The Proto-Turkic language is the proto-language of the family of Turkic languages that predates the separation of the Turkic peoples in the course of the Turkic expansion from ca. the 4th century AD.

The oldest records of a Turkic language, the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions of the 7th century Göktürk khaganate, already show characteristics of the Eastern branch of Turkic, and reconstruction of Proto-Turkic must rely on comparisons of Old Turkic with early sources of the Western branches, Oghuz and Kypchak, as well as the Oghur branch (Bulgar, Chuvash, Hunnic, Khazar, Turkic Avar). Since attestation of these non-Eastern languages is much more sparse, reconstruction of Proto-Turkic still rests fundamentally on East Old Turkic of the Göktürks.

Proto-Turkic exhibited vowel harmony, a feature sometimes also ascribed to Proto-Altaic, distinguishing vowel qualities e, i, o, u vs. ë, ï, ö, ü besides a, as well as two vowel quantities.

The consonant system had a two-way contrast of obstruents (fortis vs. lenis), k, p, t vs. g, b, d, with verb-initial b- becoming h- still in Proto-Turkic. Two sibilants s, ?, and m, n, ?, ?, r, z, l, ?.

The non-Common Turkic Oghur languages are characterized by sound correspondences such as Oghuric r versus Common Turkic z and Oghuric l versus Common Turkic ?.

In national mysticism

Proto-Turkic plays a certain role in Turkish nationalism and Pan-Turkism and involving claims of a neolithic date and direct connection to Sumerian, see Sun Language Theory.

References

• Gyula Décsy, The Turkic Protolanguage: A Computational Reconstruction (1998).
  • Edward J. Vajda, review of Décsy (1998), Language (2000), 473-474.
• Gerard Clauson, Etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish, Oxford, Clarendon Press (1972).
• Vilhel Gronbech, Preliminary Studies in Turkic Historical Phonology (Uralic & Altaic), RoutledgeCurzon (1997), ISBN 0700709355.
• Andras Rona-Tas, 'The Reconstruction of Proto-Turkic and the Genetic Question', in L. Johanson, The Turkic Languages, Routledge Language Family Descriptions, Routledge (1998), ISBN 0415082005, pp. 67-80.

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