А. З. Абдуллаев, Г. П. Мельников: “Берлиский Форум Алтаистов”, Sovetskaya Tyurkologiya, 1970 (1), pp. 109–111
Editor’s Note: Translation from Russian to English heavily assisted by google.ai.
Berlin Forum of Altaicists
From August 29 to September 2, 1969, the 12th Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) took place in Berlin (GDR), convened by the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and the Berlin State Humboldt University. The core theme of the annual PIAC Meeting is the problem of the genetic relationship of the Altaic languages: Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic-Manchu (and, possibly, Korean and Japanese). As before, participation in the work of the current Meeting included not only linguists but also literary scholars, ethnographers, historians, and folklorists working in the respective fields of Altaic studies.
The participants of the Meeting represented many countries across Europe, Asia, and America, among them well-known foreign scientists such as A. von Gabain, L. Ligeti, L. Bazin, A. Tietze, A. Zajączkowski, B. Rinchen, and others. In total, more than 200 people attended the 12th Meeting of PIAC. The delegation from the USSR was the most representative. Thirty-eight scientists arrived from our country to attend the PIAC Meeting. Among them were such major specialists as A. N. Kononov, N. A. Baskakov, G. D. Sanzheev, S. K. Kenesbaev, P. A. Azimov, M. S. Silchenko, V. I. Tsintsius, T. A. Bertagaev, A. S. Tveritinova, N. P. Shastina, and others. The Soviet delegation was headed by A. N. Kononov.
The primary work of the PIAC took place in the form of presentation reports and their subsequent discussions at plenary and sectional meetings. The subject matter of the reports was highly diverse. A portion of them was directly related to the problem of proving the validity of the hypothesis regarding the genetic relationship of the Altaic languages, while the rest touched upon specific issues of language, literature, folklore, ethnography, and the history of individual Altaic peoples.
At the opening of the 12th Meeting of the PIAC, Prof. H. F. Junker, in his report “20 Years of Altaic Studies in the GDR,” spoke about the achievements of German scholars in researching the language and history of the Altaic peoples. In particular, the speaker noted that the GDR houses over 1,000 monuments of Old Uyghur script, a part of which has not yet been studied or published. Significant work in this direction is being carried out at Humboldt University by a group of young scientists under the guidance of G. Hazai.
The Secretary General of the PIAC, D. Sinor, speaking on the status and tasks of international Altaic research, called for strengthening scientific cooperation among scholars worldwide to resolve the problems of Altaic studies and noted the great contribution made by Soviet specialists to Altaic studies.
One of the plenary sessions was dedicated to the scientific activity of the famous German orientalist W. Bang on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Prof. A. N. Kononov and Prof. A. von Gabain spoke about W. Bang’s great merits in establishing the German school of Altaic studies. He was the founder of the Berlin archive and one of the first outstanding researchers of Uyghur textual monuments, the author of many works of great importance for the development of Altaic studies, as well as a mentor to a whole galaxy of Turkologists and Orientalists, such as K. Menges, G. Jarring, M. Räsänen, A. Zajączkowski, S. Çağatay, A. von Gabain, and others.
Reports dedicated directly to the problem of the genetic relationship of the Altaic languages were presented primarily by Soviet scientists. A. N. Kononov, examining Turkic collective and plural affixes, demonstrated against a broad Altaic backdrop the groundlessness of attempts to trace every Turkic affix back to a once independent word. Many modern affixes in Altaic languages historically evolved as a result of the merging of different affixes with close meanings.
Using the material of causative affixes, I. V. Kormushin confirmed this idea in his report. S. N. Muratov showed quite convincingly that if one considers the Turkic languages in comparison with other Altaic languages, then the widely distributed Turkic affix -daš can be traced back to an All-Altaic morpheme with the same meaning. Based on a comparison of both lexical and grammatical elements of the Turkic and Mongolic languages, S. K. Kenesbaev arrives at the conclusion that it is impossible to explain the obvious parallels observed in the compared languages solely as the result of their prolonged interaction. B. S. Orusbaeva and A. A. Darbeeva arrive at similar conclusions. M. Z. Zakiev analyzes the structure of Altaic languages at the level of syntax and discovers that for the formation of a simple sentence across all Altaic languages, only two types of word connections are used: specifying (attributive) and predicative. Proceeding from the assumption that the leading grammatical trend (determinant) of all Altaic languages is the principle of affix economy, G. P. Melnikov shows that differences in the structure of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic-Manchu languages can be explained by the uneven evolution of these languages in the direction of the specified trend. For the research of O. P. Sunik, V. I. Tsintsius, O. A. Konstantinova, and V. D. Kolesnikova, the starting point in proving the genetic relationship of the Altaic languages was primarily Tungusic-Manchu materials. Analyzing reflexive pronouns, kinship terms, names of dwellings, and body parts, these scholars demonstrated the material relationship of words belonging to the indicated themes across all groups of Altaic languages and presented the primary sound correspondences between them.
The most important problem of sound correspondences in Altaic languages—the problem of rhotacism and lambdism—was the focus of a report by G. D. Sanzheev. The Hungarian scholar A. Róna-Tas put forward an interesting hypothesis regarding the ancient influence of Indo-European languages through Tocharian on the Turkic languages.
A significant number of reports examined current issues in Turkology. N. A. Baskakov outlined a well-structured theory for describing the architecture of Turkic affixes. L. Bazin shared interesting data in his report on the influence of lexical taboos on the development of Turkic languages. F. Zeynalov examined methods of expressing modality in Turkic languages and suggested criteria for identifying modal words. N. Z. Gadzhieva spoke about two sources forming the conditional period in Turkic languages. L. A. Pokrovskaya presented the results of a study on the stability of Turkic kinship terms. A. Eyvazov analyzed existing viewpoints in the literature among Turkologists regarding the study of the adjective. In the report by A. Z. Abdullaev, a hypothesis on the origin and development of the directive case affix from the word garu (“hand”) was presented. A. Zajączkowski spoke about the Ottoman-Turkish military treatise Adab-i harb.
A number of reports were built on the material of studying Turkic and Mongolic historical monuments. Reports by A. von Gabain, G. Hazai, P. Zieme, E. Fazylov, S. Kleinmichel, A. S. Tveritinova, P. Ratchevsky, N. C. Munkuev, G. Kara, and I. Melikoff were received with interest. The attention of the attendees was also drawn to reports by Z. Korkmaz, S. Buluç, S. Atamirzoeva, and E. Taube, which examined the characteristics of Turkish, Uzbek, and Tuvan dialects. Great interest was aroused by a report by a young Turkish researcher, S. Tezcan, who uncovered a number of features reflecting archaic characteristics of Turkic languages in the Khalaj dialect on the territory of Iran. A. Bodrogligeti, F. Iz, I. D. Cirtautas, and D. Schultz dedicated their presentations to specific questions concerning modern Turkic languages. Reports by K. M. Musaev, H. Kaleši, and S. Kakuk provided results on the investigation of the influence of Turkic languages on languages of other systems.
Reports dedicated to the problems of literature and folklore of the Altaic peoples occupied a significant place in the sectional work of PIAC. A number of reports were heard: M. Silchenko on the typological study of the works of poets representing Turkic-speaking peoples, I. V. Stebleva on the development of aruz (prosody) forms in 11th-century Turkic literature, A. Karahan on the characteristics of literature from the Karakhanid period, R. Fish on the poetics of Nâzım Hikmet, I. T. Tatarli on the prose of Sabahattin Ali, H. Bicari on Shahriar’s poem “Heydar Babaya Salam”, and others.
In reports by P. N. Boratav, B. Brentjes, P. Chorloo, and G. Bethlenfalvy, important issues regarding the folklore of Turkic and Mongolic peoples were raised. N. P. Shastina spoke on the status of Mongolian studies in the USSR, while a young Japanese linguist, I. Ikegami, discussed the principles of classification for Tungusic-Manchu languages. P. Mijatov spoke on the state of Altaic studies in Bulgaria. Reports and presentations by B. Rinchen, E. Lot-Falck, T. A. Bertagaev, [K.] Uray-Kőhalmi, S. Mukhamediyarov, W. Enderlein, E. Esin, and others were dedicated to popular beliefs, shamanism, ethnography, folk art, and other specialized topics in Altaic studies. H.-P. Vietze reported on a computer program designed for the automated compilation of a reverse dictionary of “The Secret History of the Mongols”.
In total, 80 reports were read at the 12th Meeting of the PIAC, 34 of them by members of the Soviet delegation. Although until recently the attitude of Soviet scientists toward the hypothesis of a genetic relationship among Altaic languages was highly reserved, their interest in this problem has grown in recent years. The outcomes of the 12th PIAC Meeting demonstrated that Altaic studies in our country are at a sufficiently high scientific level. Interest in Altaic studies in our country is natural, as representatives of nearly all Altaic languages reside within the territory of the USSR, where the study of culture, history, ethnography, folklore, literature, and language of the Altaic peoples has always been given a great deal of attention.
At the final plenary session, a number of organizational issues were discussed. In particular, it was decided to publish the materials of the 12th PIAC Meeting in the form of a special volume and to convene the next, 13th Meeting of the PIAC in 1970 in France, in the city of Strasbourg. The French Turkologist, Madame I. Melikoff, was elected President of the next Meeting.
In conclusion, it is worth noting the efficient organization and execution of the 12th PIAC Meeting in Berlin. The main burden of this work fell to the scholars of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Humboldt University, and, first and foremost, to the President of the 12th PIAC Meeting, G. Hazai, and his colleagues.