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Altaic
THE ALTAIC HYPOTHESIS holds that there is an Altaic language family which consists minimally of the following branches: Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic. These languages are of the SOV type, are agglutinative and share morphological harmony.
--Reinhard F. Hahn, LINGUIST 5.908

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE HYPOTHESIS are mostly based upon criteria used in Indo-European research. The main weaknesses of the AH as alleged by the anti-Altaicists are:
  • Absence or scarcity of cognates among numerals.
  • Scarcity of cognates among terms for parts of the body.
  • Turkic-Mongolic and Mongolic-Tungusic "pseudo-cognates" but no direct Turkic-Tungusic ones.
--Reinhard F. Hahn, LINGUIST 5.908
LINGUIST DISCUSSION ON ALTAIC

LINGUIST DISCUSSION ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD
Page Updated: 22-Nov-2008

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