Altaic languages

Not to be confused with Altai languages.
"Altaic" redirects here. For other uses, see Altaic (disambiguation).

Altaic
(highly controversial[1])
Geographic
distribution		Northern and Central Asia
Linguistic classificationProposed as a major language family by some, but more often viewed as a sprachbund
Proto-languageProto-Altaic
Subdivisions
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5tut
GlottologNone
  Turkic languages
  Mongolic languages
  Tungusic languages
  Koreanic languages
(sometimes included)
  Japonic languages
(sometimes included)
  Ainu languages
(rarely included)

The Altaic (/ælˈteɪ.ɪk/) languages consist of the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic and Japonic families.[2]: 73  These languages share 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 linguists in favor of language contact, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority.[2][3][4] Like the Uralic language family, which is named after the Ural Mountains, the group is named after the 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".[5]

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.[2] Since the 1950s, most comparative linguists have rejected the proposal, after supposed cognates 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.[6][7][8] 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 contact.[9][10][11]

Altaic has maintained a limited degree of scholarly support, in contrast to some other early macrofamily proposals. Continued research on Altaic is still being undertaken by a core group of academic linguists, but their research has not found wider support. In particular it has support from the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and remains influential as a substratum of Turanism, where a hypothetical common linguistic ancestor has been used in part as a basis for a multiethnic nationalist movement.[12]

  1. ^ Georg, Stefan (2023). "Connections between Uralic and Other Language Families". In Daniel Abondolo; Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi (eds.). The Uralic Languages. London: Routledge. pp. 176–209. doi:10.4324/9781315625096-4. ISBN 9781315625096.
  2. ^ a b c Georg, Stefan; Michalove, Peter A.; Ramer, Alexis Manaster; Sidwell, Paul J. (1999). "Telling general linguists about Altaic". Journal of Linguistics. 35 (1): 65–98. doi:10.1017/S0022226798007312. S2CID 144613877.
  3. ^ Campbell, Lyle (2007). Glossary of Historical Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7486-3019-6. 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.
  4. ^ Starostin, George (2016). "Altaic Languages". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.35. ISBN 9780199384655. 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.
  5. ^ Robbeets, Martine, ed. (30 September 2016). Transeurasian Linguistics (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-82560-3.
  6. ^ 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."
  7. ^ 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."
  8. ^ 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"
  9. ^ Starostin, George (5 April 2016), "Altaic Languages", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.35, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5, retrieved 11 July 2023
  10. ^ 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."
  11. ^ De la Fuente, José Andrés Alonso (2016). "Review of Robbeets, Martine (2015): Diachrony of verb morphology. Japanese and the Transeurasian languages". Diachronica. 33 (4): 530–537. doi:10.1075/dia.33.4.04alo. 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.
  12. ^ Aytürk, İlker (2004). "Turkish Linguists against the West: The Origins of Linguistic Nationalism in Atatürk's Turkey". Middle Eastern Studies. 40 (6). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 1–25. doi:10.1080/0026320042000282856. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4289950. S2CID 144968896. Retrieved 11 July 2023.