is a proposed and northeast Asia. The relationships among these languages remain a matter of debate among historical linguists. Some scholars consider the apparent similarity among these languages to indicate a genetic relationship; others propose that they are not a family derived from a common ancestor, but a
Sprachbund , a group of languages that have become similar in some ways by massive borrowing because of long
Language Contact .
The proponents of Altaic traditionally consider it to include the
Turkic Languages , the
Mongolic Languages , the
Tungusic Languages (also called Manchu-Tungus languages), and sometimes
Japonic or
Korean . A few linguists add
Ainu , but this view has few adherents.Georg, S., Michalove, P.A., Manaster Ramer, A., Sidwell, P.J.: "Telling general linguists about Altaic", ''Journal of Linguistics'' 35 (1999): 65-98
Online abstract Occasionally, hypotheses that include only Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic are called "Micro-Altaic", and ones that include more language families are called "Macro-Altaic".
Altaic is itself part of the even more controversial
Nostratic and
Eurasiatic hypotheses.
("''Mountains of Gold''" in Turkic and Mongolic) give their name to the proposed language family.]]
The idea that the
Turkic ,
Mongolic , and
Tungusic (or Manchu-Tungus) Languages are each others' closest relatives was first published by F. J. von Stralenberg in 1730.
As early as 1857,
Anton Boller suggested adding
Korean and
Japanese . For Korean,
G. J. Ramstedt and
E. D. Polivanov put forward more etymologies in the 1920s.
For much of the 19
th and early 20
th centuries those few linguists who studied these language families regarded them as members of the so-called
Ural-Altaic Family , together with the
Finno-Ugric and the
Samoyedic Languages , based on features such as
Vowel Harmony and
Agglutinative grammar. While the Ural-Altaic hypothesis can still be found in encyclopedias, atlases and similar general reference works, it has not had any adherents in the linguistics community for decades ("an idea now completely discarded" – Starostin et al.
{Link without Title} ).
As a result of decades-long work,
G. J. Ramstedt 's book ''Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft''
to Altaic linguistics was published in 1952 (two years after Ramstedt's death). It separated the
Uralic Languages (i. e. the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic families) from the Altaic ones, added
Korean and
Japanese to the latter, and contained the first attempts to find regular correspondences in the sound systems and the grammars of the Altaic language families.
Further contributions to Altaic studies, especially attempts to reconstruct the
Most Recent Common Ancestor of the Altaic languages (the so-called ), were made in the 1950s and 1960s by linguists such as
Nikolaus Poppe ,
K. Menges ,
Vera Cincius ,
Vladimir Illich-Svitych ,
S. Martin and
R. A. Miller ; most of these attempts did not include Korean or Japanese, judging them to be too different from Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic.
In the 1960s the pendulum swung in the other direction. Researchers such as
G. Clauson ,
Gerhard Doerfer , and
A. Shcherbak argued that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic were for the most part borrowings, and that the rest could be attributed to random chance. For example, they argued that while there were words shared by Turkic and Mongolic, by Mongolic and Tungusic, and by all three, there were none shared by Turkic and Tungusic but not Mongolic. If all three families had a common ancestor, we should expect losses to happen at random, not only at the geographical margins of the family; on the other hand, we should expect exactly the supposedly observed pattern if borrowing is to blame. Furthermore, they argued that many of the
Typological features of the supposedly Altaic languages, such as
Agglutinative Morpology and
SOV word order, usually occur together. In sum, the idea was that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic form a – the result of
Convergence by intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers of languages that are not necessarily closely related. The proponents of this hypothesis are sometimes called "Anti-Altaicists".
Doubt was also raised about the affinities of Korean and Japanese (defended by
R. A. Miller in 1971); in particular, some workers tried to connect Japanese to the
Austronesian Languages .
Since then, the debate has raged back and forth, with wholesale defenses of Altaic in the wide sense (e. g. Starostin 1991), a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic, but not Turkic or Mongolic ("Macro-Tungusic";
J. Marshall Unger 1990), and wholesale rejections (e. g. Doerfer 1988) being published. The latter was the generally most popular point of view among historical linguists. (For a review see e. g. Georg et al.
{Link without Title} .)
Using the controversial
Phenetic method of
Multilateral Comparison , Greenberg found a family consisting of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic and another consisting of Korean, Japanese, and
Ainu . This result has found very little acceptance because of the peculiarities of the Ainu language, although the idea was not new, having been proposed long before by Street (1962) and Patrie (1982).
An important step in the debate was the publication of ''An Etymological Dictionary of Altaic Languages'' by S. Starostin, A. Dybo, and O. Mudrak in 2003. The result of some twenty years of work, it contains 2800 proposed
Cognate sets, a complete set of regular sound correspondences, and a number of grammatical correspondences, as well as a few important changes to the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic; for example, while most of today's Altaic languages have
Vowel Harmony , Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by Starostin et al. (2003) lacked it – instead various independent vowel assimilations between the first and the second syllables of words happened in Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic. Importantly, it tries hard to distinguish loans between Turkic and Mongolic and between Mongolic and Tungusic from cognates, and it suggests words that occur in Turkic and Tungusic but not Mongolic (Starostin et al. 2003:20; all other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book).
Starostin's ''et aliorum'' "sincere
{Link without Title} hope that this publication will bring an end to this discussion" (Starostin et al. 2003:7) has not been fulfilled, however. The debate continues (e. g. Georg 2004, Vovin 2005Vovin, Alexander. (2005). "The End of the Altaic Controversy". ''Central Asiatic Journal'' 49.1: 71–132., Starostin 2005, Georg 2005, Blažek 2006).
It has been suggested that the Japonic languages could be Altaic but have an Austronesian or generally
Austric Substratum . This would (geographically) fit suggestions (e. g. Bengtson) that Ainu is an Austric language.
inscription with the
Orkhon Script (c. 8th century).
Kyzyl ,
Russia ]]
Altaic languages in their diversity show a great depth, probably going back deep into the Mesolithic or even Upper Paleolithic period in Central Asia, following the disappearance of the
Mansiyskoe Lake , or, as it is still named, the West Siberian lake, that took practically the whole territory of the west Siberian flatland up to foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau and Altai. With the late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, into this area mesolithic groups moved northwards from the Hissar (6-4,000 BCE) and the
Keltiminar (5,500-3,500 BCE) who introduced the
Bow And Arrow , and the hunting
Dog , within what
Kent Flannery has called the "
Broad Spectrum Revolution ". The Keltiminar culture practised a mobile hunting, gathering, fishing, and over time, an introduced stockbreeding seasonal-round subsistence system while inhabiting the semi-desert, desert, and deltaic areas of the Kara and Kyzyl Kum deserts, and the lower Amu Darya and Zeravshan rivers. Whitney Coolidge, Jennifer "Southern Turkmenistan in the Neolithic: A Petrographic case study" (Oxbow Books)
The spread of the
Karasuk Culture , and the appearance of northern Mongol
Dinlin elements has been equated with the spread of what has been called the later "micro-Altaic" group. Their anthropological type is of a basic Europoid group with admixture of Mongoloids. Karasuk People lived in permanent settlements, in frame type houses. The economy was complex, they bred large horned livestock, horses and sheep. In Karasuk period they developed high level of bronze metallurgy. Characteristic for Karasuk Culture are extensive cemeteries, tombs are fenced with stone slabs laid on crest. Karasuk Culture is result of migration of eastern part of Dinlins, and had an influence as far as the Ordos region of China and across into Manchuria and northern Korea. The split between Turkic and Mongolian languages, it is suggested, was the last division within the Proto-Altaic group, and it has been suggested that this occurred just prior to the
Xiongnu period of Central Asian history.
Based on the proposed correspondences listed below, the following
Phoneme inventory has been reconstructed for the
Proto (-Macro)-Altaic language (taken from Blažek's
summary of the newest Altaic etymological dictionary [Starostin et al. 2003 and transcribed into
IPA ):
¹ This phoneme only occurred at the beginnings of words.
&
2 These phonemes only occurred in the interior of words.
It is not clear whether /æ/, /ø/, /y/ were
Monophthong s as shown here (presumably ) or
Diphthong s (); the evidence is equivocal. In any case, however, they only occurred in the first syllable of any word.
Every vowel occurred in long and short versions which were different
Phoneme s in the first syllable.
As reconstructed by Starostin et al. (2003), Proto-Altaic was a
Pitch Accent or
Tone language; at least the first, and probably every, syllable could have high or low pitch.
If a Proto(-Macro)-Altaic language really existed, it should be possible to reconstruct regular sound correspondences between that
Protolanguage and its descendants; such correspondences would make it possible to distinguish
Cognate s from
Loanword s (in many cases). Such attempts have repeatedly been made. The latest and (so far) most successful version is reproduced here, taken from Blažek's (2006) summary of the newest Altaic etymological dictionary (Starostin et al. 2003) and transcribed into
IPA .
When a Proto-Altaic
Phoneme developed differently depending on its position in a word (beginning, interior, or end), the special case (or all cases) is marked with a hyphen; for example, Proto-Altaic disappears (marked "0") or becomes /j/ at the beginning of a Turkic word and becomes /p/ elsewhere in a Turkic word.
Only single consonants are considered here. In the middle of words, clusters of two consonants were allowed in Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by Starostin et al. (2003); the correspondence table of these clusters spans almost 7 pages in their book (83–89), and most clusters are only found in one or a few of the reconstructed roots.
- ¹ The Khalaj Language has /h/ instead. (It also retains a number of other archaisms.) However, it has also added /h/ in front of words for which no initial consonant (except in some cases /ŋ/, as expected) can be reconstructed for Proto-Altaic; therefore, and because it would make them dependent on whether Khalaj happens to have preserved any given root, Starostin et al. (2003:26–28) have not used Khalaj to decide whether to reconstruct an initial in any given word and have not reconstructed a /h/ for Proto-Turkic even though it was probably there.
- &2 The Monguor Language has /f/ here instead (Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1988); it is therefore possible that Proto-Mongolian also had /f/ which then became /h/ (and then usually disappeared) in all descendants except Monguor. Tabgač and Kitan , two extinct Mongolic languages not considered by Starostin et al. (2003), even preserve /p/ in these places (Blažek 2006).
- ³ This happened when the next consonant in the word was , , or .
- 4 In front of /i/.
- 5 When the next consonant in the word was /h/.
- 6 When followed by /æ/, /ø/, /y/.
- 7 When the next consonant in the word was /r/.
- 8 When the preceding consonant was , , , or , or when the next consonant was /g/.
- 9 When the following vowel was /a/, /ə/, or followed by /j/.
- 10 When followed by /i/ and then another vowel, or by /j/.
- 11 When preceded by a vowel preceded by /i/.
- 12 When followed by /a/.
- 13 When followed by /u/.
- 14 When followed by /a/, /o/, or /e/.
- 15 When followed by /i/ or /u/.
and was often counted among the arguments for the
Ural-Altaic Hypotheses .) Nevertheless, Starostin et al. (2003) reconstruct Proto-Altaic as lacking vowel harmony. Instead, according to them, vowel harmony originated in each daughter branch as assimilation of the vowel in the first syllable to the vowel in the second syllable (which was usually modified or lost later). "The situation therefore is very close, e.g., to
Germanic [see
Germanic Umlaut ] or to the
Nakh Languages in the Eastern Caucasus, where the quality of non-initial vowels can now only be recovered on the basis of umlaut processes in the first syllable." (Starostin et al. 2003:91) The table below is taken from Starostin et al. (2003):
- ¹ When preceded by a bilabial consonant.
- &2 When followed by a trill, /l/, or .
- ³ When preceded or followed by a bilabial consonant.
- 4 When preceded by a fricative ().
Length and pitch in the first syllable evolved as follows according to Starostin et al. (2003), with the caveat that it is not clear which pitch was high and which was low in Proto-Altaic (Starostin et al. 2003:135). For simplicity of input and display every syllable is symbolized as "a" here:
- ¹ "Proto-Mongolian has lost all traces of the original prosody except for voicing ---p > ---b in syllables with original high pitch" (Starostin et al. 2003:135).
- &2 " several secondary metatonic processes happened [… in Korean, basically in the verb subsystem: all verbs have a strong tendency towards low pitch on the first syllable." (Starostin et al. 2003:135)
Because grammar is less easily borrowed than words, grammar is usually considered stronger evidence for language relationships than vocabulary. Starostin et al. (2003) have reconstructed the following correspondences between the case and number
Suffix es (or
Clitic s) of the (Macro-)Altaic languages (taken from Blažek, 2006):
/V/ symbolizes an uncertain vowel. Suffixes reconstructed for Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolic, Proto-Korean, or Proto-Japonic, but not attested in Old Turkic, Classical Mongolian, Middle Korean, or Old Japanese are marked with asterisks.
Personal Pronoun s are thought by many to be seldom borrowed between languages. Therefore the many correspondences between Altaic pronouns found by Starostin et al. (2003) could be rather strong evidence for the existence of Proto-Altaic. The table below is taken (with slight modifications) from Blažek (2006) and transcribed into IPA.
As above, forms not attested in Classical Mongolian or Middle Korean but reconstructed for their ancestors are marked with an asterisk, and /V/ represents an uncertain vowel.
In the
Indo-European Family , the
Numerals are remarkably stable. Therefore shared numerals are often considered good evidence for language relationships. The Altaic numerals are less stable than the Indo-European ones, but nevertheless Starostin et al. (2003) reconstruct them as follows:
- ¹ Manchu /soni/ "single, odd".
- &2 Old Bulgarian /tvi-rem/ "second".
- ³ Kitan has (Blažek 2006).
- 4 is probably a contraction of -/ubu/-.
- 5 The /y/- of "3" "may also reflect the same root, although the suffixation is not clear." (Starostin et al. 2003:223)
- 6 Compare Silla /mir/ "3" (Blažek 2006).
- 7 Compare Goguryeo /mir/ "3" (Blažek 2006).
- 8 "third (or next after three = fourth)", "consisting of three objects"
- 9 "song with three out of four verses rhyming (first, second and fourth)"
- 10 Kitan has /dur/ (Blažek 2006).
- 11 Kitan has /tau/ (Blažek 2006).
- 12 "(the prefixed i- is somewhat unclear: it is also used as a separate word meaning ‘fifty’, but the historical root here is no doubt ''---tu-'')" (Starostin et al. 2003:223). – Blažek (2006) also considers Goguryeo --- (from ---/uti/) to be related.
- 13 Kitan has /nir/ (Blažek 2006).
- 14 Middle Korean has "6", which may fit here, but the required loss of initial "is not quite regular" (Starostin et al. 2003:224).
- 15 The Mongolian forms "may suggest an original proto-form" or /ladi/ "with Dissimilation or Metathesis in" Proto-Mongolic (Starostin et al. 2003:224). – Kitan has /dol/ .
- 16 "Problematic" (Starostin et al. 2003:224).
- 17 Compare Goguryeo /tok/ "10" (Blažek 2006).
- 18 Manchu "a very big number".
- 19 Orok "a bundle of 10 squirrels", Nanai "collection, gathering".
- 20 "Hundred" in names of hundreds.
- 21 Starostin et al. (2003) suspect this to be a reduplication: "20 + 20".
- 22 /kata-ti/ would be expected; Starostin et al. (2003) think that this irregular change from /k/ to /p/ is due to influence from "2" /puta-tu/.
- 23 From .
- 24 Also see Tumen .
The following table is a brief selection of further proposed
Cognate s in basic vocabulary across the Altaic family (from Starostin et al.
{Link without Title} ).
- 1 Contains the Proto-Altaic dual suffix : "both breasts" – "chest" – "heart".
- 2 Contains the Proto-Altaic singulative suffix -/nV/: "one breast".
- 3 Compare Baekje ---/turak/ "stone" (Blažek 2006).
- 4 This is disputed by Georg (2004), who states: "The traditional Tungusological reconstruction ''---yāsa'' = cannot be replaced by the nasal-initial one espoused here, needed for the comparison."Georg, S. (2004). of Starostin et al. 2003 . ''Diachronica'' 21(2):445–450.
- Blažek, V.: "Current Progress in Altaic Etymology" , ''Linguistica Online'' 30 January 2006 (pdf)
- Doerfer, G.: ''Grundwort und Sprachmischung: Eine Untersuchung an Hand von Körperteilbezeichnungen (Münchener Ostasiatische Studien 47)'', Franz-Steiner-Verlag, 1988
- Miller, R.A.: ''Languages and history. Japanese, Korean and Altaic'', Inst. for Comparative Research in Human C, 1996, 974-8299-69-4 .
- Georg, S.: "Reply Starostin 2005 ", ''Diachronica'' 22(2):455–457, 2005.
- Kortlandt, F.: "The origin of the Japanese and Korean accent systems" , ''Acta Linguistica Hafniensia'' 26 (1993): 57–65 (pdf)
- Ruhlen, M. : ''A Guide to the World's Languages'', Stanford University Press (1987).
- Starostin, S.A. , Dybo, A., Mudrak, O.: ''Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages'', Brill Academic Publishers, June 2003, 90-04-13153-1 .
- Starostin, S.A.: "Response to Stefan Georg's review of the ''Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages''", ''Diachronica'' 22(2):451–454, 2005.
- LINGUIST Mailing List, 18 Aug 1994, Reinhard F. Hahn
- Sinor, D. (1990). ''Essays in comparative Altaic linguistics''. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. ISBN 0933070268
- Poppe, N. N. (1965). ''Introduction to Altaic linguistics''. Ural-altaische Bibliothek, 14. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.
