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Altaic
Geographic
distribution:		 East, North, Central, and West Asia and Eastern Europe
Genetic
classification:		 One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions:
Korean and its extinct relatives (controversial)
Japonic and its extinct relatives (controversial)
Ainu (occasionally included)
Distribution of the Altaic languages across Eurasia. The inclusion of Japanese and Korean, and to a lesser degree the existence of a single Altaic language family, is controversial.
Distribution of the Altaic languages across Eurasia. North Asia or Northern Asia is sometimes defined as a Subregion of Asia consisting only of the Asian portion of Russia. Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east and from southern Russia in the north to northern Pakistan in the south Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia (largely overlapping with the Middle East) is the southwestern portion of Asia. Eastern Europe is a general term that refers to the Geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the European continent. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Turkic languages constitute a Language family of some thirty languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus Tungus are spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages is a Language family that descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or The Ainu language (Ainu ain アイヌ イタク aynu itak; Japanese: ja アイヌ語 ainu-go) is spoken by the Ainu For the superstate in George Orwell 's novel see Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The inclusion of Japanese and Korean, and to a lesser degree the existence of a single Altaic language family, is controversial. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system

Altaic is a hypothetical language family that includes 66 languages[1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east and from southern Russia in the north to northern Pakistan in the south [2]

According to the most common version of the Altaic hypothesis, Altaic consists of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families. The Turkic languages constitute a Language family of some thirty languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus Tungus are spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria.

To these some linguists add Korean, while others add Japonic (consisting of Japanese and Ryukyuan). This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages is a Language family that descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subfamily of the Japonic Language family. A few linguists include Ainu in Altaic. The Ainu language (Ainu ain アイヌ イタク aynu itak; Japanese: ja アイヌ語 ainu-go) is spoken by the Ainu [3]

The core version of Altaic, consisting of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, is sometimes referred to as "Micro-Altaic" while the expanded version, typically including Korean or Korean and Japonic, is referred to as "Macro-Altaic".

The Macro-Altaic hypothesis is significantly more controversial.

The relationships among the languages proposed for Altaic are currently a matter of debate among historical linguists. Some scholars consider that the similarities among these languages indicate they are genetically related. In Linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between Languages that are members of the same Language family. Others maintain that they are not a language family (a group of languages descended from a common ancestor) but a Sprachbund (a group of languages that have become similar in some ways through massive borrowing as a result of prolonged language contact). List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family A Sprachbund (ˈʃpraːxbʊnt in German plural Sprachbünde) from the German word for “language union” also known as a linguistic area, convergence Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact

The view that these languages constitute a Sprachbund is by far the more widely accepted one at the present time.

Altaic is itself a major component of the still more controversial Eurasiatic and Nostratic macrofamilies. Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe Asia and North America The Nostratic languages constitute a proposed Language family that according to its proponents includes a high proportion of the language families of Europe In Linguistics, a macrofamily is a proposed Language family that unites two or more language families that are already recognized

Contents

History of the hypothesis

The Altai Mountains ('High Mountain' in Turkic) give their name to the proposed language family.
The Altai Mountains ('High Mountain' in Turkic[4]) give their name to the proposed language family. The Altai Mountains (Алтай Altay; Алтай 阿尔泰山脉 are a Mountain range in central Asia, where Russia,

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are each others' closest relatives was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, who travelled in Russia as a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War. The Turkic languages constitute a Language family of some thirty languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus Tungus are spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (1676 — 1747 was a Swedish officer and Geographer of German origin who made important contributions to the cartography The Great Northern War (1700-21 was fought between Russia and Sweden for supremacy in the Baltic Sea. However, as has been shown by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell (1997), Strahlenberg actually opposed the idea of a closer relationship between the languages which later became known as "Altaic". Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956 is a Polish-born American Linguist (PhD 1981 University of Chicago)

The term "Altaic", as the name for a language family, was introduced in 1844 by Matthias Castrén, a pioneering Finnish philologist who made major contributions to the study of the Uralic languages. Matthias Alexander Castrén ( December 2 1813 - May 7 1853) was a Finnish Ethnologist and Philologist. See Comparative linguistics for the narrower field of "comparative philology" The Uralic languages (jʊˈrælɨk constitute a language family of 39 Languages spoken by approximately 20 million people As originally formulated by Castrén, Altaic included not only Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus (=Tungusic) but also Finno-Ugric and Samoyed (Poppe 1965:126). Finno-Ugric (ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family comprising Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by perhaps 30000 speakers altogether Finno-Ugric and Samoyed are not included in later formulations of Altaic. They came to be grouped in a separate family, known as Uralic (though doubts long persisted about its validity). Castrén's Altaic is thus equivalent to what later came to be known as Ural-Altaic (ib. The Ural-Altaic languages constitute a hypothetical Language family uniting the Uralic and Altaic language families 127). More precisely, Ural-Altaic came to subgroup Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic as Uralic and Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic as Altaic, with Korean sometimes added to Altaic, and less often Japanese. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system The immediate classification of the Japanese language is clear it is a Japonic language along with the Ryukyuan languages.

For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, those few linguists who studied Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic regarded them as members of a common Ural-Altaic family, together with Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, based on such shared features as vowel harmony and agglutination. Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together 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. It has been characterized by Sergei Starostin as "an idea now completely discarded" (Starostin et al. Dr Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin ( Cyrillic: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2003:8).

In 1857, Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese to Altaic or more precisely to Ural-Altaic (Miller 1986:34). is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities For Korean, G.J. Ramstedt and E.D. Polivanov put forward additional etymologies in favor of its inclusion in the 1920s. Gustaf John Ramstedt born in Ekenäs October 22, 1873, died in Helsinki November 25 1950, was a Finland-Swedish Yevgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov ( Евге́ний Дми́триевич Полива́нов) (1891 - 1938 was a Soviet / Russian linguist,

A result of decades-long labor, Ramstedt's work Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft, 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics', was published in 1952-1957. It rejected grouping the Uralic languages in a common family with the Altaic ones and included Korean in Altaic. Ramstedt's work contained the first attempts to find regular correspondences in the sound systems and grammars of the Altaic language families.

Further contributions to Altaic studies, especially attempts to reconstruct the hypothetical Proto-Altaic language, were made in the 1950s and 1960s by linguists such as Nicholas Poppe, John C. Nicholas N Poppe (1897-1991 was an important Russian Linguist. Street, Karl Menges, Vera Cincius, Vladislav Illich-Svitych, and Roy Andrew Miller. Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych ( Russian: Владислав Маркович Иллич-Свитыч 1934-1966 was a founding father of comparative Nostratic Some of these attempts did not include Korean or Japanese, considered to be too different from Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, while others did (e. g. that of Miller).

The controversy over Altaic

There are two kinds of controversies about the Altaic languages: the first is whether the relationship is genetic or the similarities are the result of borrowing, while the second is which particular languages should be included under the rubric "Altaic".

A language family or a Sprachbund?

Following Ramstedt's work and the subsequent developments in the 1950s, in the 1960s the pendulum swung in the other direction. Gerard Clauson (1956), Gerhard Doerfer, Alexander Shcherbak, and András Róna-Tas 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 chance resemblances. Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson (1891–1974 was an English civil servant businessman and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkish language András Róna-Tas (December 30 1931-) is a Hungarian Historian and linguist. 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 responsible. Furthermore, they argued that many of the typological features of the supposedly Altaic languages, such as agglutinative morphology and SOV word order, usually occur together. Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997 An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually In sum, the idea was that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic form a Sprachbund – the result of convergence through intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers of languages that are not necessarily closely related. Language convergence is a type of contact -induced change whereby languages with many Bilingual speakers mutually borrow morphological and syntactic The proponents of this hypothesis are sometimes called "the Anti-Altaicists".

Doubt was also raised about the affinities of Korean and Japanese (defended by Roy Andrew 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 defenses of Altaic in the wide sense (e. g. Sergei Starostin 1991), advocacy of a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic but not Turkic or Mongolic ("Macro-Tungusic", J. Marshall Unger 1990), and wholesale rejections (e. Dr Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin ( Cyrillic: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин March 24, 1953 – September 30, James Marshall Unger, (born May 28 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a professor of Japanese at Ohio State University who specializes g. Doerfer 1988) being published. The latter was the generally most popular point of view among historical linguists in the west, but hardly in the ex-USSR. (For a review see e. g. Georg et al. [1999][3]. )

Starostin's (1991) lexicostatistical research[5] showed that the Altaic groups shared about 15-20% of potential cognates within a 110-word Swadesh-Yakhontov list (e. g. Turkic-Mongolic 20%, Turkic-Tungusic 18%, Turkic-Korean 17%, Mongolic-Tungusic 22%, Mongolic-Korean 16%, Tungusic-Korean 21%). Some of these probable cognates may look doubtful, but many of them seem quite stable and can hardly be the result of mutual borrowing. Altogether, Starostin concluded that the Altaic grouping was substantiated, though "older than most other language families in Eurasia, such as Indo-European or Finno-Ugric, and this the reason why the modern Altaic languages preserve few common elements".

A further step in the debate was the publication of An Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages by Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. 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. Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages lacked it – instead various vowel assimilations between the first and second syllables of words occurred 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 […] 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 2005, Starostin 2005, Georg 2005, Blažek 2006, A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).

The membership of Altaic

The focus of the inclusion controversy is whether Japanese and Korean (especially as part of a proposed Buyeo family) should be included. Buyeo or Fuyu dialects ( Buyeo or Puyŏ in Korean, Fúyú (扶餘 in Chinese) are a hypothetical Language The inclusion of Japanese and Korean in Altaic is not generally accepted by either Japanese linguists or Western linguists.

It has been suggested that the Japonic languages could be Altaic but have an Austronesian or generally Austric substratum. The Austric language superfamily is a large theoretical grouping of languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and the eastern Indian subcontinent In Contact linguistics, a substratum ( lat sub: under + stratum: layer → lower layer) is a Language This would (geographically) fit suggestions (e. g. Bengtson 2006[6]) that Ainu is an Austric language.

Joseph Greenberg (2000, 2002) proposed a family consisting of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic and a separate family consisting of Korean, Japanese, and Ainu. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28 1915 – May 7 2001 was a prominent and controversial linguist and Africanist anthropologist known for his work in both typology Many linguists view this proposal with skepticism because it is based on multilateral comparison, a highly controversial method of language classification. Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among

Urheimat

Old Turkic inscription in the Orkhon script, c. 8th century, among the oldest known texts in an Altaic language. Kyzyl, Russia.
Old Turkic inscription in the Orkhon script, c. Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested Turkic language, found in inscriptions by the The Old Turkic script (also Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script; Turkish: Orhun Yazıtları, 鄂爾渾文字 8th century, among the oldest known texts in an Altaic language. Kyzyl, Russia. Kyzyl ( Tuvan and Кызы́л is a city, and is the capital of the Tuva Republic, Russia. Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending

If the languages grouped as Altaic are genetically related, their high diversity would point to a great temporal depth, probably going back deep into the Mesolithic or even Upper Paleolithic period in Central Asia. The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age was a period in the development of human technology in between the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic or New Stone Age The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe Africa

A possible entry for the ancestor of Altaic into Central Asia would have been after the disappearance of the Mansiyskoe lake, which occupied practically the whole territory of the western Siberian flatlands up to the foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau and Altai. The West Siberian Glacial Lake, also known as West Siberian Lake, or Mansiyskoe Lake (Мансийское озеро was a Periglacial lake formed when With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved northwards into this area from the Hissar (6000-4000 BCE) and Keltiminar (5500-3500 BCE) cultures, which introduced the bow and arrow and the hunting dog, parts of what Kent Flannery has called the "broad-spectrum revolution". A bow is a Weapon that projects arrows powered by the elasticity of the bow The dog ( Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated Subspecies of the gray wolf, a Mammal of the Canidae family of the order Kent Vaughn Flannery (born 1934 is an North American Archaeologist who has conducted and published extensive research on the Pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations 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. [7]

Some seek the origin of Micro-Altaic in the spread of the Karasuk culture and the appearance of northern Mongol Dinlin elements. The Karasuk culture describes a group of Bronze Age societies who ranged from the Aral Sea or the Volga River to the upper Yenisei catchment The Dingling (丁零 or Gaoche (高車 Chile (敕勒, Tiele (鐵勒 were an ancient Siberian people The Karasuk culture is the result of a migration of the eastern part of the Dinlins. Its influence extended as far as the Ordos region of China and across into Manchuria and northern Korea.

The Karasuk people lived in permanent settlements in frame-type houses. The economy was complex. They bred large-horned livestock, horses, and sheep. They developed a high level of bronze metallurgy. Characteristic of the Karasuk culture are extensive cemeteries. Tombs are fenced with stone slabs laid on crest.

Others, however, equate the Karasuk culture with the origin of the Karasuk languages, a recently proposed language family that includes the Yeniseian languages and Burushaski but not any of the suggested members of Altaic. Karasuk is a Language family proposed by George van Driem of the University of Leiden that links the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia with The Yeniseian Language family (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak; occasionally spelt with - ss - is spoken in central Siberia Burushaski (بروشسکی - burū́šaskī is a Language isolate not known to be related to any other language of the world Associating languages with archeological discoveries in the absence of written evidence is always a delicate matter. This hypothesis was dealt a major blow when the Yeniseian languages were firmly linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America in a family now called Dené-Yeniseian. Dené-Yeniseian is a proposed relationship between the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia and the Na-Dené languages of northwestern North America [8]

The postulated split between the Turkic and Mongolian languages would have been the last division within the Proto-Altaic group. It has been suggested that this occurred just prior to the Xiongnu period of Central Asian history. The Xiongnu ( Turkish: Doğu Hun were a confederation of nomadic tribes from Central Asia with a ruling class of unknown origin and other subjugated tribes

Reconstructed phonology

Based on the proposed correspondences listed below, the following phoneme inventory has been reconstructed for the Proto(-Macro)-Altaic language (taken from Blažek's [2006] summary of the newest Altaic etymological dictionary [Starostin et al. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU A proto-language is a Language which was the common ancestor of related languages that form a Language family. 2003] and transcribed into the IPA):

Consonants

Bilabial Alveolar or dental Alveolopalatal Postalveolar  Palatal    Velar  
Plosives aspirated /pʰ/ /tʰ/ /kʰ/
voiceless /p/ /t/ /k/
voiced /b/ /d/ /g/
Affricates aspirated /tʃʰ/
voiceless /tʃ/
voiced /dʒ/
Fricatives voiceless /s/ /ʃ/
voiced /z/¹
Nasals /m/ /n/ /nʲ/ /ŋ/
Trills /r/² /rʲ/
Approximants /l/ /lʲ/ /j/²

¹ This phoneme only occurred at the beginnings of words. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets In Phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) Consonants are palatalized postalveolar Fricatives articulated with Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the In Phonetics, a trill is a Consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the Place of articulation. Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants

² These phonemes only occurred in the interior of words.

Vowels

Front Back
unrounded rounded
Close /i/   /y/   /u/
Mid /e/ /ø/ /o/
Near-open /æ/
Open /a/

It is not clear whether /æ/, /ø/, /y/ were monophthongs as shown here (presumably [æ œ~ø ʏ~y]) or diphthongs ([i̯a~i̯ɑ i̯ɔ~i̯o i̯ʊ~i̯u]); the evidence is equivocal. A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as In Phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the Lips during the articulation of a Vowel. In Phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the Lips during the articulation of a Vowel. A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an A near-open vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as A monophthong ( Greek μονόφθογγος "monophthongos" = single note) is a "pure" Vowel sound one whose articulation at In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with In any case, however, they only occurred in the first (and sometimes only) syllable of any word.

Every vowel occurred in long and short versions which were different phonemes in the first syllable. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Starostin et al. (2003) treat length together with pitch as a prosodic feature.

Prosody

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. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words

Sound correspondences

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 cognates from loanwords (in many cases). A proto-language is a Language which was the common ancestor of related languages that form a Language family. Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation 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 the 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 /pʰ/ disappears (marked "0") or becomes /j/ at the beginning of a Turkic word and becomes /p/ elsewhere in a Turkic word.

Consonants

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.

Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean Proto-Japonic
/pʰ/ 0-¹, /j/-, /p/ /h/-², /j/-, -/b/-, -/h/-², -/b/ /p/ /p/ /p/
/tʰ/ /t/-, /d/-³, /t/ /t/, /tʃ/4, -/d/ /t/ /t/ /t/
/kʰ/ /k/ /k/-, -/k/-, -/g/-5, -/g/ /x/-, /k/, /x/ /k/, /h/ /k/
/p/ /b/ /b/-6, /h/-², /b/ /p/-, /b/ /p/ /p/
/t/ /d/-, /t/ /t/, /tʃ/4 /d/-, /dʒ/-7, /t/ /t/, -/r/- /t/-, /d/-, /t/
/k/ /k/-, /k/, /g/8 /k/-, /g/ /k/-, /g/-, /g/ /k/-, -/h/-, -0-, -/k/ /k/
/b/ /b/ /b/-, -/h/-, -/b/-9, -/b/ /b/ /p/, -/b/- /p/-, /w/, /b/10, /p/11
/d/ /j/-, /d/ /d/, /dʒ/4 /d/ /t/, -/r/- /d/-, /t/-, /t/, /j/
/g/ /g/ /g/-, -/h/-, -/g/-5, -/g/ /g/ /k/, -/h/-, -0- /k/-, /k/, 012
/tʃʰ/ /tʃ/ /tʃ/ /tʃ/ /tʃ/ /t/
/tʃ/ /d/-, /tʃ/ /d/-, /dʒ/-4, /tʃ/ /s/-, -/dʒ/-, -/s/- /tʃ/ /t/-, -/s/-
/dʒ/ /j/ /dʒ/ /dʒ/ /tʃ/ /d/-, /j/
/s/ /s/ /s/ /s/ /s/-, /h/-, /s/ /s/
/ʃ/ /s/-, /tʃ/-13, /s/ /s/-, /tʃ/-13, /s/ /ʃ/ /s/ /s/
/z/ /j/ /s/ /s/ /s/ /s/
/m/ /b/-, -/m/- /m/ /m/ /m/ /m/
/n/ /j/-, -/n/- /n/ /n/ /n/ /n/
/nʲ/ /j/-, /nʲ/ /dʒ/-, /j/, /n/ /nʲ/ /n/-, /nʲ/14 /m/-, /n/, /m/
/ŋ/ 0-, /j/-, /ŋ/ 0-, /j/-, /g/-15, /n/-16, /ŋ/, /n/, /m/, /h/ /ŋ/ /n/-, /ŋ/, 0 0-, /n/-, /m/-7, /m/, /n/
/r/ /r/ /r/ /r/ /r/ /r/, /t/17
/rʲ/ /rʲ/ /r/ /r/ /r/ /r/, /t/
/l/ /j/-, /l/ /n/-, /l/-, /l/ /l/ /n/-, /r/ /n/-, /r/
/lʲ/ /j/-, /lʲ/ /d/-, /dʒ/-4, /l/ /l/ /n/-, /r/ /n/-, /s/
/j/ /j/ /j/, /h/ /j/ /j/, 0 /j/, 0

Vowels

Vowel harmony is pervasive in Altaic languages: most Turkic and Mongolic as well as some Tungusic languages have it, Korean is arguably in the process of losing its traces, and it is (controversially) hypothesized for Old Japanese. Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages (Vowel harmony is also typical of the neighboring Uralic languages and was often counted among the arguments for the Ural-Altaic hypotheses. The Uralic languages (jʊˈrælɨk constitute a language family of 39 Languages spoken by approximately 20 million people The Ural-Altaic languages constitute a hypothetical Language family uniting the Uralic and Altaic language families ) 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. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. In Linguistics, umlaut (from German um - "around"/"the other way" + Laut "sound" is a process whereby a See also Nakh peoples The Nakh languages are a small family of languages spoken mostly in Russia ( Chechnya and Ingushetia) and Georgia " (Starostin et al. 2003:91) The table below is taken from Starostin et al. (2003):

Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic Proto-Tungusic Middle Korean Proto-Japonic
first s. second s. first syllable
/a/ /a/ /a/, /a/¹, /ʌ/¹ /a/ /a/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/a/ /e/ /a/, /ɯ/ /a/, /i/ /a/ /a/, /e/ /ə/
/a/ /i/ /ɛ/, /a/ /a/, /e/ /a/ /a/, /e/, /i/ /i/
/a/ /o/ /o/, /ja/, /aj/ /a/, /i/, /e/ /a/ /ə/, /o/ /a/
/a/ /u/ /a/ /a/, /o/, /u/ /a/ /a/, /ə/, /o/, /u/ /u/
/e/ /a/ /a/, /ʌ/, /ɛ/ /a/, /e/ /e/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/e/ /e/ /ja/-, /ɛ/, /e/² /e/, /ja/ /e/ /a/, /e/, /i/, /ɨ/ /ə/
/e/ /i/ /ja/-, /ɛ/, /e/² /e/, /i/ /e/ /i/, /ɨ/, /a/, /e/ /i/
/e/ /o/ /ʌ/, /e/ /a/, /e/, /y/³, /ø/³ /e/ /ə/, /o/, /u/ /ə/, /a/
/e/ /u/ /ɛ/, /a/, /ʌ/ /e/, /a/, /o/³ /e/ /o/, /u/, /a/ /u/
/i/ /a/ /ɯ/, /i/ /i/ /i/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/i/ /e/ /ɛ/, /e/² /e/, /i/ /i/ /i/, /ɨ/ /i/
/i/ /i/ /i/ /i/, /e/¹ /i/ /i/ /i/
/i/ /o/ /ɯ/ /i/ /i/ /o/, /u/, /ɨ/ /i/, /ə/
/i/ /u/ /ɯ/, /i/ /i/ /i/ /i/, /ɨ/ /u/
/o/ /a/ /o/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/o/ /e/ /ø/, /o/ /ø/, /y/, /o/ /o/, /u/ /ɨ/, /o/, /u/ /ə/
/o/ /i/ /ø/, /o/ /ø/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /u/
/o/ /o/ /o/ /u/ /o/, /u/ /a/, /e/ /ə/
/o/ /u/ /o/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /ə/, /o/, /u/ /u/
/u/ /a/ /u/, /o/ /a/, /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/u/ /e/ /y/ /o/, /u/, /y/ /u/ /a/, /e/ /ua/, /a/¹
/u/ /i/ /y/, /u/ /y/, /ø/ /u/ /o/, /u/, /ɨ/ /u/
/u/ /o/ /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /ɨ/ /ə/
/u/ /u/ /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /u/
/æ/ /a/ /ia/, /ja/, /ɛ/ /a/ /ia/, /i/4 /ə/, /a/³ /a/
/æ/ /e/ /ia/, /ja/ /i/, /a/, /e/ /i/ /i/, /e/, /je/ /ə/
/æ/ /i/ /ia/, /ja/, /ɛ/ /i/, /e/ /ia/, /i/4 /ə/, /e/, /je/ /i/
/æ/ /o/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/¹ /e/ /o/, /u/ /ə/, /o/, /u/ /a/
/æ/ /u/ /e/, /a/, /ʌ/¹ /a/, /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /e/, /je/ /u/
/ø/ /a/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/¹ /a/, /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /ə/ /a/
/ø/ /e/ /e/, /a/, /ʌ/¹ /e/, /ø/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /je/ /ə/, /u/
/ø/ /i/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/¹ /i/, /e/, /ø/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /ə/ /i/
/ø/ /o/ /o/, /u/ /ø/, /y/, /o/, /u/ /i/ /i/, /e/, /je/ /ə/, /a/
/ø/ /u/ /u/, /o/ /e/, /i/, /u/ /ia/, /i/4 /ə/, /u/, /je/ /u/
/y/ /a/ /ɯ/ /o/, /u/, /i/ /o/, /u/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/y/ /e/ /y/, /ø/, /i/² /ø/, /y/, /o/, /u/ /y/, /u/¹ /a/, /e/, /ja/, /je/, /o/, /u/ /u/, /ə/
/y/ /i/ /y/, /ø/ /ø/, /y/, /o/, /u/ /i/, /u/¹ /ɨ/, /i/, /o/, /u/ /i/
/y/ /o/ /u/, /o/ /o/, /u/ /y/ /a/, /e/, /ja/, /je/, /o/, /u/ /u/, /ə/
/y/ /u/ /ɯ/ /i/, /o/, /u/, /y/, /ø/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /i/, /ɨ/ /u/

Prosody

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:

Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean Proto-Japonic
á a a¹ a ಠá
à a a a á à
áː aː a¹ a ಠá
àː a a aː á à

Morphological correspondences

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 suffixes (or clitics) of the (Macro-)Altaic languages (taken from Blažek, 2006):

Case
Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic (*), Old Turkic Proto-Mongolic (*), Classical Mongolian Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean (*), Middle Korean Proto-Japonic (*), Old Japanese
nominative: 0 0 0 0 0 0
accusative: /be/ /ba/, /be/ /wo/
partitive: /ga/ -/ʁ/, -/ɯʁ/, -/g/, -/ig/ *-/ʁ/ (accusative) /ga/ /ga/ (possessive)
genitive: -/nʲV/ -/ŋ/ *-/n/ -/ŋi/ -/nʲ/ /no/
dative-locative: /du/, /da/ -/ta/, -/da/, -/te/, -/de/ (locative-ablative) -/da/ (dative-locative), -/du/ (attributive) /du/ (dative), -/daː/- (locative) -/tu/ (attributive-locative)
dative-instrumental: -/nV/ -/n/, -/ɯn/, -/in/ (instrumental) /ni/ (dative-locative)
dative-directive: -/kʰV/ -/qa/, -/ke/ (dative) /kiː/ (directive)
comitative-locative: -/lV/ -/li/, -/lɯʁ/ /laː/ (locative), -/liː/ (prolative), -/luʁa/ (comitative) -/ro/ (instrumental-lative)
comitative-equative: -/tʃʰa/ -/tʃa/, -/tʃe/ (equative) /tʃa/ (ablative), /tʃa/, /tʃaʁa/ (terminative) /to/ (comitative)
allative: -/gV/ -/ʁaru/, -/gery/ (directive) *-/ʁa/, -/a/ /giː/ (allative) -/ei/
directive: -/rV/ -/ʁaru/, -/gery/ -/ru/ -/ro/ (lative)
instrumental-ablative: -/dʒV/ *?-/ja/, -/a/ terminal dative /dʒi/ /ju/ (ablative)
singulative: -/nV/ *-/n/ -/n/
Number
dual: -/rʲV/ *-/rʲ/ (plural for paired objects) -/r/ (plural) *-/rə/ (plural for paired objects)
plural: -/tʰ/- *-/t/ -/d/ -/ta/, -/te/, -/tan/, -/ten/ *-/tɨr/ *-/tati/
plural: -/s/- *-/s/ -/sal/
plural: -/l/- *-/lar/ *-/nar/ -/l/, -/sal/ *-/ra/

/V/ symbolizes an uncertain vowel. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive Note partitive case has to be distinguished from partitive meaning which refers to the selection of a part or quantity out of a group or amount see Partitive. In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given Locative (also called the seventh case) is a Grammatical case which indicates a location The instrumental case (also called the eighth case) is a Grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the The comitative case, also known as the associative case, is a Grammatical case that denotes companionship and is used where English would use "in company with" The prolative case (also vialis case is a Declension of a Noun or Pronoun that has the basic meaning of "by way of" Lative is a case which indicates motion to a location It corresponds to the English prepositions "to" and "into" Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison or likening Allative case ( abbreviated ALL, from Latin allāt-, afferre "to bring to" is a type of the locative 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.

Selected cognates

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are seldom borrowed between languages. Personal pronouns are Pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common Nouns. 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.

Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic (*), Classical Mongolian Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean (*), Middle Korean Proto-Japonic
"I" (nominative) /bì/ /be/ */bi/ /bi/ /-i/[9] /bà/
"me" (oblique cases) /mine/- /men/ */min/- /min/-
"I" /ŋa/ */nad/-, -/m/- (oblique) /nà/
/ú/(吾), yi(矣)[10]		 /a/-
"thou" (nominative) /si/ and/or /tʰi/ /se/ */tʃi/ /si/ /-si//-sya/[11] /si/
"thee" (oblique cases) /sin/- and/or /tʰin/- /sen/  ?*/tʃin/-
"thou" /ná/ -/ŋ/ */nè/ /ná/
"we" (nominative) /bà/ /bi-rʲ/ */ba/ /bue/ /ú-rí/ /bà/
"us" (oblique cases) /myn/- */man/- /myn/-
"ye" (nominative) /sV/ and/or /tʰV/ /s/ */ta/ /suː/
"you" (oblique) /sVn/- /sun/-

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. An oblique case (casus generalis in Linguistics is a Noun case of Synthetic languages that is used generally when a Noun is the object The word thou ( in most dialects is a second person singular Pronoun in English. The word thou ( in most dialects is a second person singular Pronoun in English.

Numerals and related words

In the Indo-European family, the numerals are remarkably stable. This is a rather exceptional case; especially words for higher numbers are often borrowed wholesale. (The perhaps most famous cases are Japanese and Korean, which have two complete sets of numerals each – one native, one Chinese. ) Indeed, the Altaic numerals are less stable than the Indo-European ones, but nevertheless Starostin et al. (2003) reconstruct them as follows:

Proto-Altaic meaning Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean Proto-Japonic
1 /byri/ /bir/ /byri/ "all, each" /pìrɨ́/ "at first" /pitə/
single /nøŋe/ /jaŋɯrʲ/ /nige/ "1" /noŋ/~/non/ "be the first, begin" /nəmi/ "only"
front /emo/ /øm-gen/ "upper part of breast" /emy/- /emu/~/ume/ "1"
single, one of a pair /sǿna/ /sɯŋar/ "one of a pair" /son-du-/ "odd" ¹ /hə̀nàh/ "1" /sa/- "together, reciprocally"
2 /tybu/ ² /dʒiw-rin/~/dʒui-rin/ "2 (feminine)"³ /dʒube/ /tuː/, /tuː-rh/4
pair, couple /pʰø̀kʰe/ /eki/ "2", /ekirʲ/ "twins"; ?/(j)ɛgir-mi/ "20" /(h)ekire/ "twins"
different, other /gojV/ /gojar/ "2" /goj/~/gia/ /kía/
pair, half /putʃʰu/ /butʃ-uk/ /ptʃa-k/ /puta/- "2"
3 /ŋy/ /o-turʲ/ "30"5 /gu-rban/; /gu-tʃin/ "30" 6 /mi/-7
(footnote 8) /ìlù/ /øløŋ/9 /ila-n/ "3" /ùrù-pu/ "bissextile (year or month)"
object consisting of 3 parts /séjra/ /sere-ʁe/ "trident, pitchfork" /seːi(h)/ "3" /sárápi/ "rake, pitchfork"
4 /toːjV/ /døː-rt/ /dø-rben/; /dø-rtʃin/ "40"10 /dy-gin/ /də/-
5 /tʰu/ /ta-bun/; /ta-bin/ "50"11 /tu-nʲga/ /tà/- /i-tu-/12
6 /nʲu/ /dʒi-rgu-/; /dʒi-ran/ "60"13 /nʲu-ŋu-/ 14 /mu/-
7 /nadi/15 /jeti/ /dolu-ʁan/; /dala-n/ "70"15 /nada-n/ /nìr-(kúp)/ /nana/-
8 /dʒa/ /dʒa-pkun/ /jè-t-/ 16 /da/-
9 /kʰegVnV/ /xegyn/ /kəkənə/
10 /tʃøbe/ or /tøbe/ /dʒuba-n/ /təwə/17,/-so/"-0"/i-so/50
many, a big number /dʒøːrʲo/ /jyːrʲ/ "100" 18 /jér(h)/ "10" /jə̀rə̀/- "10,000"
/pʰVbV/ /oː-n/ "10" /ha-rban/ "10", /ha-na/ "all" 19 -/pə/, -/pua/ "-00"20
20 /kʰyra/ /gɯrk/ or /kɯrk/ "40"21 /kori-n/ /xori-n/ /pata-ti/22
100 /nʲàmò/  ?/jom/ "big number, all" /dʒaʁu-n/23 /nʲamaː/ /muàmuà/
1000 /tʃỳmi/ /dymen/ or /tymen/ "10,000"24 /tʃɨ̀mɨ̀n/ /ti/

Other cognates

The following table is a brief selection of further proposed cognates in basic vocabulary across the Altaic family (from Starostin et al. Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from [2003]).

Proto-Altaic meaning Proto-Altaic Proto-Turkic Proto-Mongolic Proto-Tungusic Proto-Korean Proto-Japonic
breast /kòkʰè/ /køky-rʲ/1 /køkø-n/2 /kuku-n/2 /kokajŋi/ "pith; medulla; core" /kəkə-rə/1 "heart"
stone /tǿːlʲì/ /diaːlʲ/ /tʃila-ʁu/ /dʒola/ /toːrh/3 /(d)ísì/
neck /móːjno/ /boːjn/ /moŋa-n/ /mje-k/ /nəmpV/
star /pʰǿlʲo/ /jul-durʲ/ /ho-dun/ /pjɨːr/ /pə́sí/
eye /næ̀ː/ /ni-dy/ /nʲia-sa/4 /nú-n/ /mà/-
that /tʰa/ /di/- or /ti/- /te-re/ /ta/ /tjé/

List of Altaicists and critics of Altaic

Note: This list is limited to linguists who have worked specifically on the Altaic problem since the publication of the first volume of Ramstedt's Einführung in 1952. For Altaicists, the version of Altaic they favor is given at the end of the entry. The dates given are those of works concerning Altaic.

Altaicists

Major critics of Altaic

Alternate hypotheses

References and notes

  1. ^ Altaic languages
  2. ^ Altaic Language Family Tree Ethnologue report for Altaic.
  3. ^ a b 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
  4. ^ TDK Dictionary: ALTAY
  5. ^ Starostin, Sergei Старостин, С. Dr Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin ( Cyrillic: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин March 24, 1953 – September 30, А. (1991). Алтайская проблема и проиcхождение японского языка [The Altaic problem and the origin of the Japanese language]. Наука [Science].  
  6. ^ John D. Bengtson (2006). "A Multilateral Look at Greater Austric pdf of similar article by the same author". Mother Tongue (Journal) 11: 219–258.  
  7. ^ Whitney Coolidge, Jennifer "Southern Turkmenistan in the Neolithic: A Petrographic case study" (Oxbow Books)
  8. ^ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Volume 264, 31 March 2008
  9. ^ 이기문, 국어사 개설, 탑출판사, 1991
  10. ^ 이기문, 국어사 개설, 탑출판사, 1991
  11. ^ 이기문, 국어사 개설, 탑출판사, 1991
  12. ^ Georg, S. (2004). "[Review of Starostin et al. 2003]". Diachronica 21: 445–450.  
  13. ^ Starostin, S. (2005). "Response to Stefan Georg's review of the Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages". Diachronica 22: 451–457. doi:10.1075/dia.22.2.09sta. A digital object identifier ( DOI) is a permanent identifier given to an Electronic document.  
  14. ^ Georg, S. (2005). "[reply to Starostin 2005]". Diachronica 22: 455–457.  
  15. ^ Georg, S. (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 N. F. 16: 143–182.  

Literature

See also

External links


The Ural-Altaic languages constitute a hypothetical Language family uniting the Uralic and Altaic language families The immediate classification of the Japanese language is clear it is a Japonic language along with the Ryukyuan languages. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system The Ainu language (Ainu ain アイヌ イタク aynu itak; Japanese: ja アイヌ語 ainu-go) is spoken by the Ainu The Nostratic languages constitute a proposed Language family that according to its proponents includes a high proportion of the language families of Europe
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