Volume 20, Winter 1998

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Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 20, Winter 1998
(University of Calgary, 1998-01) Blair, Leslie; Burns, Christine; Rowsell, Lorna V
The editors of this volume, Leslie Blair, Christine Bums and Lorna Rowsell are pleased to present the twentieth issue of the Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics published by the department of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. The papers contained in this volume represent works in progress and as such should not be considered in any way final or definitive.
Open Access
Var mı, yok mu? ("Does it or doesn't it exist?"): the Altaic dilemma (or: Aru, nai?)
(University of Calgary, 1998-01) Mills, Timothy Ian
This paper is an overview of arguments for the relatedness of the two languages demonstrated in the title - Turkish and Japanese - and the series of language groups between the two, including the rest of the Turkic languages, the Mongolian and Manchu-Tungus families, and Korean, the close sister of Japanese. The Altaic family is a hypothesized genetic unity including the subfamilies of Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus, as well as the fringe languages of Japanese and Korean. The great geographical expanse of these languages encourages scepticism until one considers that Indo-European is said to reach from Icelandic to Hindi. Having had less attention in studies of historical linguistics than lndo-European, the existence of the Altaic family is still hotly debated among scholars.