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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 36:3 (2019) ► pp.299–336

Significance testing of the Altaic family

| University of Pennsylvania
Historical linguists have been debating for decades about whether the classical comparative method provides sufficient evidence to consider Altaic languages as part of a single genetic unity, like Indo-European and Uralic, or whether the implicit statistical robustness behind regular sound correspondences is lacking in the case of Altaic. In this paper, I run a significance test on Swadesh-lists representing Turkish, Mongolian and Manchu to see if there are regular patterns of phonetic similarities or correspondences among word-initial phonemes in the basic vocabulary that cannot be expected to have arisen by chance. The methodology draws on Oswalt (1970), Ringe (1992), Baxter & Manaster Ramer (2000) and Kessler (2001, 2007). The results only partially point towards an Altaic family: Mongolian and Manchu show significant sound correspondences, while Turkish and Mongolian show some marginally significant phonological similarity, that might however be the consequence of areal contact. Crucially, Turkish and Manchu do not test positively under any condition.
Keywords: comparative method, historical linguistics, Altaic, lexicostatistics, Swadesh lists, multilateral comparison
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Altaic controversy
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Phonetic algorithms
    • 3.2Phonological classes
    • 3.3Regular correspondences
  • 4.Wordlists
  • 5.Polymorphism
  • 6.False positives
    • 6.1Testing Kessler & Lehtonen’s (2006) algorithm
    • 6.2Testing Baxter & Manaster Ramer’s (2000) algorithm
    • 6.3Testing the presence of sound correspondences
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Turkish, Manchu and Mongolian with Kessler & Lehtonen’s (2006) algorithm
    • 7.2Turkish, Manchu and Mongolian with Baxter &
      Manaster Ramer’s (2000) algorithm
    • 7.3Evaluating sound correspondences
  • 8.Loanwords
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17007.ceo
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