Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed
language family which includes some 60
languages spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around
Central Asia and northeast Asia. The relationships among these languages remain a matter of debate among historical linguists. Some scholars consider the obvious similarity between these languages as genetically inherited; others propose the idea of the
Sprachbund.
The proponents of Altaic traditionally considered it to include
Korean, the
Turkic languages, the
Mongolic languages, the
Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungus), and
Japanese.
Castrén (1862) put forward a similar view, but classified Turkic with what is now called
Uralic. In 1857
Anton Boller suggested adding Korean and Japanese; for Korean, G. J. Ramstedt and E. D. Polivanov put forward more etymologies in the 1920's. Korean has commonly been linked to
Japonic, and in
1971,
Roy Miller suggested relating it to both Korean and Altaic. These suggestions have been taken up and developed by various historical linguists such as
John Whitman,
Sergei Starostin, and
Alexander Vovin (who now rejects a genetic connection between Korean and Japanese).
There have been some attempts to extend the Altaic family borders by including
Ainu (e.g., Street 1962, Patrie 1982),
Tamil,
Nivkh, or
Hungarian, but these proposals have been rejected by the majority of scholars. The inclusion of Japanese and Korean and eventually Ainu in Altaic proper (Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages) is called
Macro-Altaic. A wider approach in research of possible genetic connections of Altaic or Macro-Altaic is their integration with some other Eurasiatic languages (especially Indo-European and Uralic) in the
Eurasiatic macrofamily proposed by
Joseph Greenberg and in
Nostratic.
There are two main schools of thought about the Altaic theory. One is that the proposed constituent language families (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic in the basic theory, with the addition of Korean and Japanese in extended versions) are genetically or "divergently" related by descent from a common ancestor, "Proto-Altaic." The other school rejects this theory (so it is often called the "Anti-Altaic" school) and argues that the member languages are related by convergence (mainly loan influence).
The Altaic theory is claimed by its opponents to be based mainly on typological similarities, such as
vowel harmony, lack of
grammatical gender, an
agglutinative typology, and shared vocabulary. In fact, its proponents have put together a large variety of grammatical, lexical, and syntactic regular correspondences between the sub-groups of Altaic (e.g., Ramstedt,
Poppe, Starostin). However, its opponents explain these as
loanwords, mutual influence, or
convergence, arguing that, although the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic families do have similarities, they are the result of intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers.
The Altaic theory is highly controversial. While some support it, others (e.g., Doerfer 1963) do not regard Altaic as a valid group and see it as three (or more) separate language families. Other linguists, such as
Bernard Comrie (1992, 2003), argue that Altaic may be part of a larger grouping, such as
Nostratic or
Eurasiatic. In contrast,
J. Marshall Unger (1990) believes that languages such as Korean and Japanese may be part of a "macro-Tungusic" family. Vovin rejected the claim for a Koreo-Japonic branch of Altaic on the basis that they have no
shared innovations.
The following is a very brief selection of proposed
cognates in basic vocabulary across the Altaic family, which may serve to give an idea of the sound changes involved.
| English | Proto-Altaic (?) | Turkish | Mongolian | Evenki | Japanese |
|---|
| three | *göl- | -- | gurav | -- | kokono- '9' (ie: '3 times 3') |
|---|
| four | *dör1- | dört | döröv | dygin | yo- |
|---|
| ten | *tuwon- | on | -- | uwan | tō- |
|---|
| I | *men | ben | -- | -- | wa (Old Japanese) |
|---|
| you | *sen | sen | -- | -- | -- |
|---|
| we | *bir2 | biz | -- | -- | -- |
|---|
| heart | *kökür2 | göğüs 'breast' | kökün (Lit.Mongolian) | -- | kokoro |
|---|
* Miller, R.A.: Languages and history. Japanese, Korean and Altaic, Inst. for Comparative Research in Human C, 1996, [ISBN 9748299694].
* Starostin, S.A., Dybo, A., Mudrak, O., Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages, Brill Academic Publishers, June 2003, [ISBN 9004131531].
*
Altay language*
Language families and languages*
Nostratic*
Starling Databases: Altaic etymology section*
Monumenta Altaica - Altaic Linguistics*
"The Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review (PDF) by Angela Marcantonio (
Rome), Pirjo Nummenaho (
Naples) and Michela Salvagni (Rome)
