Mills, Timothy Ian2016-06-212016-06-211998-01Mills, T. I. (1998). Var mı, yok mu? ("Does it or doesn't it exist?"): the Altaic dilemma (or: Aru, nai?). Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 20(Winter), 55-72.2371-2643http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51418This 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.enLinguisticsTurkish languageJapanese languageComparative linguisticsTypology (Linguistics)Altaic languagesProto-Altaic languageHistorical linguisticsjournal article10.11575/PRISM/28941