This review article deals with Martine Robbeets & Alexander Savelyev (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
The authors review the past century of Khitan studies in Hungary and introduce the latest achievements in this field in China, the country that has become the centre of academic scrutiny for the decipherment of Khitan script in recent... more
The authors review the past century of Khitan studies in Hungary and introduce the latest achievements in this field in China, the country that has become the centre of academic scrutiny for the decipherment of Khitan script in recent decades. Arranged in a chronologic order for the first time, an exhaustive list of the main known Khitan Small Script monuments is also included, followed by a selected bibliography of essential pieces on Khitan studies.
The present paper offers new readings and interpretations of the inscriptions on the silver bowl from the famous Issyk Kurgan and the silver ingot from Ai Khanum.
A 6th century Mongolian inscriptions written in Brahmi script is newly discovered in Mongolia. The phonological features are: *p- initial consonant and *-p- middle consonant, which reaffirms the historical phonological law of Mongolian... more
A 6th century Mongolian inscriptions written in Brahmi script is newly discovered in Mongolia. The phonological features are: *p- initial consonant and *-p- middle consonant, which reaffirms the historical phonological law of Mongolian language constructed by Ramstedt. Based on this, the Mongolian vocabulary of Tuoba Xianbei and Rouran is restored. Then it is determined that the primitive Mongolian «writing » *biti- is the first writing behavior in the history of nomadic nomadic history, and they first writing they learnt is Chinese script. Before that, the nomadic world had only the Turkic-Mongolian cognate *yïr- ~ *ǰiru-, which was the tradition of the Huns of "carved bone wood". Today, only the Mongolian dialect Tu (Monguor) of Qinghai still uses *ǰiru-"scribe", resisting the trend of *biti- ~ *biči- writing. Finally, study the underlying vocabulary of the Tu language (Monguor), compare the history of Tuyuhun, and explore the potential relationship between the these two. 蒙古國新發現六世紀婆羅米字原始蒙古語碑文，其音韻特色：*p- 首輔音與 *-p- 中間輔音，重新肯定藍司鐵 (Ramstedt) 構擬的蒙古語歷史音韻規律。以此為基礎，還原拓跋鮮卑與柔然的蒙古語詞匯。繼而考訂原始蒙古語“寫”*biti- 是遊牧史上最先的書寫行為，寫的是漢字：*biti- 是漢語“筆”，引意筆寫。在此之前，遊牧世界只有突厥－蒙古同源詞 *yïr- ~ *ǰiru-，是匈奴人“刻骨契木”的傳統。今日，蒙古方言只有青海的土族語 (Monguor) 仍然使用 *ǰiru-“劃寫”，抵制了 *biti- ~ *biči- 筆寫潮流。最後，研究土族語的底層詞彙，對比吐谷渾的歷史，探索兩者之間的潛在關係。
