Starostin, Sergei/Anna Dybo/Oleg Mudrak, with assistance of Ilya Gruntov and Vladimir Glumov: Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic

Languages, 3 Vol., 2096 pp., Leiden/Boston: Brill (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik, Section Eight: Central Asia, edited by Denis Sinor and Nicola DiCosmo, Volume 8/1).

The publication of a three-volume etymological dictionary for any language family is without doubt a major event in the history of historical and comparative linguistics. The more so, if this dictionary describes the reconstructed proto-language of a family, which is so far not generally accepted as valid by all specialists active in the field. It goes without saying that an etymological dictionary of a non-existing language family is a paradoxon, to say the least. One possible way out of this is of course the conclusion that the family is after all real and that the existence of a work like this is the best proof of this fact. On the other hand, a quite different conclusion would be that there could after all be such a thing as a full-scale 3-volume lexical reconstruction of a proto-language, which indeed never existed. Now, the odd "throwaway" book, which wastes hundreds of pages trying to show the relationship of far-fetched languagepairs or sets (more often than not involving Basque, Sumerian or its author's native language, which has to be "freed" from some well-established but boring - phylum it has been put in by malevolent academics) is a familiar sight on our library shelves, but usually such para-scientific endeavors are recognizable as what they are on first inspection by its authors' ostensive lack of interest in any kind of linguistic method, be this intended or not. The dictionary under review is certainly different. It is an organic continuation of S. Starostin's monograph on the Altaic theory (Starostin 1991); its etymologies (not the 240-pp. introduction) had been for years available on the Internet, and many of them have been quoted repeatedly in the literature. Its authors are seasoned comparativists, and they do subscribe to what is loosely referred to as the principles of the comparative method, especially to the necessity to observe and describe recurrent, regular sets of phonological correspondences in order to make a claim of genetic relationship plausible and possibly convincing. The theory it sets out to defend and illustrate is, thus, testable, which sets it clearly apart from so many other macrocomparativist publications. This is not to be taken lightly, even for a hard-nosed skeptic, and the work deserves the full attention of comparative linguists and specialists for the constitutive languages and families of the putative Altaic phylum as well (i.e. Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean and Japanese). I dare say "putative", since I do maintain that the reality of Altaic as a genetic grouping remains to be convincingly shown, even after the publication of this monumental work, and, what is more, I still think that there is no Altaic language family, but rather a set of

languages which share the many commonalities found between them due to a prolonged history of areal convergence. Of course, this point of view is anything but new; it is closely connected with the names of scholars like Gy. Nmeth, G. Clauson, A. Rna-Tas, J. Janhunen and, perhaps most of all, G. Doerfer, who devoted a long and impressive series of works to the promotion of the areal view of Altaic. There is no need to repeat the long row of arguments exchanged pro and contra Altaic here, only so much be said, that the areal "school of thought" (often polemically referred to as the "Anti-Altaicists' Camp" by those Altaicists who prefer a more aggressive language but who doesn't in Altaic studies?) may be reproached of having failed to present the scientific community with a comprehensive and coherent and testable statement of its views (though Doerfer 1963-75 comes close to such a statement). Rejecting a theory which is underpinned by several thousand (ca. 2000) etymologies may seem hazardous at least, if not quixotic. However, there are fundamental problems both with numerous single etymologies and with some general principles of language comparison espoused by S. Starostin and his group, many of which have been pointed out in the discussion following the publication of Starostin 1991, but few of which have been remedied in this dictionary. It is of course, within the limited space of a short review, plainly impossible to give a comprehensive overview of the host of reasons a critical observer such as the present reviewer finds with a great number of the etymologies presented in this book. This will be a task of the future, and a series of shorter and longer papers illustrating many of these problems is currently being prepared. But one limited test can be exercised and demonstrated here. Fortunately, Starostin explains his main criterion for "proving" a genetic relationship in full detail (a coherent statement may be found in Starostin 1999). The criterion is lexical and statistical. It departs as so often in comparative linguistics today from the concept of "basic core vocabulary" and the "Swadesh 100-words-list", but it introduces a refinement by breaking it down into two parts: a longer part, consisting of 65 words, and a shorter, 35-item, list, which is claimed to contain the diachronically (and cross-linguistically) most stable semantic concepts (less likely to be borrowed etc.,;this two-tier list is due to the sinologist S.J. Jachontov). Now, if a given language pair shows a higher ratio of cognates in the shorter list than among the remaining 65 items, genetic relationship is claimed to be proven (cf. p. 234 in the present dictionary, or Starostin 1999). Thus, a language pair may display 11 cognates in the 35-item-list (= ca. 31 %) and a further 19 among the remaining 65 concepts (= ca. 29 %). The resulting "35/65 w. list ratio" can be plotted as 1.07, a figure > 1, thus indicating genetic relationship. This is exactly the figure

obtained for the pair Mongolic and Tungusic, and Starostin himself calls it "dangerously close to 1" (p. 234). It goes without saying that this (and all the other) figure(s) stand(s) and fall(s) with the evaluation of the very etymologies underpinning it, and we can try to give a glimpse of our problems with them by inspecting this very language pair. I will not dwell on the theoretical adequacy of this approach here (I have serious doubts). Instead, I may, argumenti causa , take it at face value and see whether the etymological comparisons presented in the dictionary meet its own criteria. Let's have a look at five of them: DIE (p. 386) Mong. *br-il- : Tung. *bu(r)The Mongolian word means "to ruin oneself by spending one's fortune, to be in such a state, to disappear", productively derived from the adverb bri "completely, entirely", the dictionary meaning "to die" being palpably secondary and metaphorical (and there is no attempt to account for the suffix, as with so many etymologies in this dictionary). EGG (p. 1499) Mong. *mdege : Tung. *um!kta The Mongolian word is rather to be reconstructed as *endge, which adds phonological difficulties not recognized by Starostin et al. The authors do mention the possibility that the Tungusic noun is actually derived from the verb *um!- "to lay eggs". This is not a possibility, but a plain fact, which cancels this comparison (-kta is one of the most common Tung. derivators of nouns from verbs, a kind of past participle). The next three comparisons have been dealt with by me in GEORG 1999/2000. Detailed justifications for their rejection may be found there (EYE 147-152 EAR 152-158, TONGUE 162-163): EYE (p. 981) Mong. *ni-d : Tung. *!ia-sa The traditional Tungusological reconstruction *ysa cannot be replaced by the nasalinitial one espoused here, needed for the comparison. EAR (p. 847) Mong. *ka[m]ar : Tung. *xoa The Mong. reconstruct is clearly *qabar, any medial nasal in some attestations being clearly secondary. TONGUE (p. 796) Mong. *kele : *xil The Tungusic reconstruct does not contain any *-l- (recte *xi!). If it can be accepted that these comparisons be eliminated from the roster of potentially valid Mong.-Tung. etymologies (and I am pretty confident that they have to), the ratio suddenly drops to 0,58 (with now only 17% cognates in the 35-w.-list), i.e. from "dangerously low" to "non-

indicative". Similar results may be obtained for all other language pairs, as I hope to be able to show in print shortly. This short "test" may also illustrate the nature of many questionable etymologies found in this book: semantics is definitely a sore spot of alarmingly many of them (not a surface difference in meaning being the problem, but the fact that very often the meaning of one or more of the comparanda is demonstrably secondary/metaphorical/extended etc.), the reconstructs given for the constitutive (proto-) languages very often violate those arrived at without the intention to find possible candidates for external comparisons etc. All this will, of course, have to be demonstrated at greater length and depth elsewhere. It may have become clear, even from such a tiny but important fraction of the data presented in this dictionary, that its evaluation will have to go on, and that a full assessment of its merits and shortcomings will take considerable more time and space. Not everything is "wrong" in this dictionary, many correspondences will stand the test of time and scrutiny doubtlessly including comparisons presented here for the first time , if only as hitherto undetected borrowings. But the bold statement found on p. 9, namely that "the very fact that it is possible to compile a dictionary of common Altaic heritage appears to be proof of the validity of the Altaic theory" is certainly, to say the least, premature, and the authors' hope, expressed on p. 7, that "this publication will bring an end to this discussion" is without doubt the gravest error found in this book. Recommending this dictionary is, thus, a rather difficult business. The undersigned opens it almost every day and finds it inspiring. It forces to clarify ones own thoughts about "Altaic" and the history of the languages and families constituting this grouping. It contains interesting and sometimes good ideas, which deserve further attention (if only different interpretations), and thus forces every user to turn many a page in many a primary source, which may have remained unturned without it. But it failed to convince me (and others, cf. the long and devastating review by A. Vovin, forthcoming in Central Asiatic Journal, to whose conclusions I fully subscribe) that "Altaic" as a true language family has been established. In this respect, I can recommend its use for specialists in, say, at least two of the language families covered, i.e. scholars who are able to form opinions of their own by consulting crucial sources, both secondary and primary, and who have some familiarity with the history of the debate. Many comparisons found here have been claimed earlier in the literature and Starostin at al. painstakingly record this. They also mention not always, but fairly consistently variae opiniones, i.e. rejections of comparisons or very important in Altaic studies claims that certain lexical items may rather be interpreted as loans

from one family into one or more other ones. However, they fail to give detailed reasons why they "reject the rejections", i.e. the whole dictionary is literally sprinkled with variations of the statement "XY's claim that this etymology is invalid/that the Mong. etc. word is a loan from Turk. etc. is unconvincing/unsuccessful etc.", and little more. While it may at times be fair enough to dismiss the arguments of some critic of Altaic against some particular etymology as weak, users of this dictionary should without fail go back to the sources quoted and complete the picture by learning what others had to say about the words in question, rather than taking Starostin's and his colleagues' dismissal at face value. The book could have become much more useful if it had been less laconic on other scholars' views. Much space needed for this could have been saved by greatly reducing the gargantuan word index (which constitutes all of the ca. 650 pp. of volume III), which is useful, but unnecessary repetitive (thus, we can locate through it a common Turkic word like ba"/bas HEAD at least 25 times, each instance in a list for one of the numerous Turkic languages; the same holds of course for a great deal of common words in all families, which often do not differ very much from language to language). I am, however, positively unable to recommend this book as a handy source for Proto-Altaic reconstructs, to be used in studies of early Asian history, general historical linguistics or, for that matter, the search for even "deeper" genetic relations among the languages of Eurasia or the world at large. Rather than such a "handbook" which it of course purports to be, given its publication in one of the most well reputed series of orientalist reference works it is a bulky position paper, which may serve as a departing point for discussions on the perennial "Altaic debate", the ultimate outcome of which remains as open as ever.

References: Doerfer, Gerhard 1963-75. Trkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, unter besonderer Bercksichtigung lterer neupersischer Geschichtsquellen, vor allem der Mongolenund Timuridenzeit, Vol. I-IV. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Georg, Stefan 1999/2000. Haupt und Glieder der Altaischen Hypothese: die Krperteilbezeichnungen im Trkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen, Ural-Altaische Jahrbcher N.F. 16, 143-182. Starostin, Sergej A. 1991. Altajskaja problema i proischo"denie japonskogo jazyka. Moskva: Nauka. Starostin, Sergej A. 1999. O dokazatel'stve jazykovogo rodstva, in: Rachilina, V./ J. Testelec (edd.): Tipologija i teorija jazyka ot opisanija k ob''jasneniju. K 60-letiju Aleksandra

Evgen'evia Kibrika. Moskva: Jazyki Russkoj Kul'tury, 57-72.

Reviewers address

Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 Bonn D-53111 Germany