Vascano-Turkic?

[Vijay]

There doesn't seem to be any such thing as "Proto-Turkish" anyway, but it seems Proto-Hungarian was indeed in contact with Old Turkic (which included Old Turkish) as the Hungarians were ruled by the Göktürks after the Huns left, and Old Turkic was the language of the Göktürks.

[Xephyr]

There doesn't seem to be any such thing as "Proto-Turkish" anyway, but it seems Proto-Hungarian was indeed in contact with Old Turkic (which included Old Turkish) as the Hungarians were ruled by the Göktürks after the Huns left, and Old Turkic was the language of the Göktürks.

What do you mean there is no such thing as "Proto-Turkish?" Also, Wikipedia indicates that the Magyars moved west of the Urals (beyond the reach of the Gokturks) a full century before the establishment of the first Turkic Khanate, so they couldn't have been ruled by the Gokturks. Btw, are you saying that the time of separation for the modern Hungarian dialects was 1,500 years ago?

[Vijay]

What do you mean there is no such thing as "Proto-Turkish?"

There's Old Turkic, of which apparently Old Turkish was a dialect, but I can't seem to find anything called "Proto-Turkish." IIRC usually words in Turkish are traced back to Old Turkic.

Also, Wikipedia indicates that the Magyars moved west of the Urals (beyond the reach of the Gokturks) a full century before the establishment of the first Turkic Khanate, so they couldn't have been ruled by the Gokturks.

OK.

Btw, are you saying that the time of separation for the modern Hungarian dialects was 1,500 years ago?

Nah, I just got this out of a poorly sourced part of Wikipedia without noticing that there were no actual citations and a big ol' tag screaming "this part needs verification!"

[mèþru]

Old Turkic is not related to Turkish. The closest relative is Uyghur, which developed from Old Turkic's sister language Middle Turkic. Yes, the terminology is correct, and yes, it is very confusing. It gets even more confusing because Old Turkic is sometimes called Old Uyghur or Old Turkish. There actually is a Proto-Turkic. However, it is overly reliant on Old Turkic, so you might as well cite the Old Turkic source anyway.

[Vijay]

There actually is a Proto-Turkic.

Yeah, there's a Proto-Turkic, but that's different from saying there's a "Proto-Turkish," isn't it?

[mèþru]

As far as I'm aware, there is no Turkish family of languages and therefore no Proto-Turkish. I use Proto- to refer to the parent language of a family of languages. Maybe you mean something like Old Anatolian Turkish or Ottoman Turkish?

[Vijay]

No, that's exactly why I'm asking. This whole discussion about "proto-Turkish" started with Αυτοβοτα mentioning "proto-Turkish," then I said there doesn't seem to be any such thing as "proto-Turkish," then Xephyr asked what I meant, then I said I can't find anything called "proto-Turkish."

[Matrix]

Vijay, I think you're just being pedantic. "Proto-Turkish" is obviously intended to mean "Proto-Turkic".

[Vijay]

I'm not being pedantic. I genuinely would like to know if there is such a thing as "Proto-Turkish" because I haven't found any evidence that there is yet. If it really was just supposed to mean "Proto-Turkic," then that's fine, but if there's something I'm missing about nomenclature here, then I'd like to know that.

[Αυτοβοτα]

Matrix's got me here. I meant, "an older, perhaps the oldest, version of the Turkic languages," it was late, I was tired. I was not trying to make up any new languages, just trying to point out that pre-European Magyars and Turks were both part of the Central Asian Steppe mixing pot. Also, the -ish and -ic suffixes should not be allowed to contrast on the same root/stem.

[Vijay]

Thanks!

[Shemtov]

IMO, the coincidences, especially with the morphology, pronouns and numerals, and the initial rhotic fact, warrant a deeper look

The "initial rhotic fact" applies to a bit too many languages in Eurasia (at minimum also Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Mongolian, Proto-Tungusic) to count as more than typological evidence.

Really? I've read a book on the origins of Korean that said that lack of initial rhotic in native words has been used by Altaists as a proof of Macro-Altaic, and even according to non-Altaists, has been used as evidence to support the idea that all five families proposed to be part of Macro-Altaic form a sprachbund. It would seem weird to use this as evidence to say that those families in particular form a sprachbund if PIE and PU could be included alongside Korean, Japonic, PTurk, PTung and PMong.

[Vijay]

Really? I've read a book on the origins of Korean that said that lack of initial rhotic in native words has been used by Altaists as a proof of Macro-Altaic

AFAIK pretty much everything that's ever even been used as evidence for Altaic is either such typological similarities or stuff that's more likely the result of language contact.

and even according to non-Altaists, has been used as evidence to support the idea that all five families proposed to be part of Macro-Altaic form a sprachbund. It would seem weird to use this as evidence to say that those families in particular form a sprachbund if PIE and PU could be included alongside Korean, Japonic, PTurk, PTung and PMong.

A lot of features that are part of a sprachbund are things that are commonly found in many other parts of the world, too (word order patterns for example), so one feature alone doesn't seem to be strong enough evidence for a sprachbund in a case like this. I'd say more likely, it's that feature combined with a bunch of others.

[Tropylium]

No, that's exactly why I'm asking. This whole discussion about "proto-Turkish" started with Αυτοβοτα mentioning "proto-Turkish," then I said there doesn't seem to be any such thing as "proto-Turkish," then Xephyr asked what I meant, then I said I can't find anything called "proto-Turkish."

If you wanted some kind of a node between modern Turkish and Proto-Turkic, Turkish is usually grouped in the Oghuz subgroup together with Azeri and Turkmen. The existence of "Proto-Oghuz" seems to be however dubious, e.g. according to Marek Stachowski:
https://www.academia.edu/7883276/Protol ... nd_English

This means that there was no Proto-Oghuz language and, by the same token, no Proto-Oghuz community in the Old Turkic period, still less so in Proto-Turkic times. Or, in other words: A group of dialects divorced at the end of the 8th century from the main body of Old Turkic dialects, were brought to Central Asia (and then farther southwards) and, during their joint migration (that is, apparently before the battle of Manzikert, 1071, that enabled Turkic migrations to Anatolia and consequently caused their separation from other Oghuz and non-Oghuz Turks), elaborated a set of common features called “(Proto-)Oghuz” today. Or, to put it another way:
Proto-Oghuz, if it really can be called a language (and not merely a group of similar but independent dialects), came into being secondarily, namely as the result of areal interactions between neighbouring dialects in the period from the late 9th century at the earliest till approximately the end of the 11th century, that is in no more than 150–200 years.

[Vijay]

I knew Turkish was part of Oghuz along with Turkmen and Azeri (and Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Salar...) but didn't know about the dubiousness of "Proto-Oghuz." Thanks!

But wow, were these really independent languages for that long? Turkic languages in general are so similar to each other that that seems surprising to me.

[Tropylium]

I knew Turkish was part of Oghuz along with Turkmen and Azeri (and Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Salar...) but didn't know about the dubiousness of "Proto-Oghuz." Thanks!

But wow, were these really independent languages for that long? Turkic languages in general are so similar to each other that that seems surprising to me.

Well, independent dialects. They definitely would have been mutually intelligible all along, but if the "Proto-Oghuz" dialects were also just as mutually intelligible with "Proto-Kipchak" dialects etc., any attempts at forcing a tree structure on them are going to be somewhat arbitrary. (There are also people who think that the division into Common Turkic vs. Bulgaric is also areal/chronological rather than genetic.)

[Shemtov]

A lot of features that are part of a sprachbund are things that are commonly found in many other parts of the world, too (word order patterns for example), so one feature alone doesn't seem to be strong enough evidence for a sprachbund in a case like this. I'd say more likely, it's that feature combined with a bunch of others.

True, which was the author's point (that this factor, among others, points to Korean and Japonic being in the same sprachbund as the other proposed branches of "Altaic", or possibly a genetic relationship with one of them.) but, my point was that logic dictates that if it the same feature existed in PIE and PU, one would not point to it as a factor in determining that Korean and Japonic are part of an Altaic sprachbund, but a Eurasian one (given the likelihood that PIE and PU were in some sort of contact with some language related to one of the families part of a proposed Altaic sprachbund), combined with other factors, and only other factors could determine if Korean and Japonic are part of an Altaic area of the Eurasian sprachbund, but the rhotic phonotactics would have to be set aside for that determination of being part of the sub-area, if you wish, a sub-sprachbund.

[Vijay]

True, which was the author's point (that this factor, among others, points to Korean and Japonic being in the same sprachbund as the other proposed branches of "Altaic", or possibly a genetic relationship with one of them.) but, my point was that logic dictates that if it the same feature existed in PIE and PU, one would not point to it as a factor in determining that Korean and Japonic are part of an Altaic sprachbund, but a Eurasian one, combined with other factors, and only other factors could determine if Korean and Japonic are part of an Altaic area of the Eurasian sprachbund, but the rhotic phonotactics would have to be set aside for that determination of being part of the sub-area, if you wish, a sub-sprachbund.

As I understand it, the point of positing a sprachbund isn't really to say that a set of features is literally unique to some geographical region; it's more like there's some set of features that is particularly common in that region when taken all together and not so much outside. It's a language contact phenomenon. In the case of this initial rhotic thing, maybe it's just a lot more common in the Altaic area than in other parts of Eurasia, so even though PIE and PU may not have initial rhotics either, it's not as common to lack them outside the Altaic area (and neither PIE nor PU seems to have been spoken all that far from the Altaic area anyway, right?). A lot of arguments for sprachbunds involve features that are much more widespread. Let's take this list of features for South Asia from Campbell's Historical Linguistics as an example:
1. Retroflex consonants, particularly retroflex stops
(Yeah because those don't exist in Mandarin, Slavic languages, Scandinavian languages, and various dialects of European languages and what not, do they?)
2. Absence of prefixes (except in Munda)
(Except that Sanskrit does have prefixes, lots of Indian languages have borrowed them, they're pretty productive FWIR, and since when was suffixation rare cross-linguistically?)
3. Presence of a dative-subject construction
(Right like Icelandic and Finnish don't have that)
4. SOV word order including postpositions
(Because that isn't common all over the world, is it?)
5. Absence of a verb 'to have'
(Again, common)
6. Tendency for subordinate clauses to have non-finite verb forms and be preposed, e.g. relative clauses precede their heads
(OK, where did this one even come from? What Indian language even has non-finite verb forms in subordinate/relative clauses, Tamil or something? Malayalam, Hindi, and Bengali for instance don't have such a thing that I can think of. And of course relative clauses precede their heads in a lot of Indian languages; that's probably what you'd expect to see in SOV languages anyway).
7. Morphological causatives
(Yep, common again. See e.g. Bantu languages)
8. Compound verbs involving an auxiliary that follows the main verb and the two verbs together refer to a single event
(Because that doesn't happen in Chinese and Southeast Asian languages too?)
9. "Sound symbolic (phonesthetic) forms based on reduplication, often with k suffixed (for example in Kota, a Dravidian language: kad-kadk '[heart or mind] beats fast with guilt or worry'; a:nk-a:nk 'to be very strong [of man, bullock], very beautiful [of woman]')."
(OK, first of all, I have literally NEVER seen this alleged k-suffixation thing. And second, it's not like onomatopeia + reduplication isn't common in other languages, too. See? All of these are problematic especially when taken in isolation. Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam! )

But when you take all of them together (at least ignoring any that aren't even attested in the (proposed) language area under discussion...), it's probably going to be at least hard to find another part of the world where you find all of those things.