Words for ancient Eurasian grain legumes in the hypothetical Altaic family

要旨

The article discusses words referring to grain legumes in languages from the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic and Korean families. Some linguists assume these languages to represent a single macro-family, usually referred to as Altaic. Taking into account that the homeland of Altaic speakers may have been an area for which there is early archaeobotanical evidence of the mentioned grain legume species, the article reports on the attestation of words for these crops in the hypothetically related languages as well as on attempts to reconstruct their ancestral forms in hypothetical Proto-Altaic. Being written from the perspective of a plant biologist, the article remains agnostic with regard to the plausibility of the Altaic hypothesis itself. Instead, it attempts to demonstrate how linguistic evidence bears witness to the uninterrupted presence of grain legumes among the speakers of the investigated languages from the sixth millennium BC to the present day.

主題