Altaic languages: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Hypothetical language family of Eurasia}}

{{Distinguish|Altai languages}}

{{Redirect|Altaic}}

{{Undue weight|date=June 2023}}

| acceptance    = widely rejected<ref>{{cite book |last=Georg |first=Stefan |year=2023 |chapter=Connections between Uralic and Other Language Families |editor1=Daniel Abondolo |editor2=Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi |title=The Uralic Languages |location=London |publisher=Routledge |pages=176–209 |doi=10.4324/9781315625096-4|isbn=9781315625096 }}</ref>

| region        = [[North Asia|Northern]] and [[Central Asia]]

| family        = Initially proposed as a major [[language family]], the Altaic grouping is now widely rejected as obsolete, with its similarities attributed to areal convergence typical of [[sprachbund]] found across unrelated language families worldwide

| map          = Lenguas altaicas.png

{{Legend|#FFD700|[[Koreanic languages]]}} (sometimes included)

{{Legend|#8B008B|[[Japonic languages]]}} (sometimes included)

{{Legend|#8B0000|[[Ainu languages]]}} (rarely included)

These languages share [[agglutinative language|agglutinative]] morphology, [[head-final]] word order and some vocabulary. The once-popular theory attributing these similarities to a common ancestry has long been rejected by most [[Comparative linguistics|comparative linguists]] in favor of [[language contact]], although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority.<ref name="georg1999"/><ref>{{Cite book|last=Campbell|first=Lyle|title=Glossary of Historical Linguistics|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|year=2007|isbn=978-0-7486-3019-6|pages=7|quote=While 'Altaic' is repeated in encyclopedias and handbooks most specialists in these languages no longer believe that the three traditional supposed Altaic groups ... are related. In spite of this, Altaic does have a few dedicated followers.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Starostin|first=George|date=2016|title=Altaic Languages|url=https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-35|website=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics|doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.35|isbn=9780199384655|quote=Despite the validity of many of these objections, it remains unclear whether they are sufficient to completely discredit the hypothesis of a genetic connection between the various branches of 'Altaic,' which continues to be actively supported by a small, but stable scholarly minority.}}</ref> Like the [[Uralic languages|Uralic]] language family, which is named after the Ural Mountains, the group is named after the [[Altai Mountains|Altai mountain range]] in the center of Asia. The core grouping of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic is sometimes called "Micro-Altaic", with the expanded group including Koreanic and Japonic labelled as "Macro-Altaic" or "Transeurasian".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Transeurasian Linguistics |date=2016-09-30 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-82560-3 |editor-last=Robbeets |editor-first=Martine |edition=1st |language=English}}</ref>

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, and references to Altaic as a language family continue to percolate to modern sources through these older sources.<ref name=georg1999/> Since the 1950s, most comparative linguists have rejected the proposal, after supposed [[cognate]]s were found not to be valid, hypothesized sound shifts were not found, and Turkic and Mongolic languages were found to have been converging rather than diverging over the centuries.<ref>Lyle Campbell and Mauricio J. Mixco (2007): ''A Glossary of Historical Linguistics''; University of Utah Press. Page 7: "While 'Altaic' is repeated in encyclopedias and handbooks most specialists in these languages no longer believe that the three traditional supposed Altaic groups, Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic, are related."</ref><ref>Johanna Nichols (1992) ''Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time''. Chicago University Press. Page 4: "When cognates proved not to be valid, Altaic was abandoned and the received view now is that Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic are unrelated."</ref><ref name=perel2012>Asya Pereltsvaig (2012) ''Languages of the World, An Introduction''. Cambridge University Press. Pages 211–216: "[...T]his 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"</ref> The relationship between the Altaic languages is now generally accepted to be the result of a [[sprachbund]] rather than common ancestry, with the languages showing influence from prolonged [[Language contact|contact]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Starostin |first=George |title=Altaic Languages |date=2016-04-05 |url=https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-35 |encyclopedia=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics |access-date=2023-07-11 |language=en |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.35 |isbn=978-0-19-938465-5|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>R. M. W. Dixon (1997): ''The Rise and Fall of Languages''. Cambridge University Press. Page 32: "Careful examination indicates that the established families, Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic, form a linguistic area (called Altaic)...Sufficient criteria have not been given that would justify talking of a genetic relationship here."</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=De la Fuente |first=José Andrés Alonso |year=2016 |title=Review of Robbeets, Martine (2015): Diachrony of verb morphology. Japanese and the Transeurasian languages |url=https://www.academia.edu/30240029 |journal=Diachronica |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=530–537 |doi=10.1075/dia.33.4.04alo |quote=For now, shared material between Transeurasian [i.e. Altaic] languages is undoubtedly better explained as the result of language contact. But if researchers provide cogent evidence of genealogical relatedness, that will be the time to re-evaluate old positions. That time, however, has not yet come.}}</ref>  

==Earliest attestations<span class="anchor" id="Earliest attestations of the languages"></span>==

[[Proto-Turkic language|PT]] *[[Luandi|Alayundluğ]] /alajuntˈluγ/ 'piebald horse clan.'<ref>Lanhai Wei and Hui Li (2018) ''About the names of Chanyu family and branch tribes of Xiongnu.''</ref>

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]], ''[[Shajara-i Tarākima|Genealogy of the Turkmens]]''.<ref name=robeets31>{{cite book |last1=Robeets |first1=Martine |title=The Classification of Transeurasian languages |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=31}}</ref>

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]].<ref name=poppe65>Nicholas Poppe (1965): ''Introduction to Altaic Linguistics.'' Volume 14 of ''Ural-altaische Bibliothek''. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.</ref>{{rp|page 125}} However, he may not have intended to imply a closer relationship among those languages.<ref name=ramer>[[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.</ref> 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 [[retronym]]y. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean, but fewer do for Japanese.<ref name="China 2008">Roger Blench and Mallam Dendo (2008): "[https://web.archive.org/web/20190227035752/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7b96/c6177913c04c7972abe56fcd86a9b6294686.pdf 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.</ref> Some proposals also included [[Ainu languages|Ainuic]] but this is not widely accepted even among Altaicists themselves.<ref name="georg1999" /> A common ancestral Proto-Altaic language for the "Macro" family has been tentatively reconstructed by [[Sergei Starostin]] and others.<ref name="staro2003" />

{{see also |Ural-Altaic languages}}

In 2017, [[Martine Robbeets]] proposed that Japanese (and possibly Korean) originated as a [[creole language|hybrid language]]. She proposed that the [[urheimat|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 languages|Austronesian]]-like language. The fusion of the two languages would have resulted in proto-Japanese and proto-Korean.<ref name=robbe>Martine Irma Robbeets (2017): "[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320915864_Austronesian_influence_and_Transeurasian_ancestry_in_Japanese_A_case_of_farminglanguage_dispersal Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal]". ''Language Dynamics and Change'', volume 7, issue 2, pages 201–251, {{doi|10.1163/22105832-00702005}}</ref><ref name=robb2015>Martine Irma Robbeets (2015): ''Diachrony of verb morphology – Japanese and the Transeurasian languages''. Mouton de Gruyter.</ref>

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."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Yurayong, Szeto|date=August 2020|title=Altaicization and De-Altaicization of Japonic and Koreanic|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343576887|journal=International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics|volume=2 |pages=108–148 |doi=10.1163/25898833-12340026 |s2cid=225358117 |quote=Despite the conventional classification of Japonic and Koreanic languages as examples of the Altaic typology (Janhunen 2007, 2014, Tranter 2012a), these languages, both today and in the past, are still so different from the Core Altaic languages that we can even speak of an independent Japanese-Korean type of grammar (see also Vovin 2015a). Given also that there is neither a strong proof of common Proto-Altaic lexical items nor solid regular sound correspondences (Janhunen 1999: 10, 2010: 296, cf. Robbeets 2005) 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 (see also Janhunen 2010, Vovin 2015a). However, through later intense language contacts, Japanese and Koreanic converged by the phenomena of Altaicization and de-Altaicization during the first millennium BC and AD, respectively (see also Janhunen 2010: 290, Vovin 2010: 239–240).}}</ref>

*[[Georgiy Starostin|George Starostin]] (A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008).

In Robbeets and Johanson (2010), there was a proposal to replace the name "Altaic" with the name "Transeurasian". While "Altaic" has sometimes included Japonic, Koreanic, and other languages or families, but only on the consideration of particular authors, "Transeurasian" was specifically intended to always include Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic, and Koreanic. Robbeets and Johanson gave as their reasoning for the new term: 1) to avoid confusion between the different uses of Altaic as to which group of languages is included, 2) to reduce the counterproductive polarization between "Pro-Altaists" and "Anti-Altaists"; 3) to broaden the applicability of the term because the suffix ''-ic'' implies affinity while ''-an'' leaves room for an areal hypothesis; and 4) to eliminate the reference to the Altai mountains as a potential homeland.<ref>Martin Robbeets & Alexander Savelyev. "Introduction," ''The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages'' (2020, Oxford University Press), page 1.</ref>

In Robbeets and Savelyev, ed. (2020) there was a concerted effort to distinguish "Altaic" as a subgroup of "Transeurasian" consisting only of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, while retaining "Transeurasian" as "Altaic" plus Japonic and Koreanic.

[[Martine Robbeets]] et al. (2021) argues that early Transeurasian speakers were originally agriculturalists in [[Northeastern Asia]], only becoming pastoralists later on.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Robbeets |first1=Martine |last2=Bouckaert |first2=Remco |last3=Conte |first3=Matthew |last4=Savelyev |first4=Alexander |last5=Li |first5=Tao |last6=An |first6=Deog-Im |last7=Shinoda |first7=Ken-ichi |last8=Cui |first8=Yinqiu |last9=Kawashima |first9=Takamune |last10=Kim |first10=Geonyoung |last11=Uchiyama |first11=Junzo |last12=Dolińska |first12=Joanna |last13=Oskolskaya |first13=Sofia |last14=Yamano |first14=Ken-Yōjiro |last15=Seguchi |first15=Noriko |date=2021 |title=Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=599 |issue=7886 |pages=616–621 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-04108-8 |issn=1476-4687|doi-access=free |pmid=34759322 |pmc=8612925 }}</ref>

{{see|Sprachbund}}

{{see|Ural-Altaic}}

[[File:AltaicTree.png|thumb|362x362px|Detailed tree of the Altaic languages. ]]

[[Juha Janhunen]] hypothesized that 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.<ref name=johrob2010>Lars Johanson and Martine Irma Robbeets (2010): ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=9zcxQqmkgE0C Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance.]''. Introduction to the book, pages 1–5.</ref> However Janhunen is sceptical about an affiliation of Japanese to Altaic,<ref name=jahu1992>Juha Janhunen (1992): "Das Japanische in vergleichender Sicht". ''Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne'', volume 84, pages 145–161.</ref> 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.<ref name=tas1988>András Róna-Tas (1988).<!--Bibliographic data needed--></ref>{{rp|77}} 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".<ref>S. Robert Ramsey (2004): "Accent, Liquids, and the Search for a Common Origin for Korean and Japanese". ''Japanese Language and Literature'', volume 38, issue 2, page 340. American Association of Teachers of Japanese.</ref>

*Lee, Ki-Moon and S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. ''A History of the Korean Language.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

* 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/10.1515/9783110748789-008

*Hahn, Reinhard F. 1994. [https://linguistlist.org/issues/5/5-908/ ''LINGUIST List'' 5.908, 18 August 1994.]  

* {{Cite journal|last1=Kim|first1=Jangsuk|last2=Park|first2=Jinho|date=2020|title=Millet vs rice: an evaluation of the farming/language dispersal hypothesis in the Korean context|journal=Evolutionary Human Sciences|language=en|volume=2|article-number=e12 |doi=10.1017/ehs.2020.13|pmid=37588344 |pmc=10427441 |issn=2513-843X|doi-access=free}}

*{{cite journal|doi=10.2307/411687|jstor=411687|title=Lexical Evidence Relating Korean to Japanese|journal=Language|volume=42|issue=2|pages=185–251|year=1966|last1=Martin|first1=Samuel E.}}

*{{cite book|doi=10.7208/chicago/9780226580593.001.0001|title=Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time|year=1992|last1=Nichols|first1=Johanna|isbn=9780226580579}}

* {{Cite journal|last1=Yurayong|first1=Chingduang|last2=Szeto|first2=Pui Yiu|date=2020-08-05|title=Altaicization and De-Altaicization of Japonic and Koreanic|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/jeal/2/1/article-p108_5.xml|journal=International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics|language=en|volume=2|issue=1|pages=108–148|doi=10.1163/25898833-12340026|s2cid=225358117|issn=2589-8833|url-access=subscription}}

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