly evaluate the validity of the Altaic hypothesis, Yurayong and Szeto (2020) discuss for Koreanic and Japonic the stages of convergence to the Altaic typological model and subsequent divergence from that model, which resulted in the present typological similarity between Koreanic and Japonic. They state that both are "still so different from the Core Altaic languages that we can even speak of an independent Japanese-Korean type of grammar. Given also that there is neither a strong proof of common Proto-Altaic lexical items nor solid regular sound correspondences but, rather, only lexical and structural borrowings between languages of the Altaic typology, our results indirectly speak in favour of a “Paleo-Asiatic” origin of the Japonic and Koreanic languages."
The Ainu language
In 1962, John C. Street proposed an alternative classification, with Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic in one grouping and Korean-Japanese- Ainu in another, joined in what he designated as the "North Asiatic" family.[John C. Street (1962): "Review of N. Poppe, ''Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen, Teil I'' (1960)". ''Language'', volume 38, pages 92–98.] The inclusion of Ainu was adopted also by James Patrie in 1982.[James Tyrone Patrie (1978): ''The genetic relationship of the Ainu language''. PhD thesis, University of Hawaii.][James Tyrone Patrie (1982): ''The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language.'' University of Hawaii Press. ]
The Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic and Korean-Japanese-Ainu groupings were also posited in 2000–2002 by Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
. However, he treated them as independent members of a larger family, which he termed Eurasiatic
Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia.
The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's prop ...
.[Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002): ''Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family'', 2 volumes. Stanford University Press.]
The inclusion of Ainu is not widely accepted by Altaicists.[ In fact, no convincing genealogical relationship between Ainu and any other language family has been demonstrated, and it is generally regarded as a ]language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
.
Early criticism and rejection
Starting in the late 1950s, some linguists became increasingly critical of even the minimal Altaic family hypothesis, disputing the alleged evidence of genetic connection between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages.
Among the earlier critics were Gerard Clauson
Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson (28 April 1891 – 1 May 1974) was an English civil servant, businessman, and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages.
The eldest son of Major Sir John Eugene Clauson, Gerard Clauson atten ...
(1956), Gerhard Doerfer
Gerhard Doerfer (8 March 1920 – 27 December 2003) was a German Turkologist, Altaicist, and philologist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages, especially Khalaj.
Biography
Doerfer was born on March 8, 1920 in Königsberg (prese ...
(1963), and Alexander Shcherbak. They claimed that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances.[ In 1988, Doerfer again rejected all the genetic claims over these major groups.][Gerhard Doerfer (1988): ''Grundwort und Sprachmischung: Eine Untersuchung an Hand von Körperteilbezeichnungen.'' Franz Steiner. Wiesbaden:]
Modern controversy
A major continuing supporter of the Altaic hypothesis has been Sergei Starostin
Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...
, who published a comparative lexical analysis of the Altaic languages in 1991. He concluded that the analysis supported the Altaic grouping, although it was "older than most other language families in Eurasia, such as Indo-European or Finno-Ugric, and this is the reason why the modern Altaic languages preserve few common elements".[
In 1991 and again in 1996, Roy Miller defended the Altaic hypothesis and claimed that the criticisms of Clauson and Doerfer apply exclusively to the lexical correspondences, whereas the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities in verbal morphology.][Roy Andrew Miller (1991), page 298][Roy Andrew Miller (1996): ''Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic.'' Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. . Pages 98–99]
In 2003, Claus Schönig published a critical overview of the history of the Altaic hypothesis up to that time, siding with the earlier criticisms of Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak.[
In 2003, Starostin, Anna Dybo and Oleg Mudrak published the '' Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages'', which expanded the 1991 lexical lists and added other phonological and grammatical arguments.][
Starostin's book was criticized by Stefan Georg in 2004 and 2005,][Stefan Georg (2004): " eview of ''Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages'' (2003). ''Diachronica'' volume 21, issue 2, pages 445–450. ][Stefan Georg (2005):]
Reply (to Starostin response, 2005)
. ''Diachronica'' volume 22, issue 2, pages 455–457. and by Alexander Vovin in 2005.[Alexander Vovin (2005): "The end of the Altaic controversy" eview of Starostin et al. (2003) ''Central Asiatic Journal'' volume 49, issue 1, pages 71–132.]
Other defenses of the theory, in response to the criticisms of Georg and Vovin, were published by Starostin in 2005,[Sergei A. Starostin (2005):]
Response to Stefan Georg's review of the ''Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages''
. ''Diachronica'' volume 22, issue 2, pages 451–454. Blažek in 2006,[Václav Blažek (2006):]
Current progress in Altaic etymology.
''Linguistica Online'', 30 January 2006. Accessed on 2019-03-22. Robbeets in 2007,[Martine Robbeets (2007): "How the actional suffix chain connects Japanese to Altaic." In ''Turkic Languages'', volume 11, issue 1, pages 3–58.] and Dybo and G. Starostin in 2008.[Anna V. Dybo and Georgiy S. Starostin (2008):]
In defense of the comparative method, or the end of the Vovin controversy.
''Aspects of Comparative Linguistics'', volume 3, pages 109–258. RSUH Publishers, Moscow
In 2010, Lars Johanson
Lars Johanson (born 8 March 1936 in Köping, Sweden) is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
He has been ...
echoed Miller's 1996 rebuttal to the critics, and called for a muting of the polemic.[Lars Johanson (2010): "The high and low spirits of Transeurasian language studies" in Johanson and Robbeets, eds. ]
Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance.
', pages 7–20. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Quote: "The dark age of ''pro'' and ''contra'' slogans, unfair polemics, and humiliations is not yet completely over and done with, but there seems to be some hope for a more constructive discussion."
List of supporters and critics of the Altaic hypothesis
The list below comprises linguists who have worked specifically on the Altaic problem since the publication of the first volume of Ramstedt's ''Einführung'' in 1952. The dates given are those of works concerning Altaic. For supporters of the theory, the version of Altaic they favor is given at the end of the entry, if other than the prevailing one of Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean–Japanese.
Major supporters
*Pentti Aalto
Pentti Aalto (22 July 1917 – 30 November 1998) was a Finnish linguist who was the University of Helsinki Docent of Comparative Linguistics 1958–1980. Aalto was a student of G. J. Ramstedt. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1949 in He ...
(1955). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.
*Anna V. Dybo
Anna Vladimirovna Dybo (russian: Анна Владимировна Дыбо, born June 4, 1959) is a Russian linguist, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and co-author (with Sergei Starostin) of the '' Etymological Dictionary of the Altai ...
(S. Starostin et al. 2003, A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).
*Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in g ...
(2010).
* Karl H. Menges (1975). Common ancestor of Korean, Japanese and traditional Altaic dated back to the 7th or 8th millennium BC (1975: 125).
*Roy Andrew Miller
Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altai ...
(1971, 1980, 1986, 1996). Supported the inclusion of Korean and Japanese.
* Oleg A. Mudrak (S. Starostin et al. 2003).
*Nicholas Poppe
Nicholas N. Poppe (russian: Никола́й/Ни́колас Никола́евич Поппе, ''Nikoláj/Níkolas Nikolájevič Poppe''; 27 July 1897 – 8 August 1991) was an important Russian linguist. He is also known as Nikolaus Poppe, wit ...
(1965). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and perhaps Korean.
*Alexis Manaster Ramer
Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956) is a Polish-born American linguist (PhD 1981, University of Chicago).
Work
Ramer has published extensively on syntactic typology (esp. in relation to Australian, Eskimo, and Austronesian languages); on phonol ...
.
*Martine Robbeets
Martine Robbeets is a Belgian comparative linguist. She is known for the Transeurasian languages hypothesis, which groups the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages together into a single language family.
Education
Robb ...
(2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015, 2021) (in the form of "Transeurasian").
* G. J. Ramstedt (1952–1957). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.
*George Starostin
Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin (russian: Гео́ргий Серге́евич Ста́ростин; born 4 July 1976) is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1953–2005), and his ...
(A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).
*Sergei Starostin
Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...
(1991, S. Starostin et al. 2003).
* John C. Street (1962). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped as "North Asiatic".
*Talât Tekin
Mehmet Talât Tekin (July 16, 1927, Tavşancıl, Dilovası - November 28, 2015, Bodrum) was a Turkish linguist, Turkologist, researcher and writer who made important contributions to Turkology, the study of Old Turkic inscriptions, and Altais ...
(1994). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.
Major critics
*Gerard Clauson
Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson (28 April 1891 – 1 May 1974) was an English civil servant, businessman, and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages.
The eldest son of Major Sir John Eugene Clauson, Gerard Clauson atten ...
(1956, 1959, 1962).
*Gerhard Doerfer
Gerhard Doerfer (8 March 1920 – 27 December 2003) was a German Turkologist, Altaicist, and philologist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages, especially Khalaj.
Biography
Doerfer was born on March 8, 1920 in Königsberg (prese ...
(1963, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1985, 1988, 1993).
*Susumu Ōno
was a Tokyo-born linguist, specializing in the early history of the Japanese language. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1943, where he studied under Shinkichi Hashimoto. He was professor emeritus at Gakushuin University.
Career
Ō ...
(1970, 2000)
*Juha Janhunen
Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on ...
(1992, 1995) (tentative support of Mongolic-Tungusic).
* Claus Schönig (2003).[
* Stefan Georg (2004, 2005).
*]Alexander Vovin
Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin (russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Ad ...
(2005, 2010, 2017). Formerly an advocate of Altaic (1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001), later a critic.
* Alexander Shcherbak.
* Alexander B. M. Stiven (2008, 2010).
Advocates of alternative hypotheses
* James Patrie (1982) and Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
(2000–2002). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped in a common taxon
In biology, a taxon ( back-formation from '' taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular n ...
(cf. John C. Street 1962), called Eurasiatic
Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia.
The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's prop ...
by Greenberg.
* J. Marshall Unger (1990). Tungusic–Korean–Japanese ("Macro-Tungusic"), with Turkic and Mongolic as separate language families.
*Lars Johanson
Lars Johanson (born 8 March 1936 in Köping, Sweden) is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
He has been ...
(2010). Agnostic, proponent of a "Transeurasian" verbal morphology not necessarily genealogically linked.
Arguments
For the Altaic grouping
Phonological and grammatical features
The original arguments for grouping the "micro-Altaic" languages within a Uralo-Altaic family were based on such shared features as vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
and agglutination
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...
.
According to Roy Miller, the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities in verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
al morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
.[
The ''Etymological Dictionary'' by Starostin and others (2003) proposes a set of sound change laws that would explain the evolution from Proto-Altaic to the descendant languages. For example, although most of today's Altaic languages have vowel harmony, Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by them lacked it; instead, various vowel assimilations between the first and second syllables of words occurred in Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic. They also included a number of grammatical correspondences between the languages.][
]
Shared lexicon
Starostin claimed in 1991 that the members of the proposed Altaic group shared about 15–20% of apparent cognates within a 110-word Swadesh-Yakhontov list; in particular, Turkic–Mongolic 20%, Turkic–Tungusic 18%, Turkic–Korean 17%, Mongolic–Tungusic 22%, Mongolic–Korean 16%, and Tungusic–Korean 21%.[Sergei A. Starostin (1991): ''Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka'' ('The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language'). Nauka, Moscow.] The 2003 ''Etymological Dictionary'' includes a list of 2,800 proposed cognate sets, as well as a few important changes to the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic. The authors tried hard to distinguish loans between Turkic and Mongolic and between Mongolic and Tungusic from cognates; and suggest words that occur in Turkic and Tungusic but not in Mongolic. All other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book. It lists 144 items of shared basic vocabulary, including words for such items as 'eye', 'ear', 'neck', 'bone', 'blood', 'water', 'stone', 'sun', and 'two'.[Sergei Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak (2003): '' Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages'', 3 volumes. .]
Robbeets and Bouckaert (2018) use Bayesian phylolinguistic methods to argue for the coherence of the "narrow" Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic) together with Japonic and Koreanic, which they refer to as the ''Transeurasian'' languages.[Robbeets, M.; Bouckaert, R.]
Bayesian phylolinguistics reveals the internal structure of the Transeurasian family
''Journal of Language Evolution'' 3 (2), pp. 145–162 (2018) Their results include the following phylogenetic tree:
Martine Robbeets
Martine Robbeets is a Belgian comparative linguist. She is known for the Transeurasian languages hypothesis, which groups the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages together into a single language family.
Education
Robb ...
(2020) argues that early Transeurasian speakers were originally agriculturalists in northeastern China, only becoming pastoralists later on. Some lexical reconstructions of agricultural terms by Robbeets (2020) are listed below.[Robbeets, Martine. 2020]
The Transeurasian homeland: where, what, and when?
In: Robbeets, Martine and Alexander Savelyev. ''The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages'', 1st ed. Oxford University Press.
;Abbreviations
*PTEA = Proto-Transeurasian
**PA = Proto-Altaic
***PTk = Proto-Turkic
***PMo = Proto-Mongolic
***PTg = Proto-Tungusic
**PJK = Proto-Japano-Koreanic
***PK = Proto-Koreanic
***PJ = Proto-Japonic
Additional family-level reconstructions of agricultural vocabulary from Robbeets et al. (2020):[Robbeets, M., Janhunen, J., Savelyev, A., & Korovina, E. 2020]
The homelands of the individual Transeurasian proto-languages
In: Robbeets, Martine and Alexander Savelyev. ''The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages'', 1st ed. Oxford University Press.
* Proto-Turkic *ek- ‘to sprinkle with the hand; sow’ > *ek-e.g. ‘plow’
* Proto-Turkic *tarï- ‘to cultivate (the ground)’ > *tarï-g ‘what is cultivated; crops, main crop, cultivated land’
* Proto-Turkic *ko- ‘to put’ > *koːn- ‘to settle down (of animals), to take up residence (of people), to be planted (of plants)’ > *konak ‘foxtail millet (''Setaria italica
Foxtail millet, scientific name ''Setaria italica'' (synonym ''Panicum italicum'' L.), is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most grown millet species in Asia. The oldest evidenc ...
'')’
* Proto-Turkic *tög- ‘to hit, beat; to pound, crush (food in a mortar); to husk, thresh (cereals)’ > *tögi ‘husked millet; husked rice’
* Proto-Turkic *ügür ‘(broomcorn) millet’
* Proto-Turkic *arpa ‘barley (''Hordeum vulgare
Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...
'')' < ? Proto-Iranian *arbusā ‘barley’
* Proto-Mongolic *amun ‘cereals; broomcorn millet (''Panicum miliaceum
''Panicum miliaceum'' is a grain crop with many common names, including proso millet, broomcorn millet, common millet, hog millet, Kashfi millet, red millet, and white millet. Archaeobotanical evidence suggests millet was first domesticated abou ...
'')’ (Nugteren 2011: 268)
* Proto-Mongolic *konag ‘foxtail millet’ < PTk *konak ‘foxtail millet (''Setaria italica
Foxtail millet, scientific name ''Setaria italica'' (synonym ''Panicum italicum'' L.), is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most grown millet species in Asia. The oldest evidenc ...
'')’
* Proto-Mongolic *budaga ‘cooked cereals; porridge; meal’
* Proto-Mongolic *tari- ‘to sow, plant’ (Nugteren 2011: 512–13)
* Proto-Macro-Mongolic *püre ‘seed; descendants’
* Proto-Tungusic *pisi-ke ‘broomcorn millet (''Panicum miliaceum
''Panicum miliaceum'' is a grain crop with many common names, including proso millet, broomcorn millet, common millet, hog millet, Kashfi millet, red millet, and white millet. Archaeobotanical evidence suggests millet was first domesticated abou ...
'')’
* Proto-Tungusic *jiya- ‘foxtail millet (''Setaria italica
Foxtail millet, scientific name ''Setaria italica'' (synonym ''Panicum italicum'' L.), is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most grown millet species in Asia. The oldest evidenc ...
'')’
* Proto-Tungusic *murgi ‘barley (''Hordeum vulgare
Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...
'')’
* Proto-Tungusic *üse- ~ *üsi- ‘to plant’ üse ~ üsi ‘seed, seedling’, üsi-n ‘field for cultivation’
* Proto-Tungusic *tari- ‘to sow, to plant’
* Proto-Koreanic *pisi ‘seed’, *pihi ‘barnyard millet
''Echinochloa'' is a very widespread genus of plants in the grass family and tribe Paniceae. Some of the species are known by the common names barnyard grass or cockspur grass.
Some of the species within this genus are millets that are grown ...
’ < Proto-Transeurasian (PTEA) *pisi-i (sow-NMLZ) ‘seed’ ~ *pisi-ke (sow-RES.NMLZ) ‘what is sown, major crop’
* Proto-Koreanic *patʌ-k ‘dry field’ < Proto-Japano-Koreanic (PJK) *pata ‘dry field’ < PTEA *pata ‘field for cultivation’
* Proto-Koreanic *mutʌ-k ‘dry land’ < PJK *muta ‘land’ < PTEA *mudu ‘uncultivated land’
* Proto-Koreanic *mat-ʌk ‘garden plot’ < PJK *mat ‘plot of land for cultivation’
* Proto-Koreanic *non ‘rice paddy field’ < PJK *non ‘field’
* Proto-Koreanic *pap ‘any boiled preparation of cereal; boiled rice’
* Proto-Koreanic *pʌsal ‘hulled (of any grain); hulled corn of grain; hulled rice’ < Proto-Japonic *wasa-ra ‘early ripening (of any grain)’
* Proto-Koreanic *ipi > *pi > *pye ‘(unhusked) rice’ < Proto-Japonic *ip-i (eat-NMLZ) ‘cooked millet, steamed rice’
* Proto-Japonic *nuka ‘rice bran’ < PJ *nuka- (remove.NMLZ)
* Proto-Japonic *məmi ‘hulled rice’ < PJ *məm-i (move.back.and.forth.with.force-NMLZ)
* Proto-Japonic *ipi ‘cooked millet, steamed rice’ < *ip-i (eat-NMLZ) < PK *me(k)i ‘rice offered to a higher rank’ < *mek-i (eat-NMLZ) ‘what you eat, food’ < Proto-Austronesian *ka-en eat-OBJ.NMLZ
* Proto-Japonic *wasa- ~ *wəsə- ‘to be early ripening (of crops); an early ripening variety (of any crop); early-ripening rice plant’
* Proto-Japonic *usu ‘(rice and grain) mortar’ < Para-Austronesian *lusuŋ ‘(rice) mortar’; cf. Proto-Austronesian
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify ...
*lusuŋ ‘(rice) mortar’
* Proto-Japonic *kəmai ‘dehusked rice’ < Para-Austronesian *hemay < Proto-Macro-Austronesian *Semay ‘cooked rice’; cf. Proto-Austronesian
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify ...
*Semay ‘cooked rice’
Against the grouping
Weakness of lexical and typological data
According to G. Clauson (1956), G. Doerfer (1963), and A. Shcherbak (1963), many of the typological features of the supposed Altaic languages, particularly agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
strongly suffixing morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
and subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
(SOV) word order, often occur together in languages.[
Those critics also argued that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances. They noted that there was little vocabulary shared by Turkic and Tungusic languages, though more shared with Mongolic languages. They reasoned that, if all three families had a common ancestor, we should expect losses to happen at random, and not only at the geographical margins of the family; and that the observed pattern is consistent with borrowing.][
According to C. Schönig (2003), after accounting for areal effects, the shared lexicon that could have a common genetic origin was reduced to a small number of monosyllabic lexical roots, including the personal pronouns and a few other deictic and auxiliary items, whose sharing could be explained in other ways; not the kind of sharing expected in cases of genetic relationship.][Schönig (2003): "Turko-Mongolic Relations." In ''The Mongolic Languages'', edited by Juha Janhunen, pages 403–419. Routledge.]
The Sprachbund hypothesis
Instead of a common genetic origin, Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak proposed (in 1956–1966) that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages form a '' Sprachbund'': a set of languages with similarities due to convergence
Convergence may refer to:
Arts and media Literature
*''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen
*Convergence (comics), "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics:
**A four-part crossover storyline that ...
through intensive borrowing and long contact, rather than common origin.[Gerard Clauson (1956).]
The case against the Altaic theory
. ''Central Asiatic Journal'' volume 2, pages 181–187[Gerhard Doerfer (1963): "Bemerkungen zur Verwandtschaft der sog. altaische Sprachen" ('Remarks on the relationship of the so-called Altaic languages') In Gerhard Doerfer ed.: ''Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, Bd. I: Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen'', pages 51–105. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden][Alexander Shcherbak (1963).]
Asya Pereltsvaig
Asya Pereltsvaig (russian: link=no, Ася Перельцвайг; born 1972) is a Russian-American linguist, writer, and educator. Pereltsvaig was born in Leningrad, USSR.
Life
Her research interests are theoretical syntax, cross-linguistic t ...
further observed in 2011 that, in general, genetically related languages and families tend to diverge over time: the earlier forms are more similar than modern forms. However, she claims that an analysis of the earliest written records of Mongolic and Turkic languages shows the opposite, suggesting that they do not share a common traceable ancestor, but rather have become more similar through language contact and areal effects.Asya Pereltsvaig
Asya Pereltsvaig (russian: link=no, Ася Перельцвайг; born 1972) is a Russian-American linguist, writer, and educator. Pereltsvaig was born in Leningrad, USSR.
Life
Her research interests are theoretical syntax, cross-linguistic t ...
(2011):
The Altaic family controversy
. ''Languages of the World'' website, published on 2011-02-16. Accessed on 2017-02-14.
Hypothesis about the original homeland
The prehistory of the peoples speaking the "Altaic" languages is largely unknown. Whereas for certain other language families, such as the speakers of Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, and Austronesian, it is possible to frame substantial hypotheses, in the case of the proposed Altaic family much remains to be done.
Some scholars have hypothesised a possible Uralic and Altaic homeland in the Central Asian steppes
The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Transnistria ...
.
According to Juha Janhunen
Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on ...
, the ancestral languages of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese were spoken in a relatively small area comprising present-day North Korea, Southern Manchuria, and Southeastern Mongolia.[Lars Johanson and Martine Irma Robbeets (2010): ]
Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance.
'. Introduction to the book, pages 1–5. However Janhunen is sceptical about an affiliation of Japanese to Altaic,[Juha Janhunen (1992): "Das Japanische in vergleichender Sicht". ''Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne'', volume 84, pages 145–161.] while András Róna-Tas
András Róna-Tas (born 30 December 1931) is a Hungarian historian and linguist. He was born in 1931 in Budapest. Róna-Tas studied under such preeminent professors as Gyula Ortutay and Lajos Ligeti, and received a degree in folklore and easter ...
remarked that a relationship between Altaic and Japanese, if it ever existed, must be more remote than the relationship of any two of the Indo-European languages.[András Róna-Tas (1988).] Ramsey stated that "the genetic relationship between Korean and Japanese, if it in fact exists, is probably more complex and distant than we can imagine on the basis of our present state of knowledge".
Supporters of the Altaic hypothesis formerly set the date of the Proto-Altaic language at around 4000 BC, but today at around 5000 BC[ or 6000 BC. This would make Altaic a language family older than ]Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
(around 3000 to 4000 BC according to mainstream hypotheses) but considerably younger than Afroasiatic
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
(c. 10,000 BC or 11,000 to 16,000 BC according to different sources).
See also
*Classification of the Japonic languages
The classification of the Japonic languages and their external relations is unclear. Linguists traditionally consider the Japonic languages to belong to an independent family; indeed, until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages wi ...
*Nostratic languages
Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and ...
*Pan-Turanism
Turanism, also known as pan-Turanianism, pan-Turanism, or simply Turan, is a pseudoscientific pan-nationalist cultural and political movement proclaiming the need for close cooperation or political unification between people who are claimed by ...
*Turco-Mongol
The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century, among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these Khanates eventually ...
*Uralo-Siberian languages
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...
*Xiongnu
The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 20 ...
*Comparison of Japanese and Korean
The geographically close languages of Japanese (part of the Japonic languages) and Korean (part of the Koreanic languages) share considerable similarity in typological features of their syntax and morphology while having a small number of ...
References
Citations
Sources
*Aalto, Pentti. 1955. "On the Altaic initial *''p-''." ''Central Asiatic Journal'' 1, 9–16.
*Anonymous. 2008. itle missing ''Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas'', 31 March 2008, 264: ____.
*
*Anthony, David W. 2007. ''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World'' is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the or ...
.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press.
*Boller, Anton. 1857. ''Nachweis, daß das Japanische zum ural-altaischen Stamme gehört.'' Wien.
*Clauson, Gerard. 1959. "The case for the Altaic theory examined." ''Akten des vierundzwanzigsten internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses'', edited by H. Franke. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, in Komission bei Franz Steiner Verlag.
*Clauson, Gerard. 1968. "A lexicostatistical appraisal of the Altaic theory." ''Central Asiatic Journal'' 13: 1–23.
*Doerfer, Gerhard. 1973. "Lautgesetze und Zufall: Betrachtungen zum Omnicomparativismus." ''Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft'' 10.
*Doerfer, Gerhard. 1974. "Ist das Japanische mit den altaischen Sprachen verwandt?" ''Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'' 114.1.
*Doerfer, Gerhard. 1985. ''Mongolica-Tungusica.'' Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
*Georg, Stefan. 1999 / 2000. "Haupt und Glieder der altaischen Hypothese: die Körperteilbezeichnungen im Türkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen" ('Head and members of the Altaic hypothesis: The body-part designations in Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic'). ''Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, neue Folge B'' 16, 143–182.
*.
*Lee, Ki-Moon and S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. ''A History of the Korean Language.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Menges, Karl. H. 1975. ''Altajische Studien II. Japanisch und Altajisch.'' Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
*Miller, Roy Andrew. 1980. ''Origins of the Japanese Language: Lectures in Japan during the Academic Year 1977–1978.'' Seattle: University of Washington Press. .
*Ramstedt, G.J. 1952. ''Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft I. Lautlehre'', 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics, Volume 1: Phonology', edited and published by Pentti Aalto. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
*Ramstedt, G.J. 1957. ''Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft II. Formenlehre'', 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics, Volume 2: Morphology', edited and published by Pentti Aalto. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
*Ramstedt, G.J. 1966. ''Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft III. Register'', 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics, Volume 3: Index', edited and published by Pentti Aalto. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
*Robbeets, Martine. 2004
"Swadesh 100 on Japanese, Korean and Altaic."
Tokyo University Linguistic Papers, TULIP 23, 99–118.
*Robbeets, Martine. 2005. ''Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic?'' Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
*Strahlenberg, P.J.T. von. 1730. ''Das nord- und ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia....'' Stockholm. (Reprint: 1975. Studia Uralo-Altaica. Szeged and Amsterdam.)
*Strahlenberg, P.J.T. von. 1738. ''Russia, Siberia and Great Tartary, an Historico-geographical Description of the North and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia....'' (Reprint: 1970. New York: Arno Press.) English translation of the previous.
*Tekin, Talat. 1994. "Altaic languages." In ''The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', Vol. 1, edited by R.E. Asher. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press.
*Vovin, Alexander. 1993. "About the phonetic value of the Middle Korean grapheme ᅀ." ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' 56(2), 247–259.
*Vovin, Alexander. 1994. "Genetic affiliation of Japanese and methodology of linguistic comparison." ''Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 85, 241–256.
*Vovin, Alexander. 2001. "Japanese, Korean, and Tungusic: evidence for genetic relationship from verbal morphology." ''Altaic Affinities'' (Proceedings of the 40th Meeting of PIAC, Provo, Utah, 1997), edited by David B. Honey and David C. Wright, 83–202. Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies.
*Vovin, Alexander. 2010. ''Koreo-Japonica: A Re-Evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin''. University of Hawaii Press.
*Whitney Coolidge, Jennifer. 2005. ''Southern Turkmenistan in the Neolithic: A Petrographic Case Study.'' Oxbow Books.
Further reading
* Blažek, Václav.
Altaic numerals
. In: Blažek, Václav. ''Numerals: comparative-etymological analyses of numeral systems and their implications: (Saharan, Nubian, Egyptian, Berber, Kartvelian, Uralic, Altaic and Indo-European languages)''. Vyd. 1. V Brně: Masarykova univerzita, 1999, pp. 102–140. ;
* Dybo, Anna. "New trends in European studies on the Altaic problem". In: ''Journal of Language Relationship'' 14, no. 1-2 (2017): 71-106. https://doi.org/10.31826/jlr-2017-141-208
* Finch, Roger. "Gender Distinctions in Nouns and Pronouns of the Altaic Languages". ''Expressions of Gender in the Altaic World: Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), Kocaeli, Turkey, July 7-12, 2013''. Edited by Münevver Tekcan and Oliver Corff. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. pp. 57-84. https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9783110748789-008
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1997. "Does Altaic exist?". In: Irén Hegedus, Peter A. Michalove, and Alexis Manaster Ramer (editors), ''Indo-European, Nostratic and Beyond: A Festschrift for Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin'', Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997, 88–93. (Reprinted in Joseph H. Greenberg, ''Genetic Linguistics'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 325–330.)
*Hahn, Reinhard F. 1994
*Janhune, Juha. 1995. "Prolegomena to a Comparative Analysis of Mongolic and Tungusic". ''Proceedings of the 38th Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC)'', 209–218. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
*Johanson, Lars. 1999
"Cognates and copies in Altaic verb derivation"
In: ''Language and Literature – Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages: Studies in Honour of Roy Andrew Miller on His 75th Birthday'', edited by Karl H. Menges and Nelly Naumann, 1–13. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. (Also
HTML version
)
*Johanson, Lars. 1999
"Attractiveness and relatedness: Notes on Turkic language contacts"
''Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Caucasian, Dravidian, and Turkic Linguistics'', edited by Jeff Good and Alan C.L. Yu, 87–94. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
*Johanson, Lars. 2002. ''Structural Factors in Turkic Language Contacts'', translated by Vanessa Karam. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
*
*Kortlandt, Frederik. 1993
"The origin of the Japanese and Korean accent systems"
''Acta Linguistica Hafniensia'' 26, 57–65.
*
*
*Robbeets, Martine. 2004
"Belief or argument? The classification of the Japanese language."
''Eurasia Newsletter'' 8. Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University.
*Ruhlen, Merritt. 1987. ''A Guide to the World's Languages''. Stanford University Press.
*Sinor, Denis. 1990. ''Essays in Comparative Altaic Linguistics''. Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. .
*Vovin, Alexander. 2009. "Japanese, Korean, and other 'non-Altaic' languages". In: ''Central Asiatic Journal'' 53 (1): 105–147.
*
External links
Altaic
at the Linguist List MultiTree Project (not functional as of 2014): Genealogical trees attributed to Ramstedt 1957, Miller 1971, and Poppe 1982
Swadesh vocabulary lists for Altaic languages
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix
Monumenta altaica
Altaic linguistics website, maintained by Ilya Gruntov
''Altaic Etymological Dictionary'', database version
by Sergei A. Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak (does not include introductory chapters)
defense of Altaic by Alexis Manaster Ramer (1994)
1. Remarks by Alexander Vovin. 2. Clarification by J. Marshall Unger. (1994)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altaic Languages
Agglutinative languages
Central Asia
Proposed language families