PTkc. *jā- ∼ *ja- ‘to be near, …’ and the question of Altaic correspondences

Abstract

The paper discusses a group of eleven words with similar phonetic shapes and somewhat similar semantics: jagu-, jak- ‘to come near’; jan- ‘to turn back’; jaguk, jakȳn ‘close, near’; jāk, jān ‘side’; jāna- ‘to sharpen’; jaŋak ‘cheek’; jaŋy ‘new’; and jaka ‘edge’. All have been suspected to belong to the same family, at the heart of which, most probably, would be the verbal root *jā-. Some of the problems associated with this idea were known previously, whereas some are newly identified here. The paper considers various constraints and proposes a scheme centred around *jā ∼ *ja- ‘to be near, …’, which may or may not be connected to MaTung. daga ‘id.’ and Mo. daga- ‘to follow’.