John:

>Agreed, but in the absence of a soundly based phylogeny, we will
>be tempted into errors in our reconstruction of Altaic (a little
>like linguists of the 19th century made errors by accepting Sanscrit as
>closer to PIE than other I-E languages). This will tend to lead to errors
>of the GIGO type in reconstructions higher
>than Proto-Altaic.

Maybe, maybe not. Luckily, Altaic isn't the only language group
to rely on for reconstructing earlier stages. IndoEuropean is
very well reconstructed now and Uralic is close behind. I think
Altaicists, just like Nostraticists, need to breathe, step back,
and build on the less contraversial connections first before
proposing more farflung connections. Pronouns and grammatical
elements first, then less common or unlikelier vocabulary like
"emu", "footstool" and "supernova" later :)

Secondly, it would be nice if Starostin and people like him
understood "phonemic economy". Start with the simplest
phonological system possible ONLY UNTIL there is a justification
to expand that system! There is no basis for a contrast of
*g/*k`/*k, for example. It surely is merely a matter of *g/*k.
Starostin shows that he is hopelessly confused when he reconstructs
*t` where there should be *t, and *t where there should be *d.
I also don't see the basis for the use of Starostin's velar nasal.
When looking at Altaic I want to impose at least a five-vowel
system of *a, *i, *u, *� and *�. That's the simplest vowel system
one could get away with for Altaic, given the fact of vowel harmony.

>Agreed, but then in the absence of a sound study of intra-Altaic
>phonemes, your schema is possibly no better (or no worse) than
>Bomhard's or Starostin's.

Nothing could be worse or even comparable to Starostin's work and,
despite some failings, I really don't think Bomhard is on the same
level of incompetency. Bomhard, at least, does impose a clear
sound system. It doesn't take much to figure out the basic
sound correspondances of Altaic by simply comparing the basic
grammatical elements of the language and simple vocabulary items.
A painfully obvious connection is Turkish /d/ = Japanese /y/ for
example (Turkish d�rt, Japanese yotsu "four" < *d�r-, in my view)
and surely it must derive from earlier *d (not *t, as Starostin
thinks) for the sake of Occam's Razor. Only Starostin flies in the
face of Occam's Razor, unnecessarily proposing a third phoneme to
account for the two, all in order to nourish his conviction of an
unsound 3-way stop system.

>I suspect including Hunnic from the Chinese transcriptions
>could have a significant effect upon our reconstructed proto-Altaic, as
>Hunnic words seem to have been been borrowed
>into both Turkic and (via Uighur) Mongol.

Of course. It doesn't take much arithmetic to figure out that
there are probably a lot of vocabulary items that have been
borrowed between Turkic and Mongolic. And, who knows if our
sheep word is even Altaic? Perhaps it was borrowed into Mongolic
and then into Turkic at some early date. Aaaargggghhh, my head
is going to explode!


- love gLeN


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