Eskaleut origins of Manchurian / Tungusic language family

Time to start a new standalone post, though as always most of what I publish will be in the comments section. I'll be continuing work on the Eskaleut origins of Tungusic words, and the sound laws that link them.

To briefly recap the latest mega-discoveries, I began with a new model for the birth of the Altaic languages as creoles that are mostly Samoyedic (in the Uralic family), with a crucial Yeniseian influence / phonotactic filter. This was partly about historical sound changes, but largely lexical, showing how Proto-Turkic in particular is "Sayan Samoyedic with a Yeniseian accent". But it created an Altaic foundation which the other two families used as well, Monogolic / Para-Mongolic, and Tungusic.

Then in the middle of that, I happened upon the mother of all secret passageways in Altaic studies -- Tungusic used to be a member of the Eskaleut family, which up until now has thought to be entirely confined to the New World, namely the Arctic New World, mostly the Eskimo branch, but also Aleut in the Aleutian Islands. The more I unearth the etymologies, the more it looks like Tungusic is mostly Eskaleut, and owes only a minor part of its nature to the Altaic foundation. It can still be considered a creole, neither pure this or pure that, but the influence and inheritance from its Eskaleut side is pervasive.

This represents a new contribution to the discoveries about linguistic connections between Siberia and the northern New World, such as Vajda's discovery of the sibling status between Yeniseian in Siberia and the Na-Dene family mainly in Northwest America (with a major recent spread into the American Southwest). I already added to that specific family in the past year or so, by showing that Japonic belongs to it as well. But this latest discovery of mine, about Tungusic being Eskaleut, provides a whole new link between Siberia and Northwest America.

Without rehearsing every single point made in the previous comment section, here are they key principles and sound laws:

The main problem that faced the speakers of Proto-Tungusic, was that the Altaic foundation came from Uralic, which is a half-sibling to their own native tongue, Eskaleut. If they let the two intermix willy-nilly, the outcome would be inbred and confusing. So, they made a concerted effort to distinguish these two sources of lexical items, when forming the lexicon of their new creole, Tungusic.

The Altaic base resulted from the Eastern Steppe nomad confederations of the 1st millennium BC (such as the Deer Stones culture), who were victorious in driving out the Indo-Iranian apocalyptic charioteer cult that had laid siege to the Sayan Mountain gate during the Andronovo era. As victors and protectors of the region, their new Samoyedic-Yeniseian creole enjoyed prestige among other residents of the Eastern Steppe, all the way east into Manchuria and the Amur region.

As such, Tungusic deferred to the Altaic foundation when separating its lexicon into two source. Words of Uralic origin would keep their Altaic form, while words of native local Eskaleut origin would be systematically altered, though still recognizable. Both Uralic and Eskaleut have a redundancy in their consonant series, where stops are voiceless and fricatives are voiced. Uralic-origin words preserved this redundancy. Eskaleut-origin words inverted this redundancy, but still kept a redundancy, to please their Eskaleut ears -- now the stops would be voiced, and fricatives would be voiceless. This creates a complimentary distribution between the two sources of words, allowing them to keep them separate.

The only major change to the phoneme inventory involved the uvular consonants from Eskaleut, since Uralic does not have consonants in this place. Briefly, "q" -> "g" and "ʀ" -> "r" in Tungusic. For the vowels, "ə" -> "e", although subject to moving due to vowel harmony.

At the earliest stage, vowel harmony seems to have been the imported Uralic pattern, since Eskaleut has no vowel harmony of its own, based on front vs. back. This may have changed over time, toward the typical Tungusic pattern based on high-front vs. low-back. This is a minor quibble to me at this point, so I'm just using front-back as a guideline.

Phonotactically, the major change was adopting a Uralic word-shape of CVCCV, perhaps involving deletion of a V between the medial C's in an Eskaleut root, or metathesizing the final two segments of an Eskaleut root of shape CVCVC. Also, new Uralic phonotactic rules for the nature of that medial consonant sequence, e.g. if there's a liquid, it must be the 1st of the sequence in Uralic, but not necessarily in Eskaleut, requiring metathesis or feature-alteration.

One other important sound change is deletion of voiced velar consonants between vowels, including Eskaleut "ɣ" and "ŋ", as well as voiced "w"-like "v" between vowels. Intervocalic velar deltion occurred in New World Eskaleut, and in the other Altaic languages, especially Turkic. Intervocalic deletion of "v" occurred in New World Eskaleut.

At the end of this initial process of adopting the Altaic foundation, and separating the two sources of words, these sound changes stopped. The job was done. However, words don't stop entering the lexicon just cuz the major initial stage has been completed. Late-coming words do not appear to show these sound changes as much, whether they're from Uralic or Eskaleut origin. This allows us to date when words entered the lexicon. It's similar to Ancient Greek, where earlier "s" -> "h", so if you see "s", that word is probably a late-comer to Greek, after that law ceased operating.

Specifically, the descendants of Proto-Samoyedic had already weakened "p" toward "x" / "h", possibly further deleting the weak consonant and yielding null. This was inherited into Turkic the strongest, where earlier "p" is null, while Mongolic and Tungusic held onto the "x" / "h" forms. Also, Tungusic changed "p" -> "b" in its Eskaleut layer, as part of the effort to distinguish Uralic from Eskaleut origin. Both of those laws erase "p".

And yet, there's still a decent amount of "p"-initial words in Proto-Tungusic -- these must be late-comers, regardless of their source. And indeed they are from less important word classes and semantic fields, unlike the crucial classes and semantic fields that show the sound changes of "p" -> "x" (Uralic) and "p" -> "b" (Eskaleut). They were lexical afterthoughts, late-minute filler, flourishes, secondary / learned / extended meanings, and so on.

There are also a handful of "t"-initial words of Eskaleut origin, entering the lexicon after the "t" -> "d" change in the Eskaleut layer. They join the words of Uralic origin, which never altered "t" in the first place.

One major common problem / shibboleth of Eskaleut and Tungusic, is palatalization of both alveolar "t" -> "c" and velar "k" -> "c", before "i" or even "ə" ("e" in Tungusic). Uralic / Samoyedic did not take part in this, let alone to such an obsessive extent. In Proto-Eskimo, no words begin with "ti", so they must have been palatalized to "ci" by the P-E stage. There are even gaps in the "tə" space, so some of those must have been sent to "cə". However, there are basically no words with "cə", so those also must have been raised to "ci", an overflowing container in P-E.

Thankfully, this palatalization of "t" and raising of "ə" was far less extensive in Old World Eskaleut, i.e. the non-Altaic parent in the Tungusic creole. So some cognates between Old World and New World Eskaleut clearly have "t" in Tungusic, vs. "c" in Eskimo, revealing that they used to begin with "t" rather than "c" in Eskimo, before the Proto stage.

Tungusic does not have "c", and it treated Eskaleut sources differently, seemingly based on chronology, although maybe there's some phonological conditioning that I can't see just yet. At the early stage, or certainly preceding non-palatal vowels, "c" -> "s", much like in several New World descendants of Eskimo. As mentioned, Tungusic did not palatalize "t" to "c" in some cases, so that source of "c" was avoided.

However, another source of "c" was earlier "ki" or "ke" (from "kə" in Eskaleut), which had been palatalized as well. Even among late-entering words, where initial "k" is preserved, there are no Tungusic words with "ke" or "ki" -- they must have been sent somewhere else, and there are a bunch of words beginning with "ʒ" (voiced palatal affricate), so they must have gone there. Eskimo did not palatalize "k", and there are many words beginning with "ki" and "kə". This palatalization of "k" is strictly Tungusic, and reflects the compresses phoneme inventory that happened when the uvular consonants of Eskaleut had to be squeezed into the Uralic-esque phoneme space, where the furthest-back place is velar.

Since "k" already has unaltered Uralic-origin words, and since that is an incredibly common consonant in Uralic, this container was going to be overflowing. So in some cases, "k" -> "x" in the Eskaleut layer, part of the inversion of the consonant feature redundancy, which produced voiceless fricatives and voiced stops. This seems to be the early stage.

Late-entering words, though, still tried to avoid overflowing "k", and palatalized them to "c" before "e" or "i" -- but since "c" doesn't exist in Tungusic, these were then voiced to "ʒ", in the same place. That keeps the change within the overarching inversion of feature redundancy, since an earlier "k" maps to a voiced stop / affricate.

Also worth noting that in late-coming words with initial "t", where "t" was preserved rather than voiced to "d", palatalization was still an active threat, and could have resulted in "t" -> "c", unlike "d", since voiced consonants do not palatalize as easily as voiceless ones. But even "d" palatalized would result in "ʒ", which would merge earlier "d" and "k", creating homophones and confusion. Since "c" is an empty container, earlier "t" words palatalized to "c" would therefore be mapped further into "ʒ". But that would have merged earlier "t" and "k" before palatal vowels, creating homophones and confusion. So, to prevent this homophone problem, the triggering palatal vowels "e" and "i" were rounded to "ö" and "ü", since round vowels tend to impede palatalization (too difficult to articulate both rounded lips and flexing the tongue tip toward the palate).

What I have not yet fully determined, is the origin of Tungusic words beginning with unusual nasals, "ń" and "ŋ". My brief look says they are either shifted from an earlier "n", or are nasalization of an oral consonant in the same place, like "k" -> "ŋ", since "k" was overflowing and had to be mapped elsewhere. They are not merely conditioned by the following vowel, as though "ń" only appeared before front vowels -- both of these nasals appear before all the vowels of Tungusic. If anything, "ń" is *less* likely to appear before a front vowel, so it could be a nasalized "c", for all I know.

To summarize the major sound changes in the Eskaleut layer of Tungusic. Remember, this is from Proto-Eskaleut, that is the shared ancestor between the Old World and New World branches. Since the New World branch palatalized "t" to "c" before "ə" or "i" already in its proto-stage, sometimes there's a correspondence between NW "c" and OW "t", due to NW palatalization of "t", and other times where NW "c" corresponds to OW "s", due to OW feature redundancy inversion (producing voiceless fricatives and voiced stops / affricates). Voiced fricatives from Eskaleut were mostly hardened to stops, as part of the inversion of feature redundancy.

Vowels:

"ə" -> "e" (subject to vowel harmony)

Consonants, voiceless stops:

"p" -> "b"

"t" -> "d"

"c" -> "s"

"k" -> "x" (early?, unconditional?)

"k" -> "ʒ" (late?, before "ə" or "i")

"q" -> "g"

Consonants, voiced fricatives:

"v" -> "b"

"ð" -> "d"

"ɣ" -> "g"

"ʀ" -> "r"

With all that said, today will see more etymologies, covering some of the "ʒ" words, including another numeral, the 4 seasons... and another massive hunting trophy, the Altaic sky-god's name Tengri. Stay tuned! ^_^