Paper short abstract:

This paper will attempt to analyze "eastern Altaic languages" (Japanese, Korean, Tungusic) as a language area using approaches from comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will attempt to analyze "eastern Altaic languages" as a language area. The term "Eastern Altaic languages" here is being used as a shorthand for Japanese or more precisely Japonic, Korean, and Tungusic in general, although this paper will focus mostly on Manchu and its dialect Sibe. This paper will be mostly diachronic in its approach, drawing both on the earliest attested phases of analyzed languages and on their modern forms. Although there have been many attempts to link the "Altaic languages" with each other, mostly they attempted to link these languages genealogically. However, this paper will approach this topic from a different angle. It will attempt to find different layers of contact induced features shared among analyzed languages. This paper will not be dealing with presumed lexical similarities, it will focus predominantly on morphosyntax. Various approaches from comparative linguistics and linguistic typology will be used, both traditional comparative methods, and newer ones, such as semantic maps.