Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 132 (2015): 121–134 doi:10.4467/20834624SL.15.013.3934 ANNA V. DYBO Institute of Linguistics, RAS, Moscow [email protected] ON THE REFLEXES OF PROTO-TURKIC VOWEL LENGTH IN THE TURKIC LANGUAGES … Parmi ces lambeaux de phrases presque effacés, les flots ont respecté quelques chiffres: malheureusement, la longitude… — On s’en passera ! s’écria le jeune garçon. Jules Verne The 129th volume of Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis con- tained an annotated edition of a previously unpublished paper by one of the “fathers” of modern Altaic studies, W. Kotwicz, written, it appears, around 1938 (K. Sta chow- ski 2012). The edition is a critical one, and an attempt at conveying to the reader as accurately as possible what Kotwicz had intended to publish, i.e. what he might have considered to be the completed text. In my opinion, the editor has fully suc- ceeded in this. The publication is doubtless of great historical-linguistic importance. So is the history of its creation that the publisher gave in the introduction, for it is a novel contribution to our understanding of the evolution of one of the problems of Turkic and Altaic reconstruction that was debated throughout the second half of the 19th and the 20th century, the problem of “primary” long vowels in the Turkic languages. The views on the Manchu-Tungus and the Mongolic long vowels that Kotwicz had expressed in his paper, have generally remained unchanged till this day; with the Turkic, this is not the case. In this paper, I attempt to give a more detailed “contextual commentary” to Kot- wicz’s article, i.e. to present the wider context of his research, and what the Turkic historical-comparative linguistics has finally settled on; that is to say, the views that Turkologists-comparativists currently adopt on the shortness : longness op- position in Proto-Turkic, and how they were influenced by Ligeti’s paper mentioned in the editorial commentary. I hope that the reader, not necessarily an expert on 122 ANNA V. DYBO historical-comparative grammar of the Turkic languages, will be able to use this presentation to evaluate Kotwicz’s assumptions and conclusions, and eventually, to understand why he has never published his paper. In particular, we will see the role played by methodological flaws and lack of certain factual data which were not clarified until much later (especially those on vowel length in the languages of the Sayan group, referred to as “Uryankhai” in Kotwicz’s paper). As is known, Boetlingk (1851: 159–169) was the first to suggest phonological vowel length in Proto-Turkic. He compared Yakut long vowels and diphthongs with the long vowels of “Nizhny Novgorod Tatar”, i.e. Mishar Tatar. At any rate, the data he collected were sufficiently relevant to assume the length opposition fora * and *o. Boetlingk’s material makes it also possible to isolate secondary (contracted) long vowels and diphthongs in Yakut, i.e. the cases where other Turkic languages have a vowel-consonant sequence, such as in Yak. ȳs ‘smoke’ : Kazan ijis, Nizhny Novgorod īs. In this way, Boetlingk anticipates Grønbech’s objections; see below on his hypothesis. The idea of ancient long vowels was not immediately recognised. Budenz (1865) extended Boetlingk’s analysis of Yakut lengths with lengths in Uzbek and Chu- vash. We know today that in Uzbek, traces of long vowels can be found in dialects, in particular in the Oghuz Khwarezmian dialect, and in the dialects of Ikan and Karabulak (see below), although regular recordings have practically not been con- ducted. In Chuvash, Budenz saw the reflex of the original length in a different phenomenon, namely in the preservation of an old rising diphthong. Although it does not accurately correlate with vowel length,1 this misconception is to be seen even in modern Turkological literature, in the works of Ligeti, Räsänen, and Doerfer, and later ones (see Schönig in Janhunen 2005: 409). Foy (1900) established Proto-Turkic length based on the relations between the vowels in the Orkhon-Yenisey, Yakut, and Turkish. Later studies of Orkhon-Yenisey 1 The rising diphthong ia, both long and short, was introduced into the Proto-Turkic recon- struction after the work of Vladimircev and Poppe (1924). For PT a and ā : Chuv. jo­ (the more archaic form of the Upper dialect, Viryal) when the word begins with a vowel, and o with a palatalisation of the preceding guttural or dental postconsonantal consonant otherwise (PT *Kiān ‘blood’, Trkm. Gān, Khal. qān, Sal. Ga(:)n, Yak. xān, Chuv. jon; PT *Kiār ‘snow’, Trkm. Gār, Yak. xār, Chuv. jor; PT *Kiār­ ‘to mix’, Trkm. Gār­, Chuv. jor­, jur­; PT *Kiařy ‘abdominal fat’, Yak. xaha, Chuv. jor­var ‘modest food’; PT *diāλ ‘stone’, Trkm. dāš, Khal. tš, Yak. tās, Chuv. čol; PT *čiāk ‘time’, Trkm. čāG, Yak. sax, Chuv. čox; PT *siāk­ ‘to think’, Trkm. sāGyn­, Yak. āx­, Chuv. šoγъš; PT *siāryg ‘yellow, white’, Trkm. sāry, Khal. sāruγ ‘orange’, Yak. araγas, arȳ ‘butter’, Chuv. šorъ; PT *iak­ ‘to flow’, Trkm.aq ­, Chuv. jox­). Presently, it is widely accepted to treat this rising diphthong as a strictly Chuvash innovation and continuation of the Proto-Turkic long *ā. One can see why this attitude is incorrect; cf. the cases where the quite reliable Proto-Turkic *ā corresponds to Chuv. u (o) with no palatalisation at all: PT *Kāř ‘goose’, Trkm. Gāz, Yak. xās, Chuv. xor; PT *Kāpuk ‘bark’, Trkm. GābyG, Chuv. xobъ; PT *dāla­ ‘to bite’, Trkm. dāla­, Chuv. tola­, rесipr. tola­š­; PT *sāl ‘raft’, Trkm. sāl, Yak. āl, Chuv. solъ; PT *āř­ ‘to stray’, Trkm. āz­, Khal. hāz­, Yak. ās­, Chuv. or­; PT *āt­ ‘to tread’, Trkm. dial. āt­, ādym, Yak. atyllā­, Chuv. odъm, ot­. On the other hand, there are examples where a diphthong or palatalisation in Chuvash corresponds to short vowels in Turkmen and Yakut (as above in ‘abdominal fat’ and ‘to flow’), and in effect, a short diphthong needs to be reconstructed. See also Dybo 2007: 60. On the reflexes of Proto-Turkic vowel length in the Turkic languages 123 do not confirm the possibility of distinguishing long from short vowels in these attestations (see Kormušin 2008); length in literary Turkish is entirely secondary and due to the dropping of the final γ* ; finally, Foy’s data (1900: 214) on length in Turkish dialects is incomplete and inconsistent. Radloff suggested that those long vowels and diphthongs in Yakut that do not evidently originate from contractions of vowel-consonant sequences (still par- tially preserved in mediaeval texts), are products of secondary changes enforced by the necessity to create a semantic distinction between phonetically similar words, such as Yak. tās ‘stone’ and tas ‘outer part’. This explanation, positively abomina- ble for comparative linguistics as it is, was put forward in Radloff 1882–1883, 1901 (against Foy), and 1908. Grønbech, apparently, had initially identified the phenomenon of “Oghuz voicing” as the appearance of voiced intervocalic obstruents in Turkish after those vowels which correspond to long vowels in the analogous Yakut words (Grønbech 1902). Nonetheless, in the same book, he opposed the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic length, and proposed to explain all cases of Yakut long vowels and diphthongs through the syncope of intervocalic consonants – some of which have been preserved in other Turkic languages, and others have not – and offered quite speculatively such develop- ments as Yak. tüört ‘four’ < *töbärttä, Yak. xān ‘blood’ < *kajan, etc. Pedersen (1903) challenged this solution on methodological grounds. The debate continued with mixed success; there were attempts to include data from various Turkic languages in the comparison, but those proposals were easy to rebut as none of them was supported by a relevant number of comparisons. As it seems, the first to establish the phonological character of vowel length in Turkmen, and to demonstrate its regular correspondence to the reflexes of the origi- nal length in Yakut, was Polivanov in his two papers of 1923 and 1927. In the ear- lier one, he contests Radloff’s assumptions (1882–1883, §106): В. В. Радлов, приводя об’яснения якутских долгих гласных из стяжения двух слогов, склонен, видимо, отрицать наличие долгот в обще-турецкую эпоху— на том основании, что в прочих турецких языках (кроме якутского) он находит соответствующие краткие гласные. Но это происходит, очевидно, потому, что Радлову были незнакомы туркменские факты. На самом деле, соответствия якутской и туркменской долгот могут быть непосредственно истолкованы в пользу восстановления праязыковых обще-турецких долгих гласных (впо- следствии сокращенных другими тур. языками). Приведу хотя бы следующие примеры: якутск. ta:s «камень»—туркм. da:š (отличается долготой от daš «дале- кий»): якут. sa:s (< ja:z)—турк. ja:z (отличается долготой от jaz «пиши»): якут. bа:r «есть»—туркм. bа:r (отличается долготой от bar «иди»). (Polivanov 1923: 157)2 2 Radloff, by suggesting to explain Yakut long vowels through contraction of two syllables, is apparently inclined to negate the existence of lengths in the Proto-Turkic epoch on the grounds that in the other Turkic languages (except Yakut), he finds the corresponding vowels short. But this is clearly because Radloff was not familiar with Turkmen facts. In point of fact, the correspondences between Yakut and Turkmen lengths can be immediately interpreted in favour of reconstruction of primary long vowels in Proto-Turkic (which were subsequently shortened in the other Turkic languages). Let us cite at least the following examples: Yak. ta:s 124 ANNA V. DYBO Polivanov adduced also one case of appearing inconsistency: long in Yakut, short in Turkmen: Yak. a:t ‘name’ : Trkm. ad. His explanation for this case, based on phonetic typological research, was that in Yakut, a secondary lengthening is possible before an old voiced consonant.