Reconstruction of the Turkic Protolanguage

Décsy Gyula
Indiana University

35^th Meeting of the PIAC, Taipei 1992

Some pecularities of the reconstruction are pointed out using experiences which were gained when the author prepared for publication his works on the Uralic Proto-language (1990) and the Indo-European Protolanguage (1991). The Turkic reconstruction is based mainly on Old Turkic vocabulary (v. Gabain, Clauson, Drevneturskij Slovar) from which the loan words (Sanskrit, Chinese, Sogdic, Tokharian, etc.) were discounted. hiternal comparative Turkic data have therein only supportive importance (contrary to the Uralic and Indo-European reconstruction where the internal connections play a major role). At the end, some methodological theses of protolinguistic and preprotolinguistic reconstruction in a universal frame are discussed. Generally, the reconstruction of the Turkic protolanguage is easier and perhaps less controversial in its results than the reconstruction of the Uralic and the Indo-European protolanguages.