Turkic Languages - Classification

Classification

For centuries, the Turkic speaking peoples have migrated extensively and intermingled continuously, and their languages have been influenced mutually and through contact with the surrounding languages, especially the Iranian, Slavic, and Mongolic languages. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, and as a result, there exist several systems to classify the Turkic languages. The modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich (1922) and are mainly based on the development of *d. However, there are still many questions for which ongoing research has not yet found an adequate solution.

The Turkic languages may be divided into six branches (Johanson 1998):

1. Southwestern (Oghuz Turkic)
2. Northwestern (Kipchak Turkic)
3. Southeastern (Karluk Turkic)
4. Northeastern (Siberian Turkic)
5. Oghur Turkic
6. Arghu Turkic

In this classification, Oghur Turkic is also referred to as Lir-Turkic and the other branches are subsumed under the title of Shaz-Turkic or Common Turkic. It is not clear when these two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged.

With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the Northeastern, Kyrgyz-Kipchak and Arghu (Khalaj) groups as East Turkic.

Geographically and linguistically, the languages of the Northwestern and Southeastern subgroups belong to the central Turkic languages, while the Northeastern and Khalaj languages are the so-called peripheral languages.