Words for ancient Eurasian grain legumes in the hypothetical Altaic family
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Aleksandar Mikić
The article discusses words referring to grain legumes in languages from the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic and Korean families. Some linguists assume these languages to represent a single macro-family, usually referred to as Altaic. Taking into account that the homeland of Altaic speakers may have been an area for which there is early archaeobotanical evidence of the mentioned grain legume species, the article reports on the attestation of words for these crops in the hypothetically related languages as well as on attempts to reconstruct their ancestral forms in hypothetical Proto-Altaic. Being written from the perspective of a plant biologist, the article remains agnostic with regard to the plausibility of the Altaic hypothesis itself. Instead, it attempts to demonstrate how linguistic evidence bears witness to the uninterrupted presence of grain legumes among the speakers of the investigated languages from the sixth millennium BC to the present day.
© 2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Masthead
- Note from the editor
- The Hittite neuter a-stems and the amorphous neuter
- Motion events in English: the emergence and diachrony of manner salience from Old English to Late Modern English
- Passives in the history of Greek: Evidence for the role of the passive suffix
- Words for ancient Eurasian grain legumes in the hypothetical Altaic family
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- Investigating the emergence of the definite article in Old English: About categorization, gradualness and constructions
- Book Reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Note from the editor
- The Hittite neuter a-stems and the amorphous neuter
- Motion events in English: the emergence and diachrony of manner salience from Old English to Late Modern English
- Passives in the history of Greek: Evidence for the role of the passive suffix
- Words for ancient Eurasian grain legumes in the hypothetical Altaic family
- How to measure replacement: Auxiliary selection in Old Spanish bibles
- Investigating the emergence of the definite article in Old English: About categorization, gradualness and constructions
- Book Reviews
