Altaic languages

Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35° N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from Turkey 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 and mythology among the Turks, Proto-Mongols and Tungus 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 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 retronymy. 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 and others.

Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages, to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean, Jeju, Japanese, and the Ryukyuan languages, for a total of about 74 (depending on what is considered a language and what is considered a dialect). These numbers do not include earlier states of languages, such as Middle Mongol, Old Korean, or Old Japanese.

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 in a scholarly race with his rival, the German–Russian linguist Wilhelm Radloff. 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. 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 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'', written in 1228 (see Mongolic languages). The earliest Para-Mongolic text is the Memorial for Yelü Yanning, written in the Khitan large script 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 from the 5th century AD, such as found on the Inariyama 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, a collection of 25 poems, of which some go back to the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC–668 AD), but are preserved in an orthography that only goes back to the 9th century AD. Korean is copiously attested from the mid-15th century on in the phonetically precise Hangul 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 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, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War.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 and Paul Sidwell (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 Matthias Castrén 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 and Samoyedic languages 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.

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, 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 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 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 phonologyNicholas 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'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, 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 proposed that Japanese (and possibly Korean) originated as a hybrid language. She proposed that the ancestral home of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was somewhere in northwestern Manchuria. 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. However, he treated them as independent members of a larger family, which he termed Eurasiatic.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.

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 (1956), Gerhard Doerfer (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, 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 298Roy 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 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 (1955). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.
*Anna V. Dybo (S. Starostin et al. 2003, A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).
* Frederik Kortlandt (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 (1971, 1980, 1986, 1996). Supported the inclusion of Korean and Japanese.
*Oleg A. Mudrak (S. Starostin et al. 2003).
* Nicholas Poppe (1965). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and perhaps Korean.
* Alexis Manaster Ramer.
* Martine Robbeets (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015, 2021) (in the form of "Transeurasian").
* G. J. Ramstedt (1952–1957). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.
* George Starostin (A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).
* Sergei Starostin (1991, S. Starostin et al. 2003).
*John C. Street (1962). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped as "North Asiatic".
* Talât Tekin (1994). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean.

Major critics

* Gerard Clauson (1956, 1959, 1962).
* Gerhard Doerfer (1963, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1985, 1988, 1993).
* Susumu Ōno (1970, 2000)
* Juha Janhunen (1992, 1995) (tentative support of Mongolic-Tungusic).
*Claus Schönig (2003).
* Stefan Georg (2004, 2005).
* Alexander Vovin (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 (2000–2002). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped in a common taxon (cf. John C. Street 1962), called Eurasiatic by Greenberg.
*J. Marshall Unger (1990). Tungusic–Korean–Japanese ("Macro-Tungusic"), with Turkic and Mongolic as separate language families.
*Lars Johanson (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 and agglutination.

According to Roy Miller, the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities in verbal morphology.

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 (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'')’
* 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'')' < ? Proto-Iranian *arbusā ‘barley’
* Proto-Mongolic *amun ‘cereals; broomcorn millet ('' Panicum miliaceum'')’ (Nugteren 2011: 268)
* Proto-Mongolic *konag ‘foxtail millet’ < PTk *konak ‘foxtail millet ('' Setaria italica'')’
* 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'')’
* Proto-Tungusic *jiya- ‘foxtail millet ('' Setaria italica'')’
* Proto-Tungusic *murgi ‘barley ('' Hordeum vulgare'')’
* 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’ < 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 *lusuŋ ‘(rice) mortar’
* Proto-Japonic *kəmai ‘dehusked rice’ < Para-Austronesian *hemay < Proto-Macro-Austronesian *Semay ‘cooked rice’; cf. Proto-Austronesian *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 strongly suffixing morphology and subject–object–verb (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 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 181–187Gerhard 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, WiesbadenAlexander Shcherbak (1963).

Asya Pereltsvaig 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 (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, Uralic, 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.

According to Juha Janhunen, 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 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 (around 3000 to 4000 BC according to mainstream hypotheses) but considerably younger than Afroasiatic (c. 10,000 BC or 11,000 to 16,000 BC according to different sources).

See also

* Classification of the Japonic languages
* Nostratic languages
* Pan-Turanism
*Turco-Mongol
* Uralo-Siberian languages
* Xiongnu
* Comparison of Japanese and Korean

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.'' 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