Proto-Turkic is the
linguistic reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
* Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to ...
of the common ancestor of the
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
that was spoken by the Proto-Turks before their divergence into the various
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...
. Proto-Turkic separated into
Oghur (western) and
Common Turkic
Common Turkic, or Shaz Turkic, is a taxon in some classifications of the Turkic languages that includes all of them except the Oghuric languages.
Classification
Lars Johanson's proposal contains the following subgroups:
* Southwestern Common ...
(eastern) branches. One estimate postulates Proto-Turkic to have been spoken 2,500 years ago in
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
.
The oldest records of a Turkic language, the
Old Turkic
Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürks, Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It ...
Orkhon inscriptions
The Orkhon inscriptions (also known as the Orhon inscriptions, Orhun inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments (also spelled ''Khoshoo Tsaidam'', ''Koshu-Tsaidam'' or ''Höshöö Caidam''), or Kul Tigin steles ( zh, t=闕特勤碑, s=阙特勤 ...
of the 7th century
Göktürk khaganate
A khaganate or khanate was a polity ruled by a khan, khagan, khatun, or khanum. That political territory was typically found on the Eurasian Steppe and could be equivalent in status to tribal chiefdom, principality, kingdom or empire.
Mongol ...
, already shows characteristics of Eastern Common Turkic and reconstruction of Proto-Turkic must rely on comparisons of Old Turkic with early sources of the Western Common Turkic branches, such as
Oghuz and
Kypchak
The Kipchaks or Qipchaks, also known as Kipchak Turks or Polovtsians, were a Turkic nomadic people and confederation that existed in the Middle Ages, inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe. First mentioned in the 8th century as part of the Se ...
, as well as the Western
Oghur proper (
Bulgar
Bulgar may refer to:
*Bulgars, extinct people of Central Asia
*Bulgar language, the extinct language of the Bulgars
* Oghur languages
Bulgar may also refer to:
*Bolghar, the capital city of Volga Bulgaria
*Bulgur, a wheat product
* Bulgar, an Ash ...
,
Chuvash,
Khazar
The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...
). Because early attestation of these non-easternmost languages is much more sparse, reconstruction of Proto-Turkic still rests fundamentally on the easternmost Old Turkic of the
Göktürks
The Göktürks, Celestial Turks or Blue Turks ( otk, 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰:𐰉𐰆𐰑𐰣, Türük Bodun; ; ) were a nomadic confederation of Turkic peoples in medieval Inner Asia. The Göktürks, under the leadership of Bumin Qaghan (d. 552) and ...
.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonant system had a two-way contrast of
stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s (fortis vs. lenis), ''k, p, t'' vs. ''g, b, d''. There was also an
affricate consonant
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
, ''ç''; at least one
sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
''s'' and
sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
s ''m, n, ń, ŋ, r, ŕ, l, ĺ'' with a full series of
nasal consonants
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
.
The sounds denoted by ''ń, ĺ, ŕ'' refer to
palatalized sounds and have been claimed by Altaicists to be direct inheritances from
Proto-Altaic
The Proto-Altaic language is a hypothetical extinct language that has been proposed as the common ancestor of the disputed Altaic languages.
In the 18th century, some similarities between the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages led to the ...
. The last two can be reconstructed with the aid of the
Oghur languages
The Oghuric, Onoguric or Oguric languages (also known as Bulgar, Pre-Proto-Bulgaric or Lir-Turkic and r-Turkic) are a branch of the Turkic language family. The only extant member of the group is the Chuvash language. The first to branch off from ...
, which show for *ŕ, *ĺ, while
Common Turkic
Common Turkic, or Shaz Turkic, is a taxon in some classifications of the Turkic languages that includes all of them except the Oghuric languages.
Classification
Lars Johanson's proposal contains the following subgroups:
* Southwestern Common ...
has *z, *š. Oghuric is thus sometimes referred to as Lir-Turkic and Common Turkic as Shaz-Turkic.
However, an alternate theory holds that Common Turkic is closer to the original state of affairs and reconstructs Proto-Turkic *z, *š. The glottochronological reconstruction based on analysis of
isoglosses
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
and Sinicisms points to the timing of the ''r/z'' split at around 56 BCE–48 CE. As A. V. Dybo puts it, that may be associated with
the historical situation that can be seen in the history of the Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...
' division onto the Northern and Southern roups the first separation and withdrawal of the Northern Huns to the west has occurred, as was stated above, in 56 BC,... the second split of the (Eastern) Huns into the northern and southern groups happened in 48 AD.
Dybo suggests that during that period, the Northern branch steadily migrated from Western
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
through Southern
Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
into the north's
Dzungaria
Dzungaria (; from the Mongolian language, Mongolian words , meaning 'left hand') is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang. It is thus also known as Beijiang, which means "Northern Xinjiang" ...
and then finally into Kazakhstan's
Zhetysu
Zhetysu, or Jeti-Suu ( kk, , Жетісу, pronounced ; ky, ''Jeti-Suu'', (), meaning "seven rivers"; also transcribed ''Zhetisu'', ''Jetisuw'', ''Jetysu'', ''Jeti-su'', ''Jity-su'', ''Жетысу'',, United States National Geospatial-I ...
until the 5th century.
There was no fortis-lenis contrast in word-initial position: the initial stops were always ''*b'', ''*t'', ''*k'', the affricate was always ''*č'' (''*ç'') and the sibilant was always ''*s''. In addition, the nasals and the liquids did not occur in that position either.
The velars /k/ and /g/ seem to have had back and front allophones (
and
and
according to their environments, and the lenis stops /b/, /d/ and /g/ may have tended towards fricatives intervocalically.
Vowels
Like most of its descendants, Proto-Turkic exhibited
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 ...
, distinguishing vowel qualities ''a, e, ı, o, u'' vs. ä'', ë, ï, ö, ü'', as well as two vowel quantities. Here,
macrons represent long vowels. The existence of a mid back unrounded ''*e'' is not accepted by all scholars,
[Róna-Tas 1998: 70] nor is that of a mid front unrounded ''*ë''.
[Johanson 1998: 90-91. History of Turkic. In: Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva (eds.). The Turkic Languages. London: Taylor & Francis. pp. 81-125.] The phonemicity of the distinction between the two close unrounded vowels, i.e. front ''*ï'' and back ''*ı'', is also rejected by some.
Morphology
This section deals mainly with Róna-Tas (1998). However, some of his reconstructions of Proto-Turkic have some Common Turkic features like substituting ''*-z'' for palatalized ''*-ŕ''.
Nouns
Plural of nouns are formed by the suffix ''*-lAr'', however, the
Chuvash plural ''-sem'' <> seems to be a late replacement. Reconstructable
possessive suffixes in Proto-Turkic includes ''*-m'', ''*-ŋ'', and ''*-(s)i'', plurals of the possessors are formed by ''*-z'' in
Common Turkic
Common Turkic, or Shaz Turkic, is a taxon in some classifications of the Turkic languages that includes all of them except the Oghuric languages.
Classification
Lars Johanson's proposal contains the following subgroups:
* Southwestern Common ...
languages.
Verbs
The reconstructable suffixes for the verbs include:
*
Aorist
Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the I ...
: ''*-Vr''
*
Past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience t ...
: ''*-dI''
* Negative suffix: ''*-mA''
* : ''*-m'' < ''*-män'' < ''*bän''
* : ''*-n'' < ''*sän''
* : ''*-∅'' < ''*ï''
* : ''*-mïz/*-bïz'' < ''*bïz''
* : ''*-sïz'' < ''*sïz''
Proto-Turkic also involves derivation with grammatical voice suffixes, as in cooperative ''*körüš'', middle ''*körün'', passive ''*körül'', and causative ''*körtkür''.
Vocabulary
Pronouns
Numbers
References
Sources
*
*
**
*
*
*
Further reading
*
Dybo, A.V. (2014).
Early contacts of Turks and problems of Proto-Turkic reconstruction. In: ''Tatarica: Language'', 2, p. 7-17.
*
External links
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Agglutinative languages
Turkic languages
Turkic