Introduction to Altaic Philology

Book excerpt: There are many excellent books dealing with Old Turkic, Preclassical and Classical Mongolian and Literary Manchu individually, but none providing in a single volume a comprehensive survey of all the three major Altaic languages. The present volume attempts to fill this gap; at the same time it reviews also the much debated Altaic Hypothesis. The book is intended for use by students at university level as well as by general readers with a basic knowledge of linguistics. The 39 language texts analysed in the volume are discussed within their historical and cultural context, thus vastly enlarging the scope of the purely linguistic investigation.