Tuoba (Tabγač or Tabghach; also Taγbač or Taghbach; ) is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

language spoken by the Tuoba people in northern China around the 5th century AD during the Northern Wei dynasty. It has variously been considered to be of ( Para-) Mongolic or Turkic affiliations.

Classification

Alexander Vovin (2007) identifies the Tuoba language as a Mongolic language. On the other hand, Juha Janhunen proposed that the Tuoba might have spoken an Oghur Turkic language.Juha Janhunen, (1996), ''Manchuria: An Ethnic History'', p. 190 According to Peter Boodberg, the Tuoba language was essentially Turkic with Mongolic admixture. Chen Sanping noted that the Tuoba language "had both" Turkic and Mongolic elements. Liu Xueyao stated that Tuoba may have had their own language, which should not be assumed to be identical with any other known languages. Andrew Shimunek (2017) classifies Tuoba (Taghbach) as a "Serbi" (i.e.,

para-Mongolic Para-Mongolic is a proposed group of languages that is considered to be an extinct sister branch of the Mongolic languages. Para-Mongolic contains certain historically attested extinct languages, among them Khitan language, Khitan and Tuyuhun lang ...

) language. Shimunek's Serbi branch also consists of the Tuyuhun and Khitan languages.

Morphology

Some functional suffixes are: * * ‘verbal noun suffix’ * * ‘deverbal noun suffix’ * ** ‘suffix denoting occupations’ 萬) ‘deverbal noun suffix’ * ** ‘plural suffix’

Lexicon

Selected basic Taghbach words from Shimunek (2017) are listed below. Forms reconstructed using the comparative method are marked with one asterisk (*), while forms reconstructed according to the Chinese fanqie spellings and/or rhymes of the traditional Chinese philological tradition are marked with two asterisks (**) (originally marked as ✩ by Shimunek 2017).

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tuoba language Languages attested from the 5th century Agglutinative languages Unclassified languages of Asia Languages of China Medieval languages Extinct languages of Asia Tuoba