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

[Alexander Vovin]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Stefan,
 
     Good to hear from you, too. Let me just jot several points below,
because the specifics should be discussed on AltaiNet.
 
(1) Although my expertize within the eastern part of the family, Chuvash
is the Turkic language I know really well (used to speak it fluently 10
years ago, unfortunately this is no longer the case). Nevertheless, I fail
to see any Chuvashoid features in alleged "Bulgaric loans" in Mongolic,
including vocalismthat you mention: Chuv. vAkAr, MM h"ok"ur, OT "ok"uz:
obviously Chuvash has a different vocalism. May be you can come up with
some hard-core evidence on AltaiNet. I will, for one, will be interested
to hear tour etymology of Turco-Mongolian heart, but I honestly can't see
how vocalism in Chuvash cEre 'heart" is going to prove that it is loan in
Mongolic.
 
(2) As I said in my reply to Lyle, I agree with him that z >r is more
natural change than r > z. Yes, I usually cite the example of Hanoi
Vietnamese where orthographical r- is pronounced nowadays as /z-/. The
fact that it was once /r/ is easily deduced from the historical spelling
(based on 17th c. Portuguese spelling) + on modern Saigon dialect where
most speakers still keep have /r-/ for /r/.
 
(3) I do reconstruct *"ok"uz for PT (or *"ok"ur2, if you like it better).
We can even do *[h]"ok"ur2/z, if you like. But, imho, h- ain't there. I am
familiar with Doerfer's article you cite, but it does not persuade me: all
we have there is a collection of random h- cases in various Turkic
languages. There is no a single word that would have h- in all languages
Doerfer cites. Thus word X will have h- in A, D, E, word Y in B and C,
word Z in E only, etc. etc. I do not buy it, and I must say that I am
really surprised that you do. Taking Qypchak "dialect" of Uzbek hardly
improves the picture: that vividly reminds me of one "oficial" PRC
linguists, who had to prove relationship of Chinese and Tai against all
odds for apparent political reasons, so he manipulated between languages
at his free whim. Fortunately, such manooevres are observed mostly in
Turcology (:-).
 
(4) Bulgars Of course *could* live near Mongols in spite the fact that
they are nowadays westernmost Turks, but this is no more than a
speculation that is given without any solid proof. There is no evidence
apart from the alleged loanwords that it was ever so, and in this case it
is your word against mine. You do believe that there did live there, I
don't. OK, can you come up with any kind of evidence, apart from "loans"
to show that this is the case? Any place names, archeology, burial
practices, anything? The problem of anti-Altaicoists is that they often
take their hypotheses to be axiomatic truths. One of Shcherbak's works
starts with line: "When Chuvash ancestors lived in Siberia..." O, ya, that
is very entertaining, but who has demonstrated that they ever did? (May be
thei lived in Huanghe valley: after all Chuvash word for person c,yn looks
like a Chinese loan, does not it?)
 
(5) Starostins 1991 book is an important contribution to Altaic studies.
But it is not the Bible. The fact that he does not have PT *h- or
pre-Turkic *p- is not going to wreck either this etymology or Altaic
studies.
 
Cheers,
 
Sasha
 
=======================================
Alexander Vovin
Associate Professor of Japanese
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
382 Moore Hall
1890 East-West Road
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
vovin at hawaii.edu
fax (808)956-9515 (o.)
t.(808)956-6881 (o.)