Editing Turanian languages

{{short description|Obsolete language-family proposal}}
{{Infobox language family
| name = Turanian
| acceptance = obsolete
| region = [[Eurasia]]
| familycolor = superfamily
| family = Proposed language family
| child1 = Northern ([[Ural–Altaic languages|Ural-Altaic]])
| child2 = Southern
| glotto = none
| map = 
| mapcaption =  
| ancestor = 
| glottoname = 
| glottorefname = 
| notes = 
}}
'''Turanian''' is an obsolete [[language family|language-family]] proposal subsuming most of the languages of Eurasia not included in [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]], [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] and [[Chinese language|Chinese]].
During the 19th century, inspired by the establishment of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] family, scholars looked for similarly widespread families elsewhere.{{sfn|Bhattacharya|1972|p=242}}
Building on the work of predecessors such as [[Rasmus Rask]] and [[Matthias Castrén]], [[Max Müller]] proposed the Turanian grouping primarily on the basis of the incidence of [[agglutinative]] morphology, naming it after [[Turan]], an ancient Persian term for the lands of Central Asia.{{sfnp|Müller|1861|pp=288–289}}{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=237}}
The languages he included are now generally assigned to nine separate language families.

==Classification==
[[File:Linguistic map of the Altaic, Turkic and Uralic languages (en).png|thumb|389x389px|Map of Eurasia showing the "Altaic" and Uralic language-speaking regions, which are united under the "Turanian" theory.]]
In 1730, [[Philip Johan von Strahlenberg|von Strahlenberg]], relying on structural similarities of languages, proposed a group of "Tatar languages" spanning northern and central Eurasia and the languages of the Caucasus.
In 1832, [[Rasmus Rask|Rask]] added [[Basque language|Basque]] and languages of Greenland and North America to von Strahlenberg's grouping, labelling the resulting group the "Scythian languages".{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=237}}{{sfnp|Poppe|1965|p=125}}
Rask also added the [[Dravidian languages]] to this grouping on the basis of similarities in grammatical structure, postulating that the Scythian languages had once stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean before being split by the intrusion of Indo-Aryan languages.{{sfnp|Krishnamurti|2003|p=5}}{{sfnp|Rask|1834|p=525}}

Müller added even more languages to this group.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=237}}{{sfnp|Poppe|1965|p=126}}
He viewed the structure of the family as follows:{{sfnp|Müller|1854|p=220}}{{sfnp|Müller|1861|pp=397–398}}

{{tree list}}
* '''Turanian'''
** Northern Division ([[Ural–Altaic languages|Ural-Altaic]])
*** [[Tungusic languages|Tungusic]]
*** [[Mongolic languages|Mongolic]]
*** [[Turkic languages|Turkic]]
*** [[Samoyedic languages|Samoyedic]]
*** [[Finno-Ugric languages|Finnic]]
** Southern Division
*** [[Tai languages|Taic]]
*** Malaic ([[Malayo-Polynesian languages|Malayo-Polynesian]])
*** Bhotîya ([[Tibeto-Burman languages|Tibeto-Burman]])
**** Gangetic
**** Lohitic
*** [[Munda languages|Munda]]
*** Tamulic ([[Dravidian languages|Dravidian]])
{{tree list/end}}

He left [[Japonic languages|Japonic]], [[Koreanic languages|Koreanic]], [[Koryak language|Koryak]], [[Itelmen language|Itelmen]] and various [[languages of the Caucasus]] unclassified, but suggested that they might have a common origin with Turanian.{{sfnp|Müller|1861|p=324}}
He preferred to call Turanian a "language group", feeling that it was less tightly bound than "language families" like Indo-European and Semitic.{{sfnp|Poppe|1965|p=126}}

== Reception ==
Linguists no longer consider [[Morphological typology|typological features]] a sufficient criterion for the identification of language families.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=242}}
Such features are commonly shared by unrelated languages across the world, and also spread by interaction between unrelated languages.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=236}}

The proposal of a relationship between Ural-Altaic and Dravidian persisted in some late 19th century scholarship, but in the absence of further development, was considered an idle hypothesis already by the early 20th.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Otto|last=Donner|year=1901|title=Die uralaltaischen sprachen|journal=Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen|volume=1|page=130}}</ref>
The Ural-Altaic hypothesis was itself abandoned early in the 20th century.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=241}}
The [[Altaic languages|Altaic]] theory linking Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic is also rejected by most scholars.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|p=238}}
The combination of the Samoyedic and Finnic (Finno-Ugric) classes form the modern [[Uralic languages|Uralic]] family, which is firmly established.{{sfnp|Campbell|Poser|2008|pp=88–94}}
Each of the five classes of Müller's southern division are now considered to belong to separate language families, [[Tai–Kadai languages|Tai–Kadai]], [[Austronesian languages|Austronesian]], [[Sino-Tibetan languages|Sino-Tibetan]], [[Austroasiatic languages|Austroasiatic]] and [[Dravidian languages|Dravidian]] respectively.

The term "Turanian" remained for a time also a synonym for the Ural-Altaic hypothesis.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Adam|last=Lucien|year=1870|title=Linguistique touranienne. Du theme du pronom de la 1re personne|journal=Revue de Linguistique et de Philologie comparée|volume=4|pages=29–40|url=https://archive.org/details/revuedelinguisti04pari/}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Wilhelm|last=Pröhle|year=1978|title=Vergleichende Syntax der ural-altäischen (turanischen) Sprachen|location=Wiesbaden|publisher=Harrassowitz}}</ref>

== References ==
{{reflist|20em}}

=== Works cited ===
* {{citation
  | surname = Bhattacharya | given = Sudhibushan
  | chapter = Dravidian and Munda: a good field for areal and typological studies
  | pages = 241–256
  | title = Third Seminar on Dravidian Linguistics
  | editor1-surname = Agesthialingom | editor1-given = S.
  | editor2-surname = Shanmugam | editor2-given = S.V.
  | location = Annamalainagar | publisher = Annamalai University | year = 1972
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | surname1 = Campbell | given1 = Lyle | author1-link = Lyle Campbell
  | surname2 = Poser | given2 = William J.
  | title = Language Classification: History and Method
  | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2008
  | isbn = 978-0-521-88005-3
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | surname = Krishnamurti | given = Bhadriraju | author-link = Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
  | title = The Dravidian Languages
  | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2003 | isbn = 0-521-77111-0
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | title = The classification of the Turanian languages
  | surname = Müller | given = Friedrich Max | author-link = Max Müller
  | year = 1854
  | url = https://archive.org/details/cu31924087972182
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | title = Lectures on The Science of Language
  | surname = Müller | given = Friedrich Max | author-mask = 3
  | year = 1861
  | publisher = New York, C. Scribner | url = https://archive.org/details/cu31924082458609
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | title = Introduction to Altaic Linguistics
  | surname = Poppe | given = Nicholas | author-link = Nicholas Poppe
  | location = Wiesbaden | publisher = Otto Harrassowitz | year = 1965
  | postscript = .
  }}
* {{citation
  | surname = Rask | given = Rasmus | author-link = Rasmus Rask
  | title = Remarks on the Zend language, and the Zendavesta
  | journal = Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland | year = 1834
  | volume = 3 | number = 3 | pages = 524–540
  | jstor = 25581776 | jstor-access = free
  | postscript = .
  }}

{{Eurasian languages}}

[[Category:Proposed language families]]