Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 47writingAlseaPenutianAltaicLanguage group in central and northern Asia with approximately sixty languages and 250million speakers, divided into the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic families. Theinclusion of Korean, Japanese, and Ainu into this group, as well as its possiblerelationship to the Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut language groups is debated. The firstclassification goes back to Strahlenberg (1730).Characteristics: relatively uniform in its typology; simple phonemic system, simplesyllable structure, vowel harmony; morphological agglutination, primarily suffixal; richcase system, subject-verb agreement. Word order SOV, strictly prespecifying; numerousparticipial forms (converbs) for conjunction and subordination of clauses.ReferencesComrie, B. 1981. The languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge.Fortescue, M. 1981. Endoactive-exoactive markers in Eskimo-Aleut, Tungus and Japanese: aninvestigation into common origins. In L.J.Dorais (ed.), The language of the Inuit: historical,phonological and grammatical issues, Quebec. 5–41.Poppe, N. 1960. Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen. Wiesbaden.alternantIn Bloomfield’s terms, the alternation of the elements of emic units (such as phonemeand morpheme), namely of allophones and allomorphs (also etic vs emic analysis).Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York.Reference