Ural-Altaic languages
Encyclopedia : U : UR : URA : Ural-Altaic languages
The Ural-Altaic language family (also Uralo-Altaic) is a hypothetical grouping of the Uralic and Altaic language families into one field. The word Turanian has also been used to describe the Ural-Altaic field. The term is from the Persian word for places beyond the Oxus, Turān.
The Ural-Altaic grouping is highly speculative, as it has not been proven to the satisfaction of most linguists that there is any genetic relationship between the two language families, and even the existence of the Altaic group as one family is today questioned. This could be for lack of analytic opportunity, however. On the other hand, particularly the southern and central Uralic languages have been in extensive contact with Turkic languages, which introduces a risk of interpreting exchange arising from contact as a genetic relationship.
There are also political motivations that have been unscientifically used to support or oppose this hypothesis. The Hungarians would welcome a linguistic relationship to Turkic languages, as the people itself has much Turkic ancestry. The Swedes and Finland-Swedes, who were overrepresented in the upper class in 19th century Finland, had a motivation to present the Finns and the Sami as "Asian". Phrenology and other pseudosciences were used to support the theory. The Ural-Altaic theory was the consensus in the 19th century.
While DNA studies have shown despite the geographic isolation of the Finnish and Sami peoples that they are unambiguously related to other Europeans, the field of genetic science is far too often confused with the topic of language origins, often for the purpose of creating sensationalist rhetoric for both sides of the debate. It remains a fact that the direction of language spread and the direction of population spread do not necessarily correlate. Quite naturally, our mother tongue cannot be expressed in our genes but purely a matter of non-genetic, social factors. The existence of a Ural-Altaic stock must in the end be determined by linguistic means alone.
The Uralic languages family tree has three main groups, Finnic, Ugric, and Samoyedic languages, and a relationship to Yukaghir languages has been proposed.
- The Finnic languages are Komi, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt, Mari, Erzya, Moksha, Southern Sami, Ume Sami, Lule Sami, Pite Sami, Northern Sami, Inari Sami, Kildin Sami, Skolt Sami, Ter Sami, Estonian, Finnish (including Meänkieli or Tornedalian Finnish, Kven Finnish, and Ingrian Finnish), Ingrian (Izhorian), Karelian, Lude, Olonets Karelian, Livonian, Veps, Võro, and Votic.
- The Samoyedic languages are subdivided into northern and southern, including Enets, Nenets or Yurak, Nganasan or Tavgy/Tawgi, and Yurats (all Northern); Kamassian or Kamas and Selkup (both Southern).
- The two Yukaghir languages are called Northern Yukaghir and Southern Yukaghir.
- The Turkic languages include Chuvash, Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Urum, Qashqai, Khorasani, Salar, Gagauz, Khalaj, Tatar, Bashkir, Baraba, Urum, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Karaim, Krymchak, Kazakh, Karakalpak, Nogay, Uzbek, Uyghur, Lop, Kyrgyz, Altay,Yakut ,Tuvan, Khakas, Shor, Fuyü Gïrgïs, Chulym, Tofa, Dolgan, Western Yugur, and Northern Altay.
- The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (Halh) Mongolian, Urdus, Oirat (Kalmyk), Darkhat, Buryat, Khamnigan Mongol, Dagur or Daur, Monguor, Kangjia, Bonan, Dongxiang, Eastern Yugur (Shira Yugur), and Moghol.
- The Tungusic languages include Evenki, Even or Lamut, Oroqen, Negidal, Solon, Manegir, Nanai, Akani, Birar, Kile, Samagir, Orok, Ulch, Oroch, Udege, Manchu, and Sibe
- Korean is a language isolate.
Controversy
Most modern linguists argue that Uralic and Altaic are unrelated families (if the latter, as understood today, be a language family at all), ascribing any similarities to coincidence or mutual influence resulting in "convergence". They commonly suggest the two families may instead be related through a larger family, either Nostratic or Eurasiatic, within which Uralic and Altaic are no more closely related to each other than are this macrofamily's other members e.g. Uralic with Indo-European or Altaic with Indo-European.
Others point out strong similarities in the pronouns of Uralic and Altaic languages. Other observations are that both Uralic and Altaic languages follow the principle of vowel harmony, are agglutinative (stringing suffixes, prefixes or both onto a single root), employ SOV word order, and lack grammatical gender (see noun class). However, typological similarities such as these do not, on their own, constitute evidence of a genetic relationship, as they may be a result of regional influence or coincidence.
The vowel harmony argument is often used to justify the necessity of the Ural-Altaic family, but vowel harmony is found in other, unrelated language groups. Moreover, there is no evidence for labial vowels in non-initial syllables in Proto-Uralic, thus leaving the remaining /a/ and /i/ open for allophony controlled by the initial syllable, creating vowel harmony from scratch. This synthesis makes the genetic connection to Altaic unnecessary.
Evidence for the Indo-Uralic family is also compelling, including common vocabulary, which has not been demonstrated for Ural-Altaic.
See also
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.