The Relations Among the Altai Languages

Abstract

The Turkish language takes place in the family of Ural-Altaic languages in the classification of the world languages. The Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages constitute the Altaic branch of this family. Some researchers consider the Koreanic and Japonic languages among the Altaic languages by extending the sphere largely.

The studies making on the Altaic languages aren’t considered very old when they are compared with the researches related to the Indian-European languages. The first effort for classification related to the Altaic languages has been made by the Swedish officer of German origin Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (1676-1747) in the XVIII century. This classification was both old and false, of course. Later, one of the Eastern Germanic scientists Wilhelm Schott (1802-1889) has tried to classify the Altaic languages for the morphological features in the real scientific form.

The follower of Wilhelm Schott, but died at a young age, the Finnish Matthias Alexander Castrén (1813-1852) has made the scientific research trips in the regions of Ural and Siberia and collected the material from the folklore language there that belonging to the Altaic languages. By based to these, he explained the issue by separating the languages belonging to the Ural-Altaic group with the languages not belonging to them from each other. According to some researchers, M.Castrén is considered the founder of the Ural-Altaic philology with his successful work.

The studies that leading to the research of the relations among the Ural and Altaic languages with each other have started by taking into account the features differs these languages from Indian-European languages. F.Wiedemann contributed these differences for understanding the issue in very easy form by expressing them in the form of items.

At the end of the XIX century, the researches related to the Altaic languages have been done in more scientific form by the influence of appearing of the method of real criticism. In the issue of the relation of the languages with each other’s: The view of existing of the similar features as 1) Phonetics, 2. Morphology, 3.Lexicology, 4.Syntax and etc. which were carrying the common source among themselves have been accepted.

But the linguists researching on the Altaic languages and considered as “altaist” are in different views in the issue of being or not being relation of the Altaic languages with each other. While some altaists claim being relation of the Altaic languages and derived from one “Major Altaic”, but the others defend not being relation of these languages, being the quote material of the language signs that seem common. And some of them are in the opinion of impossibility of giving the exact estimate in the issue of relationship.

The relations of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages being with each other which creating the Altaic languages will be researched and the discussions in the issue of relationship will be tried to reveal by giving the concrete samples.