r and s in Turkic (long and focussing on Altaic)

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
No, I don't mean to convert Histling into AltaiNet - and I did notice that
this thread has left its original focus long ago, but I think some points
maybe of general interest, and the Altaic details can, if need be,
discussed by us further in a different forum.
 
Sasha, old friend, good to hear from you again. While it will come as no
surprise to you (nor to me) that a discussion of these matters will see us
two, as so often, on the opposite sides of the table, I might be allowed to
comment a bit on your assertions.
 
First, let me agree with you (and Alexis, of course) that the whole
rhotacism/zetacism has no immediate bearing on the Altaic question. The
languages can wlel be related (or not), regardless what the original
consonant qualities were. This is, e.g., the position prominent in most
writings of Gerhard Doerfer, who is, as we know, a critic of Altaic and a
zetacist (by which I mean that he views /z/ as the end of the story).
However, it is quite surprising that pro-Altaicists usually defend zetacism
like the crown-jewels, each time a rhotacist appears lumping him/her with
the anti-Altaicists. In view of what you said yourself, this is an
oversimplification, or, better, plainly wrong.
I don't follow Lyle Campbell where he formulates that " No one with a sense of
phonology postulates the reverse, the unnatural and implausible changes of
*r > z/s  and  *l > Z/S, which are almost unknown in languages elsewhere"
etc., since the opposite sound-change *can* happen (few things really
*don't ever* happen), as we see in Kevin Tuite's French example (already
quoted in Shcherbak somewhere and in writings by Rona-Tas); I remember you
yourself bringing an example from Vietnamese - if I'm not mistaken - to my
attention. Yet I subscribe to the view that rhotacism is far more common
(see previous examples from a wide variety of languages).
Yet, phonetics apart, and it is not basically a phonetic problem I'm
dealing with, there *are* difficulties with either scenario (for *both*)
positions which have at least potential bearing on Altaic studies (not on
the "Altaic question", no question like that can be decided on by relying
on a single point like that; so, in a word, there can be no talk of
"disproving" "Altaic" by dealing with the liquids alone, I think we all can
agree on that).
 
>(3) The theory of wholesale borrowing from Bulgaric to proto-Mongolic
>faces many obstacles (some of them unsurmountable in my opinion). First,
>it is cyclic by its logic: Turkic "loans" in Mongolic have /r/, therefore
>they must be Bulgar loans. But there should be, a second independent
>evidence for the fact that these words are indeed Bulgaric loans, apart
>from the the /r/ itself. As a matter of fact, this evidence does not
>exist. Let me demonstrate it by using the same word for "ox".
 
With this I have to take issue, since, I'm afraid, it contains a piece of
oversimplification on your side. -r- instead of CT -z- is *by no means* the
only criterion for the "Bolgharicity" of some words. There are other
criteria, involving other pieces of consonantism and, especially, vocalism,
which is all too often overlooked. A word can have (more than one) typical
Bulghar trait, even if it doesn't contain anything remotely resembling -r-
(< -z- or -r2).  I have recently (in press) argued *against Doerfer* (who
took the words as chance similarities) for a loan-scenario involving the
Turkic and Mongolian words for "heart" (although there *is* an -r- in this
word, it's of the /r1/-type) on the evidence of non-rhotacistic criteria
alone. I'll not try to get on everyone's nerves here by giving the whole
story of this etymology, but I'm ready to share it with everyone, who wants
to hear about it.
 
On rhotacism: zetacism does carry along one difficulty for Altaic studies:
whily in a rhotacistic scenario this process happened only once (in
Bolghar, carried over by LWs to Mong. and Tung.), the zetacist scenario
would hold /r/ as the proto-Altaic sound, maintained almost everywhere, but
shifted to /z/ in each and every non-Bulghar Turkic language. While this is
OK as far as it goes, it brings about the need to view zetacistic Tk.
languages as *one and only* primary branch of Turkic (languages from
Turkish to Yakut via Tuvan, that is). This may well be the case, but on
other occasions we two had a hot debate on the number of *primary* branches
of Turkic, with me voting against and you voting for such a branch as
"Sayanic" and others, being as primary as all the others (Kipchak, Oghuz).
Now the least thing you'll have to do is to admit a *primary* branch
"Common Turkic" with the shift r2 > z as the one common innovation. Maybe
you are prepared to do so, but don't talk to me about "primary Sayanic"
again ;-)
 
On the "bovine"-etymology you do a variety of things. You reconstruct
proto-Mong. *with* *p-, using the Mmo. evidence, which is OK with me. Then
you deny *p- (> h-) in Turkic, reconstructing *"ok"uz only (I take it that
this means CT, or you accidentally forgot to write -r2 ;-). This should now
make borrowing less likely then cognacy. I admit that I don't follow (in
fact, the Starostinian sound-laws expect proto-Altaic p- - evidenced by
Mong. -  to be reflected by Turkic h- as well; so, taking Starostin's
sound-laws for granted, you are actually advocating for the Turko-Mong.
etymology to be given up ! Or else, where's the h- ? Calm down, it is
there, see below.). In fact, by removing the h- from the Turkic form you
strengthen the case for an old (and long ago given up) borrowing scenario
which wanted to derive Turkic *"ok"uz from sthl. Tokharian okso (this
etymology had been given up, largely because h- got in the way, which was
not well known in Turkic at that time, as well as the Mmo. data). Now I
wouldn't call this borrowing scenario nonsense, but I don't subscribe to
it, since I do think that the h- is there after all. The question of Turkic
h- is a difficult one, and it can't be put aside by a laconic "but it is
prosthetic" and a mere "contrary to Doerfer's claim". While I'm not going
to present the fifty-odd papers D. devoted to the problem here, readers
interested in the question might wish to consult
 
G. Doerfer: "Materialien zu t"urk. h-" I, UAJb N.F. 1/198193-141, II:
2/1982, 138-168 (oops, it's eighty-odd pages). There a (imho strong) point
is made for the attestation of original h-s in some Turkic lgs. and
prosthetic ones also, together with some criteria to distinguish between
them.
I hope interested parties will read this to form an opinion of their own.
Now, for the "bovine"-word, h- is attested from more than one source. While
it is true that Khaladzh is silent on this word, we find h- forms in
Turkmen dialects (R"as"anen), Khorasanli Turkic, Modern Uighur, Uzbek
(which you mentioned) and the older literary language Chaghatay.
So, h- is there, the Tokharian loan scenario is again to be forgotten, and
the Turkic and Mong. words belong together.
(Please note that, while I'm far from presenting everything Doerfer says as
the plain gospel, I'm unwilling to further discuss the matter of Tk. h- on
the base of anything but this paper. It is a most thorough investigation of
this difficult problem and every discussion which does not depart from it
(maybe by disagreeing, but then the whole of the data and the methods
employed should be discussed in detail, which we certainly cannot do here)
is simply uninformed.
 
 
>does not show up in such word as ar "man", where we should expect it if
>Uzbek h- were regular. Thus, we end up with Turkic *"ok"uz.
 
And: the word for "man" *is* attested in Uzbek with h- (albeit not in the
literary standard, but rather in Kipchak-Uzb. dialects; and it is so
attested in Old Turkic in Brahmi-script, TT VIII).
 
 
 
>(c) summing up, the hypothesis that Mongolic word is a loan from
>Bulgar s based on three (sic!) unproven hypotheses: that Bulgaric had *h-
>(no traces of it in any of Bulgaric languages) (1), that Chuvash vocalism
>is secondary as compared to Common Turkic (2), and that it represents a
>late development (3). Thus, the loanword explanation, a hypothesis itself,
>is relying on three other hypotheses to be true. It is much more complex
>solution than a single hypothesis that words in question represent
>cognates.
 
(2) and (3) are only one hypothesis. It is true that Bulghar does not show
any trace of h-. But this is common practice: Germanic loans in
Balto-Finnic sometimes show traces of Proto-Germanic, which are nowhere
attested in Germanic, but only recoverable through comparative
reconstruction; Finnish words often show that this reconstruction was
right. There is no reason I can see why an older form of language A should
not be observable in A loans in B.
 
>     Finally, the wholesale loanword scenario is based on one more
>hypothesis, again not proven. It presumes that Mongols were in contact of
>all Turks with Bulgars. But Bulgars are... the westernmost branch of
>Turkic, and there is a zero independent evidence that they ever were in
>touch with Mongols (until 13th c.), who came to the territory of Mongolia
>from the
>territory to the east. The only evidence presented for this brave claim is
>again Bulgar "loanwords" in Mongolic with -r. Circularity again, isn't it?
 
But there is another argument here, which is simply dangerous: that of
geography. Well, Bulghar is the Westernmost branch of Turkic, so what ?
Baluchi is one of the easternmost Iranian languages, yet it is West
Iranian, Ossetic is one of the westernmost languages of this family, yet it
is East Iranian.
Iranian loanwords are present in a variety of Finno-Ugric languages, Baltic
loanwords are to be found as far east as Mordva, it is linguistics which
can *claim* that for these borrowings previous contact *has* to be assumed
(and it is, in the case of Baltic in the East, seconded by toponymy). You
don't assume that Bulghar Turkic speaking people have always been living on
the Volga, do you ?
To put it more precisely, changing seats for argument's sake: given the
Altaic theory were correct, and an original proto-Altaic speech community
split up somewhere in Asia: we don't have to assume that the Japanese end
up on the Japanese islands immediately after that, as well as the Bulghar
Turks on the Volga, do we ??? The disintegration of an original speech
community is a complicated process, certainly allowing for a great deal of
inter-branch borrowing going on for some time, at least as long as
geographical contiguity is maintained or contacts are not blocked by social
and other reasons. *Of course*, the Bulghar loan hypothesis *does* make a
strong claim for prehistoric contacts between Bulghar Turkic and Mongolian,
that's its strength, that's where the linguist's work becomes interesting
for historians, that's part of the success story of I.E. linguistics in
Western Universities, I'd say. The only thing we can say that Bulghar
*writing* started in the West. There is a host of early Inner Asian nomad
confederacies which are linguistically "unlumpable" into one of the known
language families. There can be no reason to exclude that one or some of
them contained a "Bulgharoid" element (though I don't dare to forward a
specific hypothesis on which one). And: given that most pro-Altaicists
locate the Altaic "homeland" pretty far in the East (you say yourself that
the Mongols probably entered the steppe from the east), the Bulghars had to
find *some* way to their present habitats through all that landmass, hadn't
they ?
 
OK, my apologies for getting verbose (as always when things Altaic are at
stake), I'll leave this thread to itself now and see what happens (I'm
ready to continue with you, Sasha, or anyone else interested on the other
fora, we are subscribed to).
 
Stefan
 
Stefan Georg
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