Editing Altaic languages (section)

===For the Altaic grouping===
====Phonological and grammatical features====
The original arguments for grouping the "micro-Altaic" languages within a Uralo-Altaic family were based on such shared features as [[vowel harmony]] and [[agglutinative language|agglutination]].

According to Roy Miller, the most pressing evidence for the theory is the similarities in [[verb]]al [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]].<ref name=miller96/>

The ''Etymological Dictionary'' by Starostin and others (2003) proposes a set of sound change laws that would explain the evolution from Proto-Altaic to the descendant languages. For example, although most of today's Altaic languages have vowel harmony, Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by them lacked it; instead, various vowel assimilations between the first and second syllables of words occurred in Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic. They also included a number of grammatical correspondences between the languages.<ref name=staro2003/>

====Shared lexicon====
Starostin claimed in 1991 that the members of the proposed Altaic group shared about 15–20% of apparent cognates within a 110-word [[Swadesh list#Shorter lists|Swadesh-Yakhontov list]]; in particular, Turkic–Mongolic 20%, Turkic–Tungusic 18%, Turkic–Korean 17%, Mongolic–Tungusic 22%, Mongolic–Korean 16%, and Tungusic–Korean 21%.<ref name=staro91>Sergei A. Starostin (1991): ''Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka'' ('The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language'). Nauka, Moscow.</ref> The 2003 ''Etymological Dictionary'' includes a list of 2,800 proposed [[cognate]] sets, as well as a few important changes to the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic. The authors tried hard to distinguish loans between Turkic and Mongolic and between Mongolic and Tungusic from cognates; and suggest words that occur in Turkic and Tungusic but not in Mongolic. All other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book. It lists 144 items of shared basic vocabulary, including words for such items as 'eye', 'ear', 'neck', 'bone', 'blood', 'water', 'stone', 'sun', and 'two'.<ref name=staro2003>Sergei Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak (2003): ''[[Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages]]'', 3 volumes. {{ISBN|90-04-13153-1}}.</ref>

[[Martine Robbeets|Robbeets]] and Bouckaert (2018) use [[Bayesian phylogeny|Bayesian phylolinguistic methods]] to argue for the coherence of the "narrow" Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic) together with Japonic and Koreanic, which they refer to as the ''Transeurasian'' languages.<ref name= "Robbeets2018">Robbeets, M.; Bouckaert, R.: [https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2630213_5/component/file_2630221/shh1046.pdf?mode=download Bayesian phylolinguistics reveals the internal structure of the Transeurasian family]. ''Journal of Language Evolution'' 3 (2), pp. 145–162 (2018) {{doi|10.1093/jole/lzy007}}</ref> Their results include the following phylogenetic tree:<ref>[https://www.shh.mpg.de/1025823/transeurasian-bayesian Structure of Transeurasian language family revealed by computational linguistic methods] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222112331/https://www.shh.mpg.de/1025823/transeurasian-bayesian |date=22 December 2019 }}. 2018. [[Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History]].</ref>

{{clade
|label1='''Transeurasian'''
|1={{clade
|label1=Japano-Koreanic
|1={{clade
|1=[[Japonic languages|Japonic]]
|2=[[Koreanic languages|Koreanic]]
}}
|label2=Altaic
|2={{clade
|1=[[Tungusic languages|Tungusic]]
|2={{clade
|1=[[Mongolic languages|Mongolic]]
|2=[[Turkic languages|Turkic]]
}}
}}
}}
}}

[[Martine Robbeets]] et al. (2021) argues that early Transeurasian speakers were originally agriculturalists in [[Northeastern Asia]], only becoming pastoralists later on.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Robbeets |first1=Martine |last2=Bouckaert |first2=Remco |last3=Conte |first3=Matthew |last4=Savelyev |first4=Alexander |last5=Li |first5=Tao |last6=An |first6=Deog-Im |last7=Shinoda |first7=Ken-ichi |last8=Cui |first8=Yinqiu |last9=Kawashima |first9=Takamune |last10=Kim |first10=Geonyoung |last11=Uchiyama |first11=Junzo |last12=Dolińska |first12=Joanna |last13=Oskolskaya |first13=Sofia |last14=Yamano |first14=Ken-Yōjiro |last15=Seguchi |first15=Noriko |date=2021 |title=Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=599 |issue=7886 |pages=616–621 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-04108-8 |issn=1476-4687|doi-access=free |pmid=34759322 |pmc=8612925 }}</ref>

The analysis conducted by Kassian et al. (2021) on a 110-item word list, specifically developed for each of the languages — [[Proto-Turkic language|Proto-Turkic]], [[Proto-Mongolic language|Proto-Mongolic]], [[Proto-Tungusic]], [[Middle Korean]] and [[Proto-Japonic]] — indicated partial support for the Altaic macrofamily, with Korean seemingly excluded. While acknowledging that prehistoric contacts are a plausible alternative explanation for the positive results, they deem such a scenario less likely for the lexical matches between Turkic and Japonic languages, which are better explained by genealogical relationship because of the substantial geographical distances involved.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kassian |first1=Alexei S. |last2=Starostin |first2=George |last3=Egorov |first3=Ilya M. |last4=Logunova |first4=Ekaterina S. |last5=Dybo |first5=Anna V. |date=2021 |title=Permutation test applied to lexical reconstructions partially supports the Altaic linguistic macrofamily |journal=Evolutionary Human Sciences |language=en |volume=3 |pages=e32 |doi=10.1017/ehs.2021.28 |issn=2513-843X|doi-access=free |pmid=37588568 |pmc=10427268 }} Quote: "Korean shows no positive results with any of its potential Altaic relatives....Korean emerges as either unrelated to any of these four taxa or impervious to the efficacy of the algorithm owing to major mutations undergone by non-initial consonants in Pre-Proto-Korean."</ref>