ABSTRACT
Turkic and Mongolic exhibit many structural similarities and a great number of lexical, morphological, and syntactic correspondences. These common features are the principal object of the field known as comparative Altaic linguistics. To explain the situation, two frameworks have been proposed: the genetic framework and the areal framework. In the genetic framework, the similarities between Turkic and Mongolic are largely assumed to be due to an original genetic relationship between the two groups of languages. This framework, also known as the Altaic Hypothesis, operates with the postulation of a common Turko-Mongolic protolanguage, termed Proto-Altaic. Apart from Turkic and Mongolic, other groups of languages, notably Tungusic, but also Korean and Japanese (Japonic), have been regarded as deriving from Proto-Altaic. By contrast, the areal model explains the similarities between the ‘Altaic’ languages as being basically due to longlasting and intensive contacts.
