Are all agglutinative languages BY
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Page 3 - III - The Hague (Holland), November 24, 2007 MIKES INTERNATIONAL Today we publish four new works of Professor Alfréd Tóth. Present volume is entitled ‘Are all agglutinative languages related to one another?’. The following volumes of Prof. Tóth were published electronically by Mikes International: 1. TÓTH, Alfréd: ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF HUNGARIAN (in English) (792 p.) 2. TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARIAN, SUMERIAN AND EGYPTIAN. — HUNGARIAN, SUMERIAN AND HEBREW. Two Addenda to ‘Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian’ (EDH) (in English) (113 p.) 3. TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARIAN, SUMERIAN AND PENUTIAN — Second Addendum to ‘Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian’ (EDH) (in English) (37 p.) 4. TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARIAN, SUMERIAN AND INDO-EUROPEAN — Third Addendum to ‘Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian’ (EDH) (in English) (118 p.) 5. TÓTH, Alfréd: IS THE TURANIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY A PHANTOM? (in English) (36 p.) 6. TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARO-RAETICA (in English) (39 p.) 7. TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARO-RAETICA II. (in English) (38 p.) 8. TÓTH, Alfréd: SUMERIAN, HUNGARIAN AND MONGOLIAN (INCLUDING AVARIC) (in English) (89 p.) 9.TÓTH, Alfréd & BRUNNER, Linus: RAETIC — An Extinct Semitic Language in Central Europe (in English) (167 p.) 10.TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNGARIAN-MESOPOTAMIAN DICTIONARY (HMD) (in English) (152 p.) 11.TÓTH, Alfréd: HUNNIC-HUNGARIAN ETYMOLOGICAL WORD LIST (based on the editions of the Isfahan codex by Dr. Csaba Detre and Imre Pet ) (in English) (66 p.)
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ALFRÉD TÓTH: ARE ALL AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUAGES RELATED TO ONE ANOTHER? |
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1. Introduction 1 In linguistics, languages can be compared to one another either by genetic or by typological classifications. Genetic relationship means that all the languages compared are (supposed to be) genetically related to one another like the members of a family. An example is the Germanic language family, which contains amongst other languages German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, the two Norwegians, Icelandic, Färöic etc. Typological relationship means that certain languages – that are not or not necessarily genetically related to one another – share certain (mostly syntactic) features. Examples are Biblical Latin, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese because they are all topic-prominent (Tóth 1992). Genetic classification of languages goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and his successors who became founders of comparative historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages.
But already von Humboldt, August Schleicher (1821-1868) and others
introduced early typological classifications of languages and
suggested that typologically similar languages may also be
genetically related. This was the basic reason why already very early
Indo-European and Semitic were compared to one another – because they
are the only two big flectional (flexive) language families, and it
was thought that this could not be by chance. Nowadays, one
differentiates at least 4 (mostly overlapping and partially
contradicting) sorts of typological classifications: Because these categories are both overlapping and partially contradictory, some classifications turn out very odd. So is, e.g., Tibetan agglutinative but has Ablaut (apophony) like fusional languages (ex.: Engl. sing – sang – sung), but unlike fusional languages, Tibetan is ergative-absolutive. Verb-initial word order structures (e.g., VSO) are typical for Semitic languages (yet except Akkadian and Rhaetic), but Old Irish (Indo-European) also follows this type (and clearly not under Semitic influence). Most ergative languages are agglutinative and thus do not belong to the Indo-European languages, but Hindi, Punjabi, Kurdish and Ossetic are ergative and nevertheless Indo-European, although they are also characterized by fusion. On the other side, the “hyperflexive” Caucasian languages are not fusional, but agglutinative, etc.
Common sense in comparative linguistics is still that there is no
need for typologically related languages to be also genetically
related and vice versa. The basic reason is the assumption that
languages may change their typological structure: 1 For providing me with articles or whole books that were not accessible to me I mention thankfully for their help: Prof. Dr. Václav Blažek (University of Brno), Prof. Dr. László Marácz (University of Amsterdam), Prof. Dr. Michael Noonan (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Prof. Dr. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz), Dr. Irmgard Pult (Ermatingen), PD Dr. Johannes Reckel (University of Göttingen), Frau Ute Rieger (University of Jena), Dr. Paul Sidwell (University of Melbourne) and Prof. Dr. George van Driem (University of Leiden).
Page 6 Trubetzkoy thus assumes (contradicting most other linguists) that flexive languages are not the crown of creation, but an initial or intermediate stadium on the way to agglutination. Already Brunner (1969: 4) assumed that Proto-Indo-European was agglutinative – an assumption that was recently shared by Lehmann (2002). And looking at Tibetan that seems to have conserved its Sumerian heritage at least what concerns its grammar best of all languages rooting in Sumerian, is agglutinative with Ablaut like Sumerian was. Therefore, Trubetzkoy may be right despite the fact that nobody followed him: Ablaut is the basic feature for flexional languages, but flexion alone can also be expressed by agglutination. So, Sumerian was kind of hyper-characterized (as Tibetan still is), thus leading on one side into language families that concentrated on Ablaut and thus became flexive, and on the other side to language families that concentrated on flexion and thus became agglutinative. From this standpoint, isolating languages in which particles fulfill the functions of affixes seem to be even a step further – this assumption also being in contradiction with most linguists. And it is surely not by chance that the isolating Malayo-Polynesian language family could be proven related to the flexive Semitic and Indo-European families (Brunner 1982). Generally, the suspect that arises that languages in a very early stadium were hyper-characterized is also what concerns the other typological features: Since in ergative languages the object in an intransitive clause is marked by the same case as the subject in a transitive clause, the syntactic role subject, the semantic role agents and the pragmatic role topic do not coincide as they do in accusative languages. Thus, the accusative languages seem to show a certain linguistic economy that is typical for more developed languages, but not for early ones. The same seems to be true for topic-prominent languages, since topics can fulfill any syntactic and semantic function, even settings can be topic (e.g., the beginning of the famous Lili Marleen song), while in subject-prominent languages the subject is mostly identical with the topic or has otherwise to be marked by special markers or syntactic structures. It is therefore not plausible at all to assume that the older a language – the simpler its structure. From our theoretical considerations as well as from the oldest testified language – Sumerian – it follows clearly that very early languages had all the possibilities together that have become differentiated in later stages of these languages following strategies of linguistic economy and leading to the known typologically differentiated languages and language families. And this seems to be true for all 4 typological structures mentioned above. Relatively recently, few linguists resumed the question if there may be certain chances of genetic- typological relationships: Hakola compared Finnish, Japanese, Mongolian, Quechua and Tamil and came to the following conclusion: “Examination of accidental CVC and CV correspondences among languages representing 5 large families of agglutinative languages found that comparison pairs had much more singularity between basic 100-word vocabularies than would have been possible by mere chance, supporting the hypothesis that those 5 language families were mutually related” (1989, p. 394). Anttila stated: “In this way typology is hierarchically superior to genetic linguistics” (1989, p. 318). Anttila’s statement is of particular interest. It means that languages can change, but only in the frame of their typological constraints. It follows that typological structures are inheritable. This insight has huge consequences, since up to Anttila, e.g., the agglutinative structure of Indo-European languages like Tocharian, Ossetic or Kurdish was explained either via substrate or adstrate effect: Tocharian, e.g., was allegedly agglutinative only because its neighboring languages (Uighur, Old Chinese) were agglutinative. The same was assumed for Kurdish (influence of agglutinative Turkish) and Ossetic (via agglutinative Caucasian languages), but since agglutination is inheritable, nothing stops us from assuming that Ossetic may have inherited its agglutinative structure from its also agglutinating ancestor- languages Scythian, Sarmatian, Alanian, Sacian and Massagetian.
Page 7 It can be shown that the distribution of many typological features of languages is not random but geographically (relatively) restricted. E.g., ergative-absolutive languages show up basically in the Caucasus, in North America, Mesoamerica, Australia: Basque, Berber, Dyirbal, Eskimo-Aleut, Kurdish, Mayan, Mixe-Zoque, Samoan, Tagalog and many other Austronesian languages, Sumerian, Tibetan, Caucasian without Kartvelian. Since agglutination is inheritable, we may thus ask if the agglutinative languages are also concentrated in certain regions of the world. Unfortunately, since there is no complete list of agglutinative languages (but cf. Shibatani/Bynon 1999), the following overview may be incomplete:
Uralic (Collinder 1957) The following ancient languages were also agglutinative:
Pre-Indo-European (Lehmann 2002; Greenberg 2000)
Page 8 From this brief list, we can conclude: 1. All known Mesopotamian languages (excluded the later Semitic languages like Akkadian, Rhaetic, Amoritic, Ugaritic, etc.) were agglutinative. 2. The geographical distribution of the agglutinative languages is more or less identical with the languages that have been suspected in the past to be related to Hungarian and thus have been researched in my “Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian” (Tóth 2007b): Roughly speaking, they extend from the Ice Sea to the Southern Seas leaving huge “gaps” only in certain parts of India (e.g., no member of the Mon-Khmer family is according to my knowledge agglutinative). Therefore, agglutination is not only inheritable, but agglutinative languages seem to cover a more or less coherent territory with a huge extension both in space and in time. Although not all languages are sufficiently documented, it is possible to show the genetic relationship of typologically related languages with Bouda’s concept of “Brückensprachen” (“bridging languages”) (cf. Bouda 1963). These are languages that connect both genetically and typologically related languages that are geographically (nowadays) distant. The concept of bridging languages is the more useful because, as already stated, languages can change their typological structure during their evolution. E.g., Old Chinese was agglutinative (as, e.g., Wu Chinese still is), while it is now isolating. The same may be true for the Mon- Khmer languages (cf. Shorto/Sidwell/ Bauer 2006, p. 590ss.). The special problem with India is that many of the hundreds of languages are not even researched yet. All the facts mentioned point strongly in favor of our suspect that all agglutinative languages are genetically related. In order to prove this hypothesis, I will proceed in two steps. First, I have collected all serious etymological studies that concern the genetic interrelationships between the above listed languages and counted the number of established word equations. From that, there can be no doubt that the phonetic proof that all these languages are related, has already be done. Second, I will apply Fokos-Fuchs’ (1962) catalogue of 25 syntactic and morpho-syntactic features that he used to prove syntactically the genetic relationship of the Uralic and Altaic languages, in order to demonstrate that Sumerian, Hungarian and the Dravidian languages share all features of Fokos-Fuchs’ catalogue. As representative of Dravidian I chose Kannada (Jensen 1969). The reason why I did not chose any other agglutinative language, is because most linguists believe since McAlpin (1981) that the Dravidian language originate in Elamite, although McAlpin brings only 81 word-equations while there are many hundreds of Sumerian-Dravidian cognates. Now, Elamite is besides Sumerian the only sufficiently documented ancient agglutinative Mesopotamian language. Thus, if we succeed in proving that the Dravidian languages are also syntactically related to Sumerian, we will be allowed to assume that all agglutinative language may be related to one another on the simple reason because they all go back to Sumerian.
Page 9 2. Overview of the phonetic proof The following classifications overlap with one another. Since each language comparison is listed only once, one has to look up all the classifications in order, e.g., to find to which other language Hungarian has been compared phonetically. The following list assembles only the most important comparisons and is thus by no means complete. 2.1. Uralic/Ural-Altaic
2.1.1. General Hungarian and FU (Lakó and Rédei 1967/78): 677
word-equations
2.1.2. Ural-Altaic and Dravidian Burrow (1943/46): 72 word-equations
only from the semantic field “body” 2.2.Altaic
2.2.1. General Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu, Korean;
Starostin/Dybo/Mudrak 2003): 2800 word-equations
2.2.2. Altaic and Japanese Japanese-Uralic (Kazár 1980): 594 word-equations 2.2.3. Altaic and Mayan Wikander (1967, 1970, 1970/71): over 100 word-equations
2.2.4. Manchu and Quechua Bouda (1961a): 120 word-equations 2.2.5. Turkish and Nubian Czermak (1921/22): morphologic and syntactic parallels 2.2.6. Mongolian and Hungarian Szentkatolnai (1877), ca. 2000 word-equations
Page 10 2.3. Ainu
2.3.1. Ainu and Altaic Rahder (1956-62): several thousands of
word-equations 2.3.2. Ainu, Altaic and Chinese Rahder (1961, 1963): several hundreds of word-equations 2.3.3. Ainu and Austroasiatic Bengtson/Blažek (2000): 82 word-equations 2.3.4. Ainu and Malayo-Polynesian Gjerdman (1926): over 70 word-equations 2.4. Eskimo-Aleut 2.4.1. General Fortescue/Jacobson/Kaplan (1994): over thousand word-equations 2.4.2. Eskimo-Aleut and Yukaghir Fortescue (1988, 1998, 2000): over hundred word-equations
2.4.3. Eskimo(-Aleut) and Hungarian Wøldike (1746a, 1746b): 86
word-equations
Page 11 2.5. Paleo-Siberian 2.5.1. Gilyak and Uralic Bouda (1960): 367 word-equations Bouda (1968): 95 word-equations
2.5.2. Chukchi and Finno-Ugric/Uralic Bouda (1941): 40 word-equations 2.5.3. Gilyak, Chukchi and Uralic Bouda (1976): 86 word-equations 2.5.4. Gilyak and Caucasian Bouda (1960): 88 word-equations 2.5.5. Chukchi and Eskimo Bouda (1941): 32 word-equations 2.5.6. Yenissean and Indo-Chinese Bouda (1957): 170 word-equations 2.5.7. Yenissean and Tibetan Bouda (1936): 27 word-equations 2.6. Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan
2.6.1. General
Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Tibetan, Burman, Jingpo, Lushai;
Peiros/Starostin 1996): 2637 word-equations 2.6.2. Tibetan and Chinese Simon (1929): 338 word-equations 2.6.3. Tibetan and Hungarian Tóth (2007b, ch. 10): 232 word-equations
Page 12 2.6.4. Chinese and Hungarian Podhorszky (1877): ca. 2000 word-equations 2.6.5. Tibeto-Burman and Nepalese (Newari) Shafer (1952a): ca. 250 word-equations 2.6.6. Tibetan and Caucasian Bouda (1949): 206 word-equations Bouda (1956): 162 word-equations 2.6.7. Tibeto-Burman and Paleo-Siberian Bouda (1956): 48 word-equations 2.6.8. Tibeto-Burman and Vietnamese Shafer (1942): 26 word-equations 2.6.9. Sino-Tibetan and Uzo-Aztecan Shafer (1964): ca. 20 word-equations 2.6.10. Sino-Tibetan and Athapaskan Shafer (1952b, 1957): ca. 100 word-equations 2.7. Caucasian (partially together with Basque)
2.7.1. Georgian/Kartvelian and Sumerian Tseretheli (1916): 260
word-equations
2.7.2. Caucasian and Uralic Bouda (1965): 36 word-equations
2.7.3. Caucasian and Mesoamerican Mixe-Zoque: (Bouda 1963): 195
word-equations 2.7.4. Caucasian and Tasmanian Bouda (1953a): 45 word-equations
Page 13 2.8. Burushaski
2.8.1. Burushaski and Caucasian Bouda (1950): 112 word-equations 2.8.2. Burushaski and Tibetan Bouda (1964c): 19 word-equations 2.8.3. Burushaski and Uralian Bouda (1964c): 11 word-equations
2.8.4. Burushaski and Paleo-Siberian Yenissean: Bouda (1957): 11
word-equations 2.8.5. Burushaski and Indochinese Bouda (1950): 86 word-equations 2.9. Indo-European 2.9.1. Indo-European and Sumerian Frayne (1993): 50 word-equations 2.9.2. Indo-European and Semitic Brunner (1969): 1030 word-equations 2.9.3. Indo-European and Finno-Ugric Jacobsohn (1922): ca. 2000 word-equations 2.9.4. Indo-European, Semitic and Polynesian Brunner (1982): 958 word-equations Page 14 - 10 - 2.9.5. Indo-European and Hungarian Szabédi (1974), over 1000 word-equations Tóth (2007a, EDH-IV): 607 word-equations, from which 203 Indo-European = Semitic 2.10. Semitic2.10.1. Hungarian and Hebrew Kiss (1839): ca. 1600 word-equations 2.11. Egyptian2.11.1. Egyptian and Hungarian Poukka (1979): 1046 word-equations 2.12. Etruscan2.12.1. Etruscan and Hungarian Tóth (2007a, ch. 9): 280 word-equations 2.13. Bantu
2.13.1. Bantu and Sumerian Drexel (1919/20);
2.14.1. Dravidian and Elamite McAlpin (1981): 81 word-equations
2.15.1. Austro-Asiatic and Japanese Matsumoto (1928): 113 word
equations
Page 15
2.15.3. Munda (Santali) and Hungarian von Hevesy (1932): 1134 word
equations
2.16.1. General Sumerian and Dene-Caucasian (= Sino-Caucasian:
Basque, Caucasian, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Yenissean + Na Dene;
Blažek/Bengtson 1995): 219 word-equations
2.17.1. Misikito/Sumo and Caucasian Bouda (1962): 199 word-equations
2.18.1. Sumerian and (Meso-, South American) Stucken (1927): over 100
word-equations
Page 16 2.18.4. Mayan and Hungarian Tóth (2007b, ch. 17): 111 word-equations 2.19. (Malayo-)Polynesian
2.19.1. Polynesian and Sumerian Rivet (1929): ca. 200 word-equations
Page 17 3. The syntactic and morpho-syntactic proof Since Fokos-Fuchs (1962) has already demonstrated that all of his 25 features apply to all members of the Uralic and Altaic families, we will show here only the correspondences between Hungarian, Dravidian and Sumerian. In order to accommodate to my non-linguistic readers, I will use a very simplified kind of interlinear-version to show the structures of the non-Hungarian examples. 3.1. Nominal clause Like the Uralic and Altaic clause, also the Sumerian and the Dravidian clauses are nominal, i.e. the predicate was originally a noun or a verbal noun:
3.2. Attributive adjective The attributive adjective precedes the noun it refers to, i.e. it follows the general principal rectum before regens (cf. 3.8.):
3.3. Numerus absolutus After numerals bigger than 1 that are simply expressing a quantity, the nouns to which they refer, appear in the singular or rather in the numerus absolutus:
Page 18 3.4. “half; half part” in one of the body parts in pairs Body parts that appear in pairs are considered to be unities. Therefore, if one part of these pairs has to be expressed, it appears as “a half (of)”:
3.5. Noun as adjectival attribute Nouns appear as attributes without prepositions or the like:
3.6. Copulative and tautological compounds With copulative and especially with tautological compounds the same meaning of a noun (or also a verb) is expressed twice:
3.7. Possessive personal suffixes Instead of possessive pronouns like in many languages (e.g., my house, your house), possessive personal suffixes are used:
Page 19 3.8. Possessive Relation Possessive relation is expressed only in the nomen possessivi by aid of personal suffixes:
3.9. Possessive personal pronouns in determining function
3.10. Possessive personal suffixes with pronouns and numerals
Page 20 3.11. “habere”, “non habere” Instead of using the “to have” or “to have not”, possession is expressed with “to be” or “to be not”:
3.12. Postpositions Agglutinative languages have postpositions instead of prepositions:
3.13. Reflexive pronoun Instead of a reflexive pronoun there appears often a noun together with possessive personal suffixes. As a noun, Hung. uses mag “seed”, Finn. itse “shadow, shadow-soul”, Turk. öz “heart, soul”, etc.:
3.14. Interrogative pronoun The interrogative-indefinite pronoun “what; somewhat” can denote “or something/anything else”:
Page 21 3.15. Tripartite case system Agglutinative languages are characterized by a tripartite local case system by use of locative (“where?”), ablative (“from where”?) and lative (“to where?”):
3.16. Lative constructions Lative is not only used for expressing direction, but appears often with certain verbs which are combined in other languages with locative or at least with local and not with directional cases:
3.17. Ablative/adessive constructions in comparisons Ablative or adessive are used in comparative constructions of the type “A is more x than Y” and the like:
Page 22 3.18. Accusative object with and without suffix
3.19. Figura etymologica Figura etymologica, thematic infinitive and related constructions are very characteristic for agglutinative languages:
3.20. Verbal nouns as verbal forms Verbal forms are to a big part originally verbal nouns to which personal endings were attached:
Page 23 3.21. Use of verbal nouns
3.22. Copulative connection of coordinate parts of speech
3.23. Parataxis and verbal adverb instead of hypotaxis
Page 24 3.24. Yes-no-questions and answering strategies Typical are question-markers in yes-no-questions and answers that consists either of the full verbal phrase to which the question markers was added or only of the pre-verb:
3.25. Word order “The most important rule of word order is: rectum before regens” (Fokos-Fuchs 1962, p. 112).” One could also say: The most important rule of word order is that focus elements immediately precede the (inflected) verb, while the rest of the comment and the topic can stand in any position whereby the rules are not governed by syntax, but by semantics and pragmatics. This is especially true for the negation, cf. in Hung. Van kenyér? = “Is there bread?” vs. Kenyér nincs (*Nincs kenyér) = “There is no bread”. Since these rules apply to all examples that Fokos-Fuchs presents, it follows that not only Hung., but all Uralic and Altaic languages are topic-prominent.
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Page 26 4. Conclusions From the word-equations in the works cited in chapter 2 and in HMD (Tóth 2007a) and EDH (Tóth 2007b) there can be no doubt that all agglutinative languages are phonetically related to Sumerian and thus to one another. Since both Sumerian and Kannada (as representative of the Dravidian languages) fulfill the syntactic and morpho-syntactic requirements of genetic relationship established for Uralic and Altaic by Fokos-Fuchs (1962), all agglutinative languages are also syntactically related to one another and thus must originate in Sumerian. Especially, this is also true for the Dravidian languages whose Elamite origin was asserted by McAlpin (1981) and followed by many linguists. Our study proves, however, that the Dravidian languages, too, originate both phonetically and syntactically in Sumerian. The syntactic structure of Elamite is quite different from Sumerian (cf. the overview in Streck 2005) and has, e.g., markers for meaning-classes like the Bantu languages. Our main result that Dravidian and Elamite are not related confirms the etymological implications for an Afro-Elamite family established by Blažek (2002a, 2002b) and explains why Hungarian and Bantu share only 8% of cognates (Tóth 2007b, ch. 8) despite the attempts made by Meinhof (1914/15), Drexel (1919/20) and Wanger (1935) to connect African and Sumerian.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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Page 32 - 28 - ALFRÉD TÓTH was born in 1965 in St. Gallen (Switzerland), his native tongue is Hungarian. Received two PhD's (1989 Mathematics, University of Zurich; 1992 Philosophy, University of Stuttgart) and an MA (General and Comparative Linguistics, Finno-Ugristics and Romanistics, University of Zurich 1991). Mr. Tóth is since 2001 Professor of Mathematics (Algebraic Topology) in Tucson, Arizona. He is member of many mathematical, semiotic, cybernetic and linguistic societies and scientific board member of eight international journals. Lives in Tucson and Szombathely where his family comes from. |
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