Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Language group in central and northern Asia with approximately sixty languages and 250 million speakers, divided into the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic families. The inclusion of Korean, Japanese, and Ainu into this group, as well as its possible relationship to the Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut language groups is debated. The first classification goes back to Strahlenberg (1730).
Characteristics: relatively uniform in its typology; simple phonemic system, simple syllable structure, vowel harmony; morphological agglutination, primarily suffixal; rich case system, subject-verb agreement. Word order SOV, strictly prespecifying; numerous participial forms (converbs) for conjunction and subordination of clauses.
References
Comrie, B. 1981.
The languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge.
Fortescue, M. 1981. Endoactive-exoactive markers in Eskimo-Aleut, Tungus and Japanese: an investigation 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.
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