6th International Symposium Oriental Studies

The 6 th International Symposium on Oriental Ancient Documents Studies 86 John Tang Approaches to the Lexical Communications Between the Tangut and the Altaic Languages The Tangut people were neighboring quite a few nations who used Altaic languages such as Sari-Uyghur, Khitan-Liao, and Jurchen-Jin, etc. However, previously there have appeared very few studies on contacts between the Tangut and the Altaic languages. This paper collects all the probable six examples – three belonging to the Altaic loanwords in Tangut, while the other three vice a versa – based on which some preliminary approaches will be laid to the characteristics of Tangut and Altaic contacts. Key words: Tangut, Altaic languages, loanwords, word derivation.