Initially proposed as a majorlanguage family, the Altaic grouping is now widely rejected as obsolete, with its similarities attributed to areal convergence typical ofsprachbund found across unrelated language families worldwide
TheAltaic (/ælˈteɪ.ɪk/ⓘ) languages are asprachbund and rejected proposed language family comprising theTurkic,Mongolic andTungusic language families, with some linguists having included theKoreanic andJaponic families.[2]: 73 The proposed Altaic language family is no longer considered valid, as linguistic similarities among Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are better explained by areal convergence within a convergence zone rather than by a shared genetic lineage, a phenomenon observed cross-linguistically in diverse language families worldwide.[3]
These languages shareagglutinative morphology,head-final word order and some vocabulary. The once-popular theory attributing these similarities to a common ancestry has long been rejected by mostcomparative linguists in favor oflanguage contact, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority.[2][4][5] Like theUralic language family, which is named after the Ural Mountains, the group is named after theAltai mountain range in the center of Asia.
The core grouping of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages is sometimes referred to as "Micro-Altaic" or "Core-Altaic," while an expanded grouping that includes Koreanic and Japonic is labeled "Macro-Altaic." A group of scholars divide the Macro-Altaic family into two related branches: Altaic family (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic) andJapano-Koreanic family (Japonic and Koreanic) which together are referred to as Transeurasian language family.[6]
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 supposedcognates 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.[7][8][9] The relationship between the Altaic languages is now generally accepted to be the result of asprachbund rather than common ancestry, with the languages showing influence from prolongedcontact.[10][11][12]
Altaic has maintained a limited degree of scholarly support, in contrast to some other earlymacrofamily 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 theInstitute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and remains influential as a substratum ofTuranism, where a hypothetical common linguistic ancestor has been used in part as a basis for a multiethnic nationalist movement.[13]
The earliest attested expressions in Proto-Turkic are recorded in various Chinese sources. Anna Dybo identifies inShizi (330 BC) and theBook of Han (AD 111) several dozen Proto-Turkic exotisms in Chinese Han transcriptions.[14] Lanhai Wei and Hui Li reconstruct the name of the Xiōngnú ruling house asPT *Alayundluğ/alajuntˈluɣ/ 'piebald horse clan.'[15]
The earliest known texts in a Turkic language are theOrkhon inscriptions, 720–735 AD.[16]: 3 They were deciphered in 1893 by the Danish linguistVilhelm Thomsen in a scholarly race with his rival, the German–Russian linguistWilhelm Radloff. However, Radloff was the first to publish the inscriptions.
The first Tungusic language to be attested isJurchen, the language of the ancestors of theManchus. A writing system for it was devised in 1119 AD and an inscription using this system is known from 1185 (seeList of Jurchen inscriptions).
Japanese is first attested in the form of names contained in a few short inscriptions inClassical Chinese from the 5th century AD, such as found on theInariyama Sword. The first substantial text in Japanese, however, is theKojiki, which dates from 712 AD. It is followed by theNihon shoki, completed in 720, and then by theMan'yōshū, which dates fromc. 771–785, but includes material that is from about 400 years earlier.[16]: 4
The most important text for the study of early Korean is theHyangga, a collection of 25 poems, of which some go back to theThree Kingdoms period (57 BC–668 AD), but are preserved in anorthography that only goes back to the 9th century AD.[17]: 60 Korean is copiously attested from the mid-15th century on in the phonetically preciseHangul system of writing.[17]: 61
A proposed grouping of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was published in 1730 byPhilip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who traveled in the easternRussian Empire while a prisoner of war after theGreat Northern War.[19]: page 125 However, he may not have intended to imply a closer relationship among those languages.[20] 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" byretronymy. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean, but fewer do for Japanese.[21] Some proposals also includedAinuic but this is not widely accepted even among Altaicists themselves.[2] A common ancestral Proto-Altaic language for the "Macro" family has been tentatively reconstructed bySergei Starostin and others.[22]
Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages,[23] to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean,Jeju, Japanese, and theRyukyuan languages, for a total of about 74 (depending on what is considered a language and what is considered adialect). These numbers do not include earlier states of languages, such asMiddle Mongol,Old Korean, orOld Japanese.
In 1844, the FinnishphilologistMatthias Castrén proposed a broader grouping which later came to be called theUral–Altaic family, which included Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus (=Tungusic) as an "Altaic" branch, and also theFinno-Ugric andSamoyedic languages as the "Uralic" branch (though Castrén himself used the terms "Tataric" and "Chudic").[19]: 126–127 The name "Altaic" referred to theAltai Mountains in East-Central Asia, which are approximately the center of the geographic range of the three main families. The name "Uralic" referred to theUral Mountains.
While the Ural-Altaic family hypothesis can still be found in some encyclopedias, atlases, and similar general references, since the 1960s it has been heavily criticized. Even linguists who accept the basic Altaic family, such asSergei Starostin, completely discard the inclusion of the "Uralic" branch.[22]: 8–9
The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone.[24] Indeed, "Ural-Altaic" may be preferable to "Altaic" in this sense. For example,Juha Janhunen states that "speaking of 'Altaic' instead of 'Ural-Altaic' is a misconception, for there are no areal or typological features that are specific to 'Altaic' without Uralic."[25]
In 1857, the Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested addingJapanese to the Ural–Altaic family.[26]: 34
In the 1920s,G.J. Ramstedt andE.D. Polivanov advocated the inclusion of Korean. Decades later, in his 1952 book, Ramstedt rejected the Ural–Altaic hypothesis but again included Korean in Altaic, an inclusion followed by most leading Altaicists (supporters of the theory) to date.[27] His book contained the first comprehensive attempt to identify regular correspondences among the sound systems within the Altaic language families.
In 1960, Nicholas Poppe published what was in effect a heavily revised version of Ramstedt's volume on phonology[28][29] that has since set the standard in Altaic studies. Poppe considered the issue of the relationship of Korean to Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic not settled.[19]: 148 In his view, there were three possibilities: (1) Korean did not belong with the other three genealogically, but had been influenced by an Altaic substratum; (2) Korean was related to the other three at the same level they were related to each other; (3) Korean had split off from the other three before they underwent a series of characteristic changes.
Roy Andrew Miller's 1971 bookJapanese and the Other Altaic Languages convinced most Altaicists that Japanese also belonged to Altaic.[30][16] Since then, the "Macro-Altaic" has been generally assumed to include Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese.
In 1990, Unger, emphasizing the need to establish language relationships rigorously "from the bottom up," advocated comparing Tungusic with the common ancestor of Korean and Japanese before seeking connections with Turkic or Mongolic.[31]
However, many linguists dispute the alleged affinities of Korean and Japanese to the other three groups. Some authors instead tried to connect Japanese to theAustronesian languages.[22]: 8–9
In 2017,Martine Robbeets proposed that Japanese (and possibly Korean) originated as ahybrid language. She proposed that theancestral home of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was somewhere in northwesternManchuria. A group of those proto-Altaic ("Transeurasian") speakers would have migrated south into the modernLiaoning province, where they would have been mostly assimilated by an agricultural community with anAustronesian-like language. The fusion of the two languages would have resulted in proto-Japanese and proto-Korean.[32][33]
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."[34]
In 1962, John C. Street proposed an alternative classification, with Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic in one grouping and Korean-Japanese-Ainu in another, joined in what he designated as the "North Asiatic" family.[35] The inclusion of Ainu was adopted also by James Patrie in 1982.[36][37]
The Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic and Korean-Japanese-Ainu groupings were also posited in 2000–2002 byJoseph Greenberg. However, he treated them as independent members of a larger family, which he termedEurasiatic.[38]
The inclusion of Ainu is not widely accepted by Altaicists.[2] In fact, no convincing genealogical relationship between Ainu and any other language family has been demonstrated, and it is generally regarded as alanguage isolate.[39]
Starting in the late 1950s, some linguists became increasingly critical of even the minimal Altaic family hypothesis, disputing the alleged evidence of genetic connection between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages.
Among the earlier critics wereGerard Clauson (1956),Gerhard Doerfer (1963), and Alexander Shcherbak. They claimed that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, andTungusic languages were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances.[40][41][42] In 1988, Doerfer again rejected all the genetic claims over these major groups.[43]
A major continuing supporter of the Altaic hypothesis has beenSergei Starostin, who published a comparative lexical analysis of the Altaic languages in 1991. He concluded that the analysis supported the Altaic grouping, although it was "older than most other language families in Eurasia, such as Indo-European or Finno-Ugric, and this is the reason why the modern Altaic languages preserve few common elements".[44]
In 1991 and again in 1996, Roy Miller defended the Altaic hypothesis and claimed that the criticisms of Clauson and Doerfer apply exclusively to the lexical correspondences, whereas the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities in verbal morphology.[45][17]
In 2003,Claus Schönig published a critical overview of the history of the Altaic hypothesis up to that time, siding with the earlier criticisms of Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak.[46]
Starostin's book was criticized by Stefan Georg in 2004 and 2005,[47][48] and by Alexander Vovin in 2005.[49]
Other defenses of the theory, in response to the criticisms of Georg and Vovin, were published by Starostin in 2005,[50] Blažek in 2006,[51] Robbeets in 2007,[52] and Dybo and G. Starostin in 2008.[53]
In 2010,Lars Johanson echoed Miller's 1996 rebuttal to the critics, and called for a muting of the polemic.[54]
List of supporters and critics of the Altaic hypothesis
The list below comprises linguists who have worked specifically on the Altaic problem since the publication of the first volume of Ramstedt'sEinführung in 1952. The dates given are those of works concerning Altaic. For supporters of the theory, the version of Altaic they favor is given at the end of the entry, if other than the prevailing one of Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean–Japanese.
In Robbeets and Johanson (2010), a proposal was made to replace the "Altaic" family with a broader "Transeurasian" superfamily. In this classification, "Altaic" remained as a subgroup consisting of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, while the "Transeurasian" superfamily also included an additional group called "Japano-Koreanic," which comprised the Japonic and Koreanic language families
Robbeets and Johanson gave as their reasoning for the new term:
to avoid confusion between the different uses of Altaic as to which group of languages is included;
to reduce the counterproductive polarization between "Pro-Altaists" and "Anti-Altaists";
to broaden the applicability of the term because the suffix-ic implies affinity while-an leaves room for an areal hypothesis; and
to eliminate the reference to the Altai mountains as a potential homeland.[55]
The term "Micro-Altaic" or "Core-Altaic" is widely used for the grouping of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, while Macro-Altaic refers to a broader grouping that also includes Koreanic and Japonic.[6]
The original arguments for grouping the "micro-Altaic" languages within a Uralo-Altaic family were based on such shared features asvowel harmony andagglutination.
According to Roy Miller, the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities inverbalmorphology.[17]
TheEtymological Dictionary by Starostin and others (2003) proposes a set of sound change laws that would explain the evolution from Proto-Altaic to the descendant languages. For example, although most of today's Altaic languages have vowel harmony, Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by them lacked it; instead, various vowel assimilations between the first and second syllables of words occurred in Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic. They also included a number of grammatical correspondences between the languages.[22]
Starostin claimed in 1991 that the members of the proposed Altaic group shared about 15–20% of apparent cognates within a 110-wordSwadesh-Yakhontov list; in particular, Turkic–Mongolic 20%, Turkic–Tungusic 18%, Turkic–Korean 17%, Mongolic–Tungusic 22%, Mongolic–Korean 16%, and Tungusic–Korean 21%.[44] The 2003Etymological Dictionary includes a list of 2,800 proposedcognate sets, as well as a few important changes to the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic. The authors tried hard to distinguish loans between Turkic and Mongolic and between Mongolic and Tungusic from cognates; and suggest words that occur in Turkic and Tungusic but not in Mongolic. All other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book. It lists 144 items of shared basic vocabulary, including words for such items as 'eye', 'ear', 'neck', 'bone', 'blood', 'water', 'stone', 'sun', and 'two'.[22]
Robbeets and Bouckaert (2018) useBayesian phylolinguistic methods to argue for the coherence of the "narrow" Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic) together with Japonic and Koreanic, which they refer to as theTranseurasian languages.[56] Their results include the following phylogenetic tree:[57]
Martine Robbeets et al. (2021) argues that early Transeurasian speakers were originally agriculturalists inNortheastern Asia, only becoming pastoralists later on.[58]
The analysis conducted by Kassian et al. (2021) on a 110-item word list, specifically developed for each of the languages —Proto-Turkic,Proto-Mongolic,Proto-Tungusic,Middle Korean andProto-Japonic — indicated partial support for the Altaic macrofamily, with Korean seemingly excluded. While acknowledging that prehistoric contacts are a plausible alternative explanation for the positive results, they deem such a scenario less likely for the lexical matches between Turkic and Japonic languages, which are better explained by genealogical relationship because of the substantial geographical distances involved.[59]
According to G. Clauson (1956), G. Doerfer (1963), and A. Shcherbak (1963), many of thetypological features of the supposed Altaic languages, particularlyagglutinative strongly suffixingmorphology andsubject–object–verb (SOV) word order,[60] often occur together in languages.[40][41][42]
Those critics also argued that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances. They noted that there was little vocabulary shared by Turkic and Tungusic languages, though more shared with Mongolic languages. They reasoned that, if all three families had a common ancestor, we should expect losses to happen at random, and not only at the geographical margins of the family; and that the observed pattern is consistent with borrowing.[40][41][42]
According to C. Schönig (2003), after accounting for areal effects, the shared lexicon that could have a common genetic origin was reduced to a small number of monosyllabic lexical roots, including the personal pronouns and a few other deictic and auxiliary items, whose sharing could be explained in other ways; not the kind of sharing expected in cases of genetic relationship.[46]
This sectionneeds expansion with: The Sprachbund hypothesis is the primary understanding of Altaic at present and needs to be much more prominent. You can help byadding to it.(July 2023)
Instead of a common genetic origin, Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak proposed (in 1956–1966) that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages form aSprachbund: a set of languages with similarities due toconvergence through intensive borrowing and long contact, rather than common origin.[40][41][42]
Asya Pereltsvaig further observed in 2011 that, in general,genetically related languages and families tend to diverge over time: the earlier forms are more similar than modern forms. However, she claims that an analysis of the earliest written records of Mongolic and Turkic languages shows the opposite, suggesting that they do not share a common traceable ancestor, but rather have become more similar through language contact and areal effects.[9][61]
This map shows the most likely location of the Urheimats of the proposed Altaic languages.[a]
The prehistory of the peoples speaking the "Altaic" languages is largely unknown. Whereas for certain other language families, such as the speakers ofIndo-European,Uralic, andAustronesian, it is possible to frame substantial hypotheses, in the case of the proposed Altaic family much remains to be done.[68]
Hypothesized homeland according to Blench (2009)[71]
Chaubey and van Driem propose that the dispersal of ancient Altaic language communities is reflected by the earlyHolocene dissemination ofhaplogroup C2 (M217): "If the paternal lineage C2 (M217) is correlated with Altaic linguistic affinity, as appears to be the case for Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic, then Japanese is noFather Tongue, and neither is Korean. ThisY-chromosomal haplogroup accounts for 11% of Korean paternal lineages, and the frequency of the lineage is even more reduced in Japan. Yet this molecular marker may still be a tracer for the introduction of Altaic language to the archipelago, where the paternal lineage has persisted, albeit in a frequency of just 6%."[72]
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.[73] However Janhunen is sceptical about an affiliation of Japanese to Altaic,[74] whileAndrás 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.[75]: 77 S. Robert 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".[76]
Supporters of the Altaic hypothesis formerly set the date of the Proto-Altaic language at around 4000 BC, but today at around 5000 BC[22] or 6000 BC.[77] This would make Altaic a language family older thanIndo-European (around 3000 to 4000 BC according to mainstream hypotheses) but considerably younger thanAfroasiatic (c. 10,000 BC[78]: 33 or 11,000 to 16,000 BC[79]: 35–36 according to different sources).
^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.ISBN9781315625096.
^Campbell, Lyle (2007).Glossary of Historical Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. p. 7.ISBN978-0-7486-3019-6.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.
^Starostin, George (2016)."Altaic Languages".Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.35.ISBN9780199384655.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.
^abRobbeets, Martine, ed. (30 September 2016).Transeurasian Linguistics (1st ed.). Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-82560-3.
^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."
^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."
^abAsya 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"
^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."
^Anna Dybo (2012)Early contacts of Turks and problems of Proto-Turkic reconstruction.
^Lanhai Wei and Hui Li (2018)About the names of Chanyu family and branch tribes of Xiongnu.
^abcRoy Andrew Miller (1971):Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages. University of Chicago Press.ISBN0-226-52719-0.
^abcdRoy Andrew Miller (1996):Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic. Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.ISBN974-8299-69-4. Pages 98–99
^Robeets, Martine (2020).The Classification of Transeurasian languages. Oxford University Press. p. 31.
^abcNicholas Poppe (1965):Introduction to Altaic Linguistics. Volume 14 ofUral-altaische Bibliothek. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
^Alexis Manaster Ramer andPaul 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.
^Roy Andrew Miller (1986):Nihongo: In Defence of Japanese.ISBN0-485-11251-5.
^Gustaf John Ramstedt (1952):Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft ("Introduction to Altaic Linguistics"). Volume I,Lautlehre ("Phonology").
^Nicholas Poppe (1960):Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen. Teil I. Vergleichende Lautlehre, ('Comparative Grammar of the Altaic Languages, Part 1: Comparative Phonology'). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. (Only part to appear of a projected larger work.)
^Roy Andrew Miller (1991): "Genetic connections among the Altaic languages." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (editors),Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages, 1991, 293–327.ISBN0-8047-1897-0.
^Martine Irma Robbeets (2015):Diachrony of verb morphology – Japanese and the Transeurasian languages. Mouton de Gruyter.
^Yurayong, Szeto (August 2020)."Altaicization and De-Altaicization of Japonic and Koreanic".International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics.2:108–148.doi:10.1163/25898833-12340026.S2CID225358117.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).
^John C. Street (1962): "Review of N. Poppe,Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen, Teil I (1960)".Language, volume 38, pages 92–98.
^James Tyrone Patrie (1978):The genetic relationship of the Ainu language. PhD thesis, University of Hawaii.
^James Tyrone Patrie (1982):The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language. University of Hawaii Press.ISBN0-8248-0724-3
^Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002):Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, 2 volumes. Stanford University Press.
^Dougherty, Thomas (2018). "Ainu". InCampbell, Lyle (ed.).Language Isolates. Routledge Language Family Series. London: Routledge. pp. 100–116.
^abcdGerhard Doerfer (1963): "Bemerkungen zur Verwandtschaft der sog. altaische Sprachen" ('Remarks on the relationship of the so-called Altaic languages') In Gerhard Doerfer ed.:Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, Bd. I: Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, pages 51–105. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden
^Gerhard Doerfer (1988):Grundwort und Sprachmischung: Eine Untersuchung an Hand von Körperteilbezeichnungen. Franz Steiner. Wiesbaden:
^abSergei A. Starostin (1991):Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka ('The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language'). Nauka, Moscow.
^abcSchönig (2003): "Turko-Mongolic Relations." InThe Mongolic Languages, edited by Juha Janhunen, pages 403–419. Routledge.
^Stefan Georg (2004): "[Review ofEtymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (2003)]".Diachronica volume 21, issue 2, pages 445–450.doi:10.1075/dia.21.2.12geo
^Alexander Vovin (2005): "The end of the Altaic controversy" [review of Starostin et al. (2003)].Central Asiatic Journal volume 49, issue 1, pages 71–132.
^Lars Johanson (2010): "The high and low spirits of Transeurasian language studies" in Johanson and Robbeets, eds.Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance., pages 7–20. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Quote: "The dark age ofpro andcontra slogans, unfair polemics, and humiliations is not yet completely over and done with, but there seems to be some hope for a more constructive discussion."
^Martin Robbeets & Alexander Savelyev. "Introduction,"The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages (2020, Oxford University Press), page 1.
^Hawkins and Gilligan (1988): "The suffixing preference", inThe Final-Over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal, page 326. MIT Press.ISBN978-0262036696; According to the table, among the surveyed languages, 75% of OV languages are mainly suffixing, and more than 70% of mainly suffixing languages are OV.
^Savelyev, Alexander; Jeong, Choongwon (2020)."Early nomads of the Eastern Steppe and their tentative connections in the West".Evolutionary Human Sciences.2.doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.18.ISSN2513-843X.PMC7612788.PMID35663512.alternatively, the descendance of the Xiongnu from the Slab Grave culture population, who preceded them in eastern Mongolia, is debated (Lee and Linhu, 2011). Such a distribution of Xiongnu words may be an indication that both Turkic and Eastern Iranian-speaking groups were present among the Xiongnu in the earlier period of their history. Arguably, these Iranian-speaking groups were assimilated over time by the predominant Turkic-speaking part of the Xiongnu population.
^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.
Boller, Anton. 1857.Nachweis, daß das Japanische zum ural-altaischen Stamme gehört. Wien.
Clauson, Gerard. 1959. "The case for the Altaic theory examined."Akten des vierundzwanzigsten internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses, edited by H. Franke. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, in Komission bei Franz Steiner Verlag.
Clauson, Gerard. 1968. "A lexicostatistical appraisal of the Altaic theory."Central Asiatic Journal 13: 1–23.
Doerfer, Gerhard. 1973. "Lautgesetze und Zufall: Betrachtungen zum Omnicomparativismus."Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 10.
Doerfer, Gerhard. 1974. "Ist das Japanische mit den altaischen Sprachen verwandt?"Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 114.1.
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