The Altaic Word For ‘Two’: Comparanda In The Turkic Family And Beyond

Sh. Nafiqof

The Altaic Word For ‘Two’: Comparanda in the Turkic Family and Beyond

50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007

Altaic has several words to designate “two’, such as PA *tiubu and *p‘idk’e, the latter standing for ‘pair, couple’ (Starostin, Dybo, Mudrak 2003: 293, 205).

The first gloss on the Turkic side is reflected in Old Bulgur tvi-rem ‘second’ (Op. cit. 293). The numeral in question is itself cognate with Nostratic * to ‘two’ (Illich-Svitych 1965: 338)

The second word for ‘two’ *p’iok’e (v.s.) gave rise to the PTurkic innovation *ek(k)i ‘two’ (cf. also PT *ekir’ ‘twins’ = PMongolian *(h)ekire ‘idem’), see (Starostin et alii, p. 293).

This * ek(k) is uniformly reflected in such idioms as Chuvash ik, Uzbek ikki, Kazakh eki, Yakut ikki, Turkish iki, Bashkir ike, Tatar ike ‘two’ and suchlike.

If we concern ourselves with some historical research we should mention certain comparisons made by several scholars. The Corean cognates are prominent here. Heinrich Koppelmann of Germany came up with Corean tu vs. Modern Persian du ‘two’ (Koppelmann 1933: 19). Gustav Ramstedt suggested that the Corean pegim ‘the following’, *pek- ‘idem’ is cognate with the Turkic iki ‘zwei’; the Mongol ikire ‘Zwillinge’ (Ramstedt 1935: 87). Later ‘two’ in Turkic was compared with Tocharian В ikam ‘twenty’ also by German scholars , see (Sevortian 1974: 339).

Nowadays several linguists working on longer range issues have suggested still more cognates far­ther afield. The well known U.S. Nostraticist Vitaliy Shevoroshkin proves the Altaic ‘two’, a cognate to the Nostr. *tu?V ‘two’, to be related to the North Caucasian *t‘-?q’wE, Sino-Tibetan- *k-, Yenissean *xi — ‘two’ (Shevoroshkin 1999: 45). If it is so, we may deal here with an archaic word for ‘two’ that can be preserved in relic forms as a the Eurasiatic dual marker * KI(N) (Greenberg 2000: 101–106).

Back in 1964 the well-known modern long-ranger scholar Ahron Dolgopolskiy in his pioneering lexicostatistic survey of the Nostratic family core vocabulary sin­gled out several major types in the words for ‘two’. I quote them with a specimen or two in brackets as follows:

Type T (Corean tuur, tuir); type KT (Khanti kät, Tawgy kidde); type К (Mongo­lian korin ‘twenty’), type RM (Afar lamnei, etc.), see (Dolgopolskiy 1964: 55–56).

These types can be recognized in the famous comparative sets offered by Al­fredo Trombetti earlier in the XX-th century:

Itelmen kas(s)a; Iroquois – ke ‘dual form’ ~ Karen khi (Trombetti 1926/1928: 194), standing for ‘two’.

The Orkhon Turkic qoš, qōš’ a pair’ may seemingly pass as the type К cognate words. Many similar examples are presented in (Trombetti 1916: 394 ff.). Not a few skeptics would dismiss the PAustralian *quDHarra ‘two’ off (Dixon 1980: 153), if this can be named a cognate also.

Common Turkic iki ‘two'< PA word for a pair, despite its vastest spread, looks less ancient in the light of the comparanda presented to the reader above.

References

  1. Dixon Robert W. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge.
  2. DolgopoTskiy Ahron B. 1964 Gipoteza drevnejshego rodstva jazykovych semej Sevemoj Jevrazii s verojatnostnoj tochki zrenija. Voprosy jazykozranija № 2, 53–63.
  3. Greenberg Joseph H. 2000: Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: the Eurasiastic language family. Vol. l. Stanford, CA: Stanford University press.
  4. Illich-Svitych Vladislav 1965. Materials for a Comparative Dictionary of the Nostratic Languages (Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic, Dravidian, Kartvelian, Hamito- Semitic) (in Russian). In: Etimologija 321–373.
  5. Koppelmann Heinrich 1933. Die Eurasiatische Sprachfamilie: Indoger- manisch, Koreanisch, Ainu und Verwandtes. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
  6. Ramstedt Gustav J. 1935. Über den Ursprung der Türkischen Sprachen. Helsinki.
  7. Sevortyan Ervand 1974. Etimologicheskiy slovar’ tyurkskih jazykov (an Etymological Dictionary of the Turkic languages) 1.1 .Moskva: Nauka.
  8. Shevoroshkin Vitaliy V. 1999. Nostratic and Sino- Caucasian: Two Ancient language phyla. N. Kirk, P. Sidwell (eds.), From Neanderthal to Easter Island, AHL studies in the science and history of language 2. 44–70. Melbourne.
  9. Starostin Sergej A., Dybo Anna, Mudrak Oleg 2003. An Etymological Dic­tionary of Altaic Languages. 3 vols. Leiden: E.J.Brill.
  10. Trombetti Alfredo 1916.1 Numerali. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata. In: Memorie della R.Accadenua delle scienze dell’ institiuto di Bologna. Sezione di scienze Storiche e Filologiche, Ser. I, Tome X.
  11. Trombetti Alfredo 1926. Origine asiatica delle lingue e popolazione americanae. In: XXII congresso intemazionale degli americanesti. Roma.