On the reflexes of Proto-Turkic vowel length in the Turkic languages

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. 2015. Vol. 132. No. 3. P. 121–134.

Dybo A.

In this paper, I attempt to give a more detailed “contextual commentary” to Kotwicz’s article, i.e. to present the wider context of his research, and what the Turkic historical-comparative linguistics has finally settled on; that is to say, the views that Turkologists-comparativists currently adopt on the shortness : longness opposition in Proto-Turkic, and how they were influenced by Ligeti’s paper mentioned in the editorial commentary. I hope that the reader, not necessarily an expert on historical-comparative grammar of the Turkic languages, will be able to use this presentation to evaluate Kotwicz’s assumptions and conclusions, and eventually, to understand why he has never published his paper. In particular, we will see the role played by methodological flaws and lack of certain factual data which were not clarified until much later (especially those on vowel length in the languages of the Sayan group, referred to as “Uryankhai” in Kotwicz’s paper).

Keywords: historical-comparative linguistics