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Japanese & Amerindian languages -related?

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Chung
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 Message 9 of 26
07 September 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
Luiz Caldas Tibirica's hypothesis reminds me a bit of this piece by the anthropologist, Prof. Otto von Sadovszky, which holds that the languages of certain tribes in California are linked to the Uralic languages via the Ob-Ugric languages (i.e. Khanty and Mansi, which are considered the most closely related languages to Hungarian) (!).

Although I am open to research on potential external connections for the Uralic languages (especially Uralo-Siberian, Nostratic, Eurasiatic, and Indo-Uralic) Sadovszky's conclusion is highly dubious to me as his linguistic evidence seems totally based on lexical comparison without being able to postulate phonological correspondances that have predictive power based on his comparisons. There's also nothing about phonology or morphology in his comparative research.
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vonPeterhof
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 Message 10 of 26
07 September 2012 at 6:11pm | IP Logged 
paleolitik wrote:
Turkish and Japanese are related languages.

Even the people who believe in the existence of the Altaic family don't all agree with this. Last time I checked most Altaicists rejected the "micro-Altaic" hypothesis (Altaic = Turkic + Mongolic + Tungusic, without Japonic and Korean) and nearly all of them now accept Korean as Altaic, but some of them still have doubts about the Japonic languages. Not all scholars of Old Japanese agree that it had vowel harmony, which is kind of important in Altaic theory, and there are theories out there that Japanese could be a creole of a language related to Old Korean and a pre-Yamato language of Japan (creoles are not included into families of their parent languages). And that's not even getting into the whole debate over the existence of Altaic, which is still inconclusive.
Quote:
Assoc. Prof. Dr. İsmail DOĞAN says Turkish and Mayan languages have more than 400 common words.
One needs more that "common words" to conclusively demonstrate relatedness - see the above comments.
Quote:
Perhaps some Altaic language speakers landed on America before Indo-Europeans did.
I don't think anyone is arguing that native American languages are related to Indo-European ones.
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Chung
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 Message 11 of 26
07 September 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged 
On the subject of vowel harmony and its importance in Altaic is that the linguists behind the Altaic Etymological Dictionary reconstructed Proto-Altaic as lacking vowel harmony.

However I too question the assertion that Japanese and Turkish are related. They show some similarities but because of Japanese's possible genesis as a kind of creole, it's hard for me to be convinced of Japanese's indisputable "belonging" or genetic relationship to Altaic based on what we know about the languages in question. However unlike vociferous critics of Altaic, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that a large group of people speaking some language that we could call "Proto-Altaic/Late Common-Altaic" or some other dialect descended from the predecessor of Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolic, Proto-Tungusic crossed the Sea of Japan and influenced the speech of the people whom they met on the Home Islands.
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paleolitik
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 Message 12 of 26
07 September 2012 at 8:03pm | IP Logged 
vonPeterhof wrote:
paleolitik wrote:
Turkish and Japanese are related languages.

Even the people who believe in the existence of the Altaic family don't all agree with this. Last time I checked most Altaicists rejected the "micro-Altaic" hypothesis (Altaic = Turkic + Mongolic + Tungusic, without Japonic and Korean) and nearly all of them now accept Korean as Altaic, but some of them still have doubts about the Japonic languages. Not all scholars of Old Japanese agree that it had vowel harmony, which is kind of important in Altaic theory, and there are theories out there that Japanese could be a creole of a language related to Old Korean and a pre-Yamato language of Japan (creoles are not included into families of their parent languages). And that's not even getting into the whole debate over the existence of Altaic, which is still inconclusive.
Quote:
Assoc. Prof. Dr. İsmail DOĞAN says Turkish and Mayan languages have more than 400 common words.
One needs more that "common words" to conclusively demonstrate relatedness - see the above comments.
Quote:
Perhaps some Altaic language speakers landed on America before Indo-Europeans did.
I don't think anyone is arguing that native American languages are related to Indo-European ones.
I didn't say Mayan language is relative of Turkish, but if there are many common words they may be "borrowed words" and this may mean "Turks and Mayans were neighbors" at least. Japanese and Turkish also are related, because they have many common words, suffixes and same rules. I used the term related for them because they are really related. I didn't say "relative" again. Ponimaesh?
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Chung
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 Message 13 of 26
07 September 2012 at 8:24pm | IP Logged 
paleolitik wrote:
I didn't say Mayan language is relative of Turkish, but if there are many common words they may be "borrowed words" and this may mean "Turks and Mayans were neighbors" at least.


Have you not considered conincidence as brought forth by Ari?

paleolitik wrote:
Japanese and Turkish also are related, because they have many common words, suffixes and same rules. I used the term related for them because they are really related. I didn't say "relative" again. Ponimaesh?


Did you pull your examples from this thread?

Japanese's classification is still disputed among linguists with the postulated Altaic link for Japanese competing with other proposals (considering further that the validity of Altaic itself is disputed which indirectly negates the integrity of Altaic including Japanese or Japanese and Turkic sharing a particularly close relationship). In other words, what you're insisting on is not the only game in town, hasn't been resolved by the professionals and is hardly a matter of being "case closed" as your rebuttal to vonPeterhof suggests.

Edited by Chung on 07 September 2012 at 8:29pm
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Ari
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 Message 14 of 26
07 September 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
Since the Turcic-Japonic link is up for discussion, does anyone know if there's a genetic component to this
hypothesis? If there's a linguistic relationship one would expect to find some genetic links. Geneticists can do some
rather spectacular things nowadays, like tracing a single Native American woman taken to Iceland by the vikings
three hundred years ago. Surely they'd find some genetic links tracing Turcic peoples to Koreans and Japanese?
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Chung
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 Message 15 of 26
07 September 2012 at 8:36pm | IP Logged 
The trees in this model are an attempt to link linguistic and genetic distinctiveness.

It's somewhat plausible to me, but then I'm reminded of the potential for language shift.

If martians were to get right now a large sample of Americans who are monoglot speakers of English, would they necessarily conclude that what they speak originated from what a bunch of peasants spoke on some island on the other side of the English Channel about 1200 years ago?

The link between race or ethnicity with native language isn't as tidy or rigid as desired.
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paleolitik
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 Message 16 of 26
07 September 2012 at 9:32pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
paleolitik wrote:
I didn't say Mayan language is relative of Turkish, but if there are many common words they may be "borrowed words" and this may mean "Turks and Mayans were neighbors" at least.


Have you not considered conincidence as brought forth by Ari?

paleolitik wrote:
Japanese and Turkish also are related, because they have many common words, suffixes and same rules. I used the term related for them because they are really related. I didn't say "relative" again. Ponimaesh?


Did you pull your examples from this thread?
I have got a book: Japonca ve Altay Dilleri (by Talat Tekin).It contains many comparisons amongst Japanese, Turkish, Mongolian and some other languages.


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