Proto-Turkic Consonants
Language Log 2022-04-02
I seldom announce the publication of Sino-Platonic Papers on Language Log, but this one, although seemingly highly esoteric, will actually be of interest to many readers. Aside from numerous Turkic tongues, among other languages and groups it touches on, the following are mentioned: Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Tocharian, Uyghur, Bulgar, Tatar, Bactrian, Tungusic, Celtic, Dravidian, Yeniseian, Samoyedic, Chuvash, Latin, Italic, Prussian, Slavic (various languages), Sanskrit, Kitan, Hungarian, Xiongnu (Appendix 2 is a list of Xiongnu words surviving in Altaic languages), Circassian, Caucasian, Avar, Dingling 丁零, Khotanese Saka, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Old Persian, Middle and New Persian, Pashto, Ossetian, and numerous Iranian languages, Yuezhi, Koguryŏan (Korean).
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-twenty-fifth issue: "On *p- and Other Proto-Turkic Consonants," by Orçun Ünal (Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Göttingen, Germany)
Dedication:
To my first teacher in Mongolian
Claus Schönig (1955–2019)
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp325_proto_Turkic_consonants.pdf
ABSTRACT
The present study takes as a starting point the question of whether Proto-Turkic had an onset *h- or *p- and aims at reconstructing its consonantism. The answer to the initial question is searched for in the fourteen Turkic lexical loans of adjacent languages such as Mongolic, Kitan, Yeniseian, and Samoyedic. At first sight, the data provided by these loanwords seem ambiguous. However, once it is demonstrated that both the daughter languages of Proto-Turkic, namely Proto-Bulgar Turkic and Proto‑Common Turkic, had the historically unattested initials *d2– and *ń-, these data can be taken to point to the existence of *p- in these languages as well as in Proto-Turkic. The discussion is extended with the question of rhotacism and lambdacism. As regards the rhotacism, Proto-Turkic is assumed to have two rhotic consonants, phonologically denoted as */r1 r2/. The lambdacism, on the other hand, turns out to be a tougher problem. Based on several lexical borrowings into and from Turkic, a further consonant */t2/ is posited for Proto-Turkic. This consonant, originally of affricate and probably later of fricative pronunciation, yielded /š/ in Common Turkic and /l/ in Bulgar Turkic. Thus, the Proto-Turkic consonantism is reconstructed as having a series of consonants */t2 d2 r2/ that underwent serious changes in historical Turkic. Finally, */k2/ is added to this series to explain the correspondence of k- and vocalic onset between some Turco-Mongolic cognates. In addition, significant sound changes in the prehistory of Turkic are dated through external evidence.
Key words: Proto-Turkic, onset consonant, lexical borrowing, consonantism
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