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Turco-Mongol tradition

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A sprachbund ( / ˈ s p r ɑː k b ʊ n d / , from German : Sprachbund [ˈʃpʁaːxbʊnt] , lit. 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area , area of linguistic convergence , or diffusion area , is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact . The languages may be genetically unrelated , or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.

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37-791: The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate . The ruling Mongol elites of these khanates eventually assimilated into the Turkic populations that they conquered and ruled over, thus becoming known as Turco-Mongols . These elites gradually adopted Islam , as well as Turkic languages , while retaining Mongol political and legal institutions. The Turco-Mongols founded many Islamic successor states after

74-448: A stop consonant ), which was followed by a tone split where the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants disappeared but in compensation the number of tones doubled. These parallels led to confusion over the classification of these languages, until André-Georges Haudricourt showed in 1954 that tone was not an invariant feature, by demonstrating that Vietnamese tones corresponded to certain final consonants in other languages of

111-897: A Turco-Mongol dynasty which gained power in Central Asia after the decline of the Chagatai khans. Chagatai is the predecessor of the modern Karluk branch of Turkic languages, which includes Uzbek and Uyghur . The Mongols during the period of the early Mongol conquests and the conquests of Genghis Khan largely followed Tengrism . However, the successor states of the Mongol Empire, the Ilkhanate , Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate ruled over large Muslim populations. The Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate in particular ruled over Muslim majority populations in Iran and Central Asia, respectively. In

148-509: A classic 1956 paper titled "India as a Linguistic Area", Murray Emeneau laid the groundwork for the general acceptance of the concept of a sprachbund. In the paper, Emeneau observed that the subcontinent's Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages shared a number of features that were not inherited from a common source, but were areal features , the result of diffusion during sustained contact. These include retroflex consonants , echo words , subject–object–verb word order, discourse markers , and

185-747: A genetic relationship ( rodstvo ) and those arising from convergence due to language contact ( srodstvo ). Nikolai Trubetzkoy introduced the Russian term языковой союз ( yazykovoy soyuz 'language union') in a 1923 article. In a paper presented to the first International Congress of Linguists in 1928, he used a German calque of this term, Sprachbund , defining it as a group of languages with similarities in syntax , morphological structure, cultural vocabulary and sound systems, but without systematic sound correspondences, shared basic morphology or shared basic vocabulary. Later workers, starting with Trubetzkoy's colleague Roman Jakobson , have relaxed

222-524: A genetic relationship and led to the widespread acceptance of an Altaic language family . More recently, due to the lack of a definitive demonstration of a genetic relationship, these similarities have been divided into these three known periods of language contact. The similarities have led to the proposal of a Northeast Asian sprachbund instead, which also includes the Tungusic , Korean , and Japonic language families, although Turkic and Mongolic display

259-630: A major field of research in language contact and convergence. Some linguists, such as Matthias Castrén , G. J. Ramstedt , Nicholas Poppe and Pentti Aalto , supported the idea that the Mongolic , Turkic , and Tungusic families of Asia (and some small parts of Europe) have a common ancestry, in a controversial group they call Altaic . Koreanic and Japonic languages, which are also hypothetically related according to some scholars like William George Aston , Shōsaburō Kanazawa, Samuel Martin and Sergei Starostin , are sometimes included as part of

296-565: A number of similarities including syntax and grammar , vocabulary and its use as well as the relationship between contrasting words and their origins, idioms and word order which all made them stand out from many other language groups around the world which do not share these similarities; in essence creating a continental sprachbund. His point was to argue that the disproportionate degree of knowledge of SAE languages biased linguists towards considering grammatical forms to be highly natural or even universal, when in fact they were only peculiar to

333-571: A process of assimilation with the non-Mongol populations that they ruled over. The population of the Golden Horde was largely a mixture of Turks and Mongols who adopted Islam later, as well as smaller numbers of Finno-Ugric peoples , Sarmato-Scythians , Slavs , and people from the Caucasus , among others (whether Muslim or not). Most of the Horde's population was Turkic: Kipchaks , Cumans , Volga Bulgars , Khwarezmians , and others. The Horde

370-399: A sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Without knowledge of the history of a regional group of similar languages, it may be difficult to determine whether sharing indicates a language family or a sprachbund. In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from

407-742: Is home to speakers of languages of the Sino-Tibetan , Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Tai–Kadai , Austronesian (represented by Chamic ) and Mon–Khmer families. Neighbouring languages across these families, though presumed unrelated, often have similar features, which are believed to have spread by diffusion. A well-known example is the similar tone systems in Sinitic languages (Sino-Tibetan), Hmong–Mien, Tai languages (Kadai) and Vietnamese (Austroasiatic). Most of these languages passed through an earlier stage with three tones on most syllables (but no tonal distinctions on checked syllables ending in

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444-548: Is rarely found in Western works, and has been attributed to late 20th-century ethnographic studies in the countries of the former Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc . This term has been used for example in works of Bulgarian, Georgian, Hungarian and Polish ethnographers. Paul R. Magocsi , an American historian specializing in Ukrainian studies , described the concept of an ethnographic group as closely related to that of

481-756: The Indian subcontinent . The Turks and Tatars also ruled part of Egypt , exercising political and military authority during the Mamluk Sultanate . One of the khanates where Turkic-Mongolian traditions are experienced most intensely is the Yenisei Kingdom . The ruling dynasty comes from the Melig lineage, the son of Ögedei khan , who was a Muslim . There are Turkic peoples such as Teleuts , Kimeks , Kipchaks , Altaians , Kyrgyzs , Naymans under their rule. These Turco-Mongol elites became patrons of

518-585: The South Slavic languages of the southern Balkans (Bulgarian, Macedonian and to a lesser degree Serbo-Croatian ), Greek , Balkan Turkish , and Romani . All but one of these are Indo-European languages but from very divergent branches, and Turkish is a Turkic language . Yet they have exhibited several signs of grammatical convergence, such as avoidance of the infinitive , future tense formation, and others. The same features are not found in other languages that are otherwise closely related, such as

555-692: The Tarim Basin ( Northwest China ) and large parts of West Asia ( Middle East ). Before the time of Genghis Khan , Turkic and Mongolic peoples exchanged words between each other, with Turkic languages being more active than Mongolic. Extensive lexical borrowings from Proto-Turkic into the Proto-Mongolic language occurred from at latest the first millennium BCE. Turkic and Mongolic languages share extensive borrowed similarities in their personal pronouns, among other lexical similarities, which seem to date to before this era and already existed before

592-600: The Turco-Persian tradition , which was the predominant culture amongst the Muslims of Central Asia at the time. In subsequent centuries, the Turco-Persian culture was carried on further by the conquering Turco-Mongols to neighbouring regions, eventually becoming the predominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of South Asia (Indian subcontinent), specifically North India ( Mughal Empire ), Central Asia and

629-531: The quotative . Emeneau specified the tools to establish that language and culture had fused for centuries on the Indian soil to produce an integrated mosaic of structural convergence of four distinct language families: Indo-Aryan , Dravidian , Munda and Tibeto-Burman . This concept provided scholarly substance for explaining the underlying Indian-ness of apparently divergent cultural and linguistic patterns. With his further contributions, this area has now become

666-599: The "Sword of Islam", and patronized educational and religious institutions. He converted nearly all the Borjigin leaders to Islam during his lifetime. Timur decisively defeated the Christian Knights Hospitaller at the Siege of Smyrna , styling himself a ghazi . Ethnocultural An ethnographic group or ethnocultural group is a group that has cultural traits that make it stand out from

703-622: The Golden Horde, Uzbeg (Öz-Beg) assumed the throne in 1313 and adopted Islam as the state religion . He proscribed Buddhism and Shamanism among the Mongols in Russia, thus reversing the spread of the Yuan culture. By 1315, Uzbeg had successfully Islamicized the Horde, killing Jochid princes and Buddhist lamas who opposed his religious policy and succession of the throne. Uzbeg Khan continued

740-406: The Mongols built mosques and other "elaborate places" requiring baths—an important element of Muslim culture. Sarai attracted merchants from other countries. The slave trade flourished due to strengthening ties with the Mamluk Sultanate . Growth of wealth and increasing demand for products typically produce population growth, and so it was with Sarai. Housing in the region increased, which transformed

777-684: The Mon–Khmer family, and proposed that tone in the other languages had a similar origin. Similarly, the unrelated Khmer (Mon–Khmer), Cham (Austronesian) and Lao (Kadai) languages have almost identical vowel systems. Many languages in the region are of the isolating (or analytic) type, with mostly monosyllabic morphemes and little use of inflection or affixes , though a number of Mon–Khmer languages have derivational morphology . Shared syntactic features include classifiers , object–verb order and topic–comment structure, though in each case there are exceptions in branches of one or more families. In

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814-594: The SAE language group . Whorf likely considered Romance and West Germanic to form the core of the SAE, i.e. the literary languages of Europe which have seen substantial cultural influence from Latin during the medieval period . The North Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages tend to be more peripheral members. Alexander Gode , who was instrumental in the development of Interlingua , characterized it as "Standard Average European". The Romance, Germanic , and Slavic control languages of Interlingua are reflective of

851-551: The SAE features. Language families that have been proposed to actually be sprachbunds The work began to assume the character of a comparison between Hopi and western European languages. It also became evident that even the grammar of Hopi bore a relation to Hopi culture, and the grammar of European tongues to our own "Western" or "European" culture. And it appeared that the interrelation brought in those large subsummations of experience by language, such as our own terms "time," "space," "substance," and "matter." Since, with respect to

888-832: The alliance with the Mamluks begun by Berke and his predecessors. He kept a friendly relationship with the Mamluk Sultan and his shadow Caliph in Cairo . After a long delay and much discussion, he married a princess from his family to Al-Nasir Muhammad , Sultan of Egypt. Under Uzbeg and his successor Jani Beg (1342–1357), Islam, which among some of the Turks in Eurasia had deep roots going back into pre-Mongol times, gained general acceptance, though its adherents remained tolerant of other beliefs. In order to successfully expand Islam,

925-493: The breakup of the Turkic people around 500 BCE. A still more ancient period of prolonged language contact between Turkic and Mongol languages is indicated by further and more fundamental phonotactic, grammatical, and typological similarities (e.g. synchronic vowel harmony , lack of grammatical gender , extensive agglutination , highly similar phonotactic rules and phonology ). In the past, these similarities were attributed to

962-708: The capital into the center of a large Muslim Sultanate. In the Chagatai Khanate, Mubarak Shah converted to Islam and over time the Chagatai elite became entirely Islamized. The Chagatai Khanate was succeeded by the Timurid Empire in Central Asia, founded by the Turco-Mongol warrior Timur. According to John Joseph Saunders , Timur was "the product of an Islamized and Iranized society", and not steppe nomadic. To legitimize his conquests, Timur relied on Islamic symbols and language, referred to himself as

999-703: The collapse of the Mongol khanates, such as the Kazakh Khanate , the Tatar khanates that succeeded the Golden Horde (e.g., Crimean Khanate , Astrakhan Khanate , Khanate of Kazan ), and the Timurid Empire , which succeeded the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia . Babur (1483–1530), a Turco-Mongol prince and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur , founded the Mughal Empire , which ruled almost all of

1036-1101: The ethnic group. Some scholars use the term ethnographic group as a synonym to ethnic group. The concept of the ethnographic group as distinct from ethnic group has been rejected by some scholars; and it has been argued that most recent studies do not distinguish between the concepts of ethnographic and ethnic groups. An example of an ethnographic group division would be dividing the Subcarpathian Rus Rusyns ethnic group into Lemkos , Boikian and Hutsul ethnographic groups. Other groups that have been described by some scholars as ethnographic groups include Pomaks in Bulgaria, Lipka Tatars in Poland, Adjarians and Khevsurians in Georgia and Feylis in Iraq and Iran. Sprachbund#Northeast Asia A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as

1073-671: The language groups most often included in the SAE Sprachbund . The Standard Average European Sprachbund is most likely the result of ongoing language contact in the time of the Migration Period and later, continuing during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance . Inheritance of the SAE features from Proto-Indo-European can be ruled out because Proto-Indo-European, as currently reconstructed, lacked most of

1110-560: The larger ethnic group it is a part of. In other words, members of an ethnographic group will also consider themselves to be members of a larger ethnic group, both sharing a collective consciousness with it, and possessing their own distinct one. Ethnographic groups are presumed to be significantly assimilated with the larger ethnic group they are part of, though they retain distinctive, differentiating characteristics related to cultural values such as speech, religion, costume, or other cultural aspects. The concept of an ethnographic group

1147-466: The most extensive similarities. According to recent aggregation and research, there are doublets , which are considered to be the same in terms of their roots, found in the vocabulary in Mongolian language and Turkic loanwords. Also, words of Turkic origin are the most common loanwords in Mongolian vocabulary. Following the Mongol conquests, the ruling Mongol elites of the Mongol successor states began

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1184-633: The northeastern part of the Tibetan plateau spanning the Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Gansu , is an area of interaction between varieties of northwest Mandarin Chinese , Amdo Tibetan and Mongolic and Turkic languages . Standard Average European ( SAE ) is a concept introduced in 1939 by Benjamin Whorf to group the modern Indo-European languages of Europe which shared common features. Whorf argued that these languages were characterized by

1221-497: The other Romance languages in relation to Romanian, and the other Slavic languages such as Polish in relation to Bulgaro-Macedonian. Languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area have such great surface similarity that early linguists tended to group them all into a single family, although the modern consensus places them into numerous unrelated families. The area stretches from Thailand to China and

1258-564: The population, both sedentary and nomadic, adopted the Kypchak language , which developed into the regional languages of Kypchak groups after the Horde disintegrated. In the Chagatai Khanate , the Turkic language that was adopted by the Mongol elites became known as the Chagatai language , a descendant of Karluk Turkic. The Chagatai language was the native language of the Timurid dynasty ,

1295-458: The purported Altaic family. This latter hypothesis was supported by people including Roy Andrew Miller , John C. Street and Karl Heinrich Menges . Gerard Clauson , Gerhard Doerfer , Juha Janhunen , Stefan Georg and others dispute or reject this. A common alternative explanation for similarities among the "Altaic" languages, such as vowel harmony and agglutination , is that they are due to areal diffusion. The Qinghai–Gansu sprachbund , in

1332-629: The requirement of similarities in all four of the areas stipulated by Trubetzkoy. A rigorous set of principles for what evidence is valid for establishing a linguistic area has been presented by Campbell, Kaufman, and Smith-Stark. The idea of areal convergence is commonly attributed to Jernej Kopitar 's description in 1830 of Albanian , Bulgarian and Romanian as giving the impression of " nur eine Sprachform ... mit dreierlei Sprachmaterie ", which has been rendered by Victor Friedman as "one grammar with the [ sic ] three lexicons". The Balkan Sprachbund comprises Albanian, Romanian,

1369-429: Was gradually Turkified and lost its Mongol identity, while the descendants of Batu's original Mongol warriors constituted the upper class. They were commonly called Tatars by Russians and other Europeans. Russians preserved this common name for this group down to the 20th century. Whereas most members of this group identified themselves by their ethnic or tribal names, most also considered themselves to be Muslims. Most of

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