Alexander Vovin
University of Michigan
Is Ainu Related to Altaic?
35th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, 1992
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that the Ainu language is unrelated to Proto-Altaic in general or to any other branch of Altaic in particular. The hypothesis of Ainu-Altaic genetic relationship was proposed by J.Patrie (1982). Patrie’s comparisons are straightforward and do not involve the comparisons on the level of proto-languages. I compare Proto-Ainu reconstruction (Vovin 1992 forthcoming from E. J. Brill) with Proto-Tungusic, Proto-Korean, Proto-Japanese, Proto-Mongolian and Proto-Turkic. The comparison of reconstructed protoforms is a safer and more reliable way to prove or to disprove a remote genetic relationship than a comparison of isolated forms from modern languages. By this method I demonstrate that Proto-Ainu actually does not have any parallels with any branch of Altaic within the boundaries of basic vocabulary. A very few reliable parallels mostly reflect a process of lexical borrowing from Japanese. The nature of phonetic correspondences between Ainu and Japanese also supports a point of view that these parallels are Japanese loanwords in Ainu and do not represent a common heritage.