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Contemporary Interdisciplinary Research on the Languages and Peoples of Southern Siberia: An Experience in Linguistics and Genetics // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2025. Issue 4 (50). P. 154-169

Using a specific case study on the classification of the Turkic languages of Southern Siberia, this paper examines the potential for combining data from linguistic and population genetic studies. Analysis of similar rules in several dialects belonging to three Turkic genealogical language groups suggests that the influence of these rules in each group is only partly related to a Sayan-Samoyedic substrate, most likely due to language shift that is, the transition of the Sayan Samoyedic people to several Turkic languages. A similar hypothesis was previously proposed by A. Dulzon (Andreas Dulson), but it has not been supported by comparative historical analysis. For Northern Altaic idioms, it appears more likely that the Sayan Samoyeds themselves did not transite to these lects, but rather that a secondary language shift occurred among the Shors, who were already Samoyeds at that time and had adopted a Turkic language. Population genetic data support this hypothesis.

Keywords: Turkic languages of Southern Siberia, dialectology, Sayan Samoyeds, sound transitions, substrate, language shift