Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

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Ithisa
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Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Ithisa »

I'm kinda confused by the Wikipedias here. Chinese Wikipedia paints Altaic consistently throughout the wiki as an accepted linguistic theory with fringe detractors, putting it in the tables for language classification, giving it Wiki categories. English Wikipedia treats it as a dubious theory with fringe supporters, and language classification tables separate Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, Japonic, and whatnot.

Which perspective would fit better? Chinese Wikipedia is famous for NPOV stuff and general people throwing around their pet linguistic theories (I asked that stackexchange question, btw) so I don't know exactly.
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Salmoneus
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Salmoneus »

It's a minority opinion, though I'm not sure it's fair to say it's 'fringe'.

It USED to be majority opinion. It's a very, very old theory, which assumed that Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic formed a valid subfamily of Uralo-Altaic. Then people looked at the evidence in more depth, and began to doubt that Uralo-Altaic existed. Then they doubted that Altaic existed. But along the way, someone decided to including Japonic and Korean in Altaic. So most of the people who believe in 'Altaic' believe that Japonic and Korean are also part of that family, and the old Altaic languages may not be a valid node within that Macro-Altaic family.

It depends, of course, how you define belief. If you mean 'how many people believe Altaic is a substantiated language family?', that's a very minority opinion I think, and really fringe if you define 'Altaic' more narrowly as just the three original families together. But if you mean 'how many people believe Altaic is probably a language family but this hasn't been demonstrated?', that's a lot bigger, though still probably a minority. Then some more would join in when you got to 'how many people believe 'Altaic' languages are all related, but not necessarily monophylitically?'.
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Omzinesý
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Omzinesý »

If you go to Russia, I think, it is generally accepted. In some other palces, in Finland for example, it is strongly rejected. To me, it is not generally accepted. Now there is some new evidence that Tungusic and Mongolic languages still are related, but that's not "generally accepted" either.

Altaic languages is still a very handy term to refer the group of languages, which are very similar typologically. You can well speak about "Altaic language type": suffixing, SVO, many infinite verb forms, agglutinative, vowel harmony etc.
The extension of the term varies, which makes it harder to use. When I say Altaic languages, I mean Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusian. The old "language family" included Japanese and Korean, too. So, when hearing the term, you cannot know what is meant.
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Ithisa
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Ithisa »

Omzinesý wrote:If you go to Russia, I think, it is generally accepted. In some other palces, in Finland for example, it is strongly rejected.
Hmm. Is there some political/historical reason behind this?
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by cybrxkhan »

Ithisa wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:If you go to Russia, I think, it is generally accepted. In some other palces, in Finland for example, it is strongly rejected.
Hmm. Is there some political/historical reason behind this?
Quite possibly, though I don't know why. I know in China for example some of the language groups in SE Asia (Tai-Kadai, others I forgot) are considered related to or part of the Sino-Tibetan branch. It makes political sense - it feeds well into China's nationalistic ideology. Now I'm pretty sure many Chinese linguists wholeheartedly believe it, but I think in this case the government found it politically useful and encouraged the theory. Outside of China however these are considered separate language groups.


Anyhow, as for Altaic, while it isn't accepted by all, it also isn't really a fringe theory like Eurasaustroindotatic or whatever that thing is called. There are a number of linguists who accept it, others who don't, and yet others who can't make up their minds either way.
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Omzinesý
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Omzinesý »

Ithisa wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:If you go to Russia, I think, it is generally accepted. In some other palces, in Finland for example, it is strongly rejected.
Hmm. Is there some political/historical reason behind this?
I said I think it is accepted in Russia. I don't know.
There are some odd schools of macro language theories in Russia. If somebody accepts Nostratic, I suppose he accepts Altaic, too. There are very good linguists in Russian, too.
If you want historical explanations, Soviet Union should, of course, be mentioned.
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Re: Is the Altaic theory generally accepted or not?

Post by Ithisa »

cybrxkhan wrote: Quite possibly, though I don't know why. I know in China for example some of the language groups in SE Asia (Tai-Kadai, others I forgot) are considered related to or part of the Sino-Tibetan branch. It makes political sense - it feeds well into China's nationalistic ideology. Now I'm pretty sure many Chinese linguists wholeheartedly believe it, but I think in this case the government found it politically useful and encouraged the theory. Outside of China however these are considered separate language groups.
I think that is something they recently threw away, at least with regards to Chinese Wikipedia, which gets quite nationalistic in its linguistic articles...

(Aside: the opinion that will get you popular on the Chinese internet is generally "hate the party but be really nationalistic/jingoistic". Basically, either "we should go back to Mao" or "Mao/the party made us too weak and bullied around". Quite unlike America, where people apparently love criticizing the government for anything they consider unfair to *other* countries...like Palestine/Iran/Syria wherever)
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