Talk:тутарга

Etymology

Two notes: 1. *-gana is not the same as *-gan 2. This word occurs in Old Turkic, so we should take the direction to be Tk. -> Mn. as we do in all such cases. Clauson deems it to be a foreign word in Turkic, but Mongolic offers no better etymology Crom daba (talk) 17:11, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@Crom daba 1. I did not say anything about -gan, what’s that / what difference do you mean? I just noticed that where Mongolian has -гана in plant names Turkic words borrowed from Mongolic end in -ǧan (not -ǧana; and Chagatay even also -ğu), that far it is the same. Do you think it isn’t that plant name suffix because the Mongolian is not *тутаргана? 2. But this word does not occur anywhere else than in the mentioned languages. “Occurs in Old Turkic” does not look to me like an argument at all. We do in all such cases? Why, where? Because it is the oldest of them all? This line of thought should be avoided; according to that logic قَفِيز (qafīz) and what is mentioned there is from Egyptian because Demotic happens to be the oldest attestation, however the Demotic word refers us back to Iran. 3. Not also that I particularly stated “the end can be identified as the plant name suffix”. No borrowing direction was fixed. Also, isn’t it possible that the Mongolian is borrowed from Turkic or the Mongolian form has been influenced by or matched to the Turkic, hence the form, but the Turkic is in the end from Mongolian? Fay Freak (talk) 21:06, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Could you give an example of this -gana/-ǧan alternation?

Yes, basically it's because Old Turkic is older by 5 centuries.

It is dangerous to make theories about (pre-/para-)Mongolic influence on Turkic because we know very little about it. For consistency sake, this whole class of etymons (well attested in earliest Turkic and Mongolic both, identical phonological shape) should be filed under "Mongolic words from Turkic" since anything else amounts to pure speculation.

Crom daba (talk) 13:21, 9 November 2019 (UTC)