Altaic languages

Altaic is a proposed language family which includes some 60 languages spoken by about 167 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.

Controversy

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, Martin, 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.

See also

• Altay language
• Language families and languages
• Nostratic

External links

• Starling Databases: Altaic etymology section
• Monumenta Altaica - Altaic Linguistics