Proto-Turkic language

The Proto-Turkic language is the proto-language of the family of Turkic languages that predates the separation of the Turkic peoples and separation into Oğuz and Oğur branches. The Oğur languages are characterized by sound correspondences such as Oğuric r versus Common Turkic z (Proto-Turkic *ŕ) and Oğuric l versus Common Turkic š (Proto-Turkic *ĺ). Oğuric is sometimes referred to as Lir-Turkic and Common Turkic as Shaz-Turkic. Proto-Turkic itself descended from Proto-Altaic. The glottochronological reconstruction based on analysis of isoglosses and Sinicisms points to the timing of the r/š split at around 56 BCE-48 CE, associated with "the historical situation that can be seen in the history of the Huns' division onto the Northern and Southern: the first separation and withdrawal of the Northern Huns to the west has occurred, as was stated above, in 56 BC,...the second split of the (Eastern) Huns into the northern and southern groups happened in 48 AD, from that time the Northern Huns gradually shifted to the Western Mongolia and later to the East Turkestan, to Dzungaria, and in 155 AD they migrated to the East Kazakhstan and Jeti-su, where they lived till the 5th c. AD"

The oldest records of a Turkic language, the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions of the 7th century Göktürk khaganate, already show characteristics of the Eastern branch of Turkic, and reconstruction of Proto-Turkic must rely on comparisons of Old Turkic with early sources of the Western branches, Oghuz and Kypchak, as well as the Oghur branch (Bulgar, Chuvash, Hunnic, Khazar, Turkic Avar). Since attestation of these non-Eastern languages is much more sparse, reconstruction of Proto-Turkic still rests fundamentally on East Old Turkic of the Göktürks.

Proto-Turkic exhibited vowel harmony, a feature sometimes also ascribed to Proto-Altaic, distinguishing vowel qualities e, i, o, u vs. ë, ï, ö, ü besides a, as well as two vowel quantities.

The consonant system had a two-way contrast of stop consonants (fortis vs. lenis), k, p, t vs. g, b, d, with verb-initial b- becoming h- still in Proto-Turkic. There was also an affricate consonant, č; a voiceless sibilants s; and sonorants m, n, ń, ŋ, r, ŕ, l, ĺ with a full series of nasal consonants.

The sounds denoted by ń, ĺ, ŕ refer to palatalized sounds and have been claimed to be direct inheritances from Proto-Altaic.

References

• Gyula Décsy, The Turkic Protolanguage: A Computational Reconstruction (1998).
  • Edward J. Vajda, review of Décsy (1998), Language (2000), 473-474.
• Gerard Clauson, Etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish, Oxford, Clarendon Press (1972).
• Vilhel Gronbech, Preliminary Studies in Turkic Historical Phonology (Uralic & Altaic), RoutledgeCurzon (1997), ISBN 0700709355.
• Andras Rona-Tas, 'The Reconstruction of Proto-Turkic and the Genetic Question', in L. Johanson, The Turkic Languages, Routledge Language Family Descriptions, Routledge (1998), ISBN 0415082005, pp. 67–80.