Typological profile of the Transeurasian languages from a quantitative perspective

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the typological features of the Transeurasian (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic, Koreanic) languages, including brief descriptions of the phonology and morphosyntax of these languages. Through the application of phylogenetic comparative methods, a set of structural features with a high phylogenetic signal is delimited. These features can be assumed to be genealogically stable. The trees achieved by Bayesian tree-sampling based on all 226 features are compared with those derived via the 97 structural features with a high phylogenetic signal and the conclusion reached is that the data set with presumably stable structural features does not provide a tree that is compatible with the language history assumed by classical historical linguists. Neither the full nor the reduced feature set provides a reliable internal classification of the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families.