LINGUIST List 5.905

Thu 18 Aug 1994

Disc: Altaic

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    Message 1: Altaic

     Date: Wed, 17 Aug 94 09:10:31 EDAltaic
    From: <amrzeus.cs.wayne.edu>
    Subject: Altaic


    Several people have written to me saying they would be interested in a discussion of Altaic on LINGUIST, so here goes.

    The Altaic hypothesis claims a genealogical relationship between Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages (and most versions of the hypothesis also include Korean and Japanese). Although the hypothesis remains controversial, a number of recent works have sought to give the impression that the controversy is long over and that the hypothesis stands refuted. This is simply untrue, and indeed clearly more people are doing more work than ever on Altaic. In addition, some of the specific statements about what is supposed to be wrong with Altaic in recent publications are also utterly incorrect, notably, the assertion that the Altaic hypothesis is based on typological similarities and is not supported by lexical comparisons. Now, one can dispute the validity of the lexical comparisons that have been proposed (by, e.g., Poppe or Starostin), but it is bizarre to deny that such comparisons have been proposed and are widely (albeit not universally) accepted. It should be added that many of the comparisons that have been made are accepted even by the critics of Altaic, but as borrowings, not cognates. This raises all kinds of interesting theoretical questions, since among such "borrowings" we find, for example, the verb 'to be'.

    Thus, I think we need to discuss two separate questions. One is what is the true state of the scholarship (both pro and con) on the Altaic question (as opposed to the nonsense that has been going around). Two, what is the state of the case for Altaic geenrally (and perhaps particularly for Japanese, since this is usually reckoned to be the most controversial part of the hypothesis).

    I think that it would be good to clear the air on the first topic (where I think that consensus should be easy to achieve) before tackling the second.

    If there is any progress to be made on the controversial questions of language classification (beyond the recent vitriol), I guess Altaic might well be a good candidate.

    Alexis Manaster Ramer