Tuoba (Tabγač or Tabghach; also Taγbač or Taghbach; ) is an extinct language spoken by the

Tuoba The Tuoba (reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation: *''tʰak-bɛt''), also known as the Taugast or Tabgach ( otk, 𐱃𐰉𐰍𐰲 ''Tabγač''), was a Xianbei clan in Imperial China. Wei Shou. ''Book of Wei''. Vol. 1 During the Sixteen Kin ...

people in

northern China Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions is not precisely defined and only serve to depict where there appears to be regional differences between the climates ...

around the 5th century AD during the Northern Wei dynasty.

Classification

Alexander Vovin (2007) identifies the Tuoba language as a Mongolic language. On the other hand,

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 o ...

proposed that the Tuoba might have spoken an Oghur Turkic language. According to Peter Boodberg, the Tuoba language was essentially Turkic with Mongolic admixture. Chen Sanping noted that the Tuoba language "had both" Turkic and Mongolic elements. Liu Xueyao stated that Tuoba may have had their own language, which should not be assumed to be identical with any other known languages.Liu Xueyao p. 83-86 Andrew Shimunek (2017) classifies Tuoba (Tabghach) as a "Serbi" (i.e., para-Mongolic) language. Shimunek's Serbi branch also consists of the Tuyuhun and Khitan languages.

Morphology

Some functional suffixes are: * *-A(y) ~ *ʁa(y) ‘verbal noun suffix’ * *-Al ~ *-l ‘deverbal noun suffix’ * **čɪ ~ **či ‘suffix denoting occupations’ * **-mɔr/-mʊr ( 萬) ‘deverbal noun suffix’ * **-n ‘plural suffix’

Lexicon

Selected basic Taghbach words from Shimunek (2017) are listed below. Forms reconstructed using the

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

are marked with one asterisk (*), while forms reconstructed according to the Chinese fanqie spellings and/or rhymes of the traditional Chinese philological tradition are marked with two asterisks (**) (originally marked as ✩ by Shimunek 2017).

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tuoba language Languages attested from the 5th century Agglutinative languages Unclassified languages of Asia Languages of China Medieval languages Extinct languages of Asia Tuoba