Central Asian Turkic and Khalkha Past Tense Systems Arose Through Balanced Contact

Abstract

This paper presents initial evidence of shared innovations in the past tense and negation systems of Central Asian (CA) Turkic languages and Khalkha Mongolian. The structural parallels in past tense and associated negation systems are absent in the older attested stages of both language families, such as Old Turkic and Middle Mongol, as well as in related contemporary languages outside of the CA region. Based on a comparative morphological analysis of data from native speaker consultations, reference grammars, and other published texts, the current study shows that both CA Turkic and Khalkha Mongolian developed a four-way organization of past tense marking, encoding distinctions in proximity and confirmativity. This shared system is further characterized by parallel patterns of suppletion, as well as the emergence of strikingly similar complex negation strategies in both groups. We argue that the unique nature of these shared innovations are unlikely results from a common linguistic ancestor or simple unidirectional borrowing. Instead, we argue that these data provide evidence for grammatical convergence. This process was likely driven by a period of sustained, balanced language contact and widespread bilingualism between the ancestral speech communities of modern Khalkha and CA Turkic speakers.