to the west has occurred, as was stated above, in 56 BC,... the second split of the (Eastern) Huns into the northern and southern groups happened in 48 AD. Dybo suggests that during that period, the Northern branch steadily migrated from Western Mongolia through Southern Xinjiang into the north's Dzungaria and then finally into Kazakhstan's Zhetysu until the 5th century. There was no fortis-lenis contrast in word-initial position: the initial stops were always *b, *t, *k, the affricate was always *č (*ç) and the sibilant was always *s. In addition, the nasals and the liquids did not occur in that position either. The velars /k/ and /g/ seem to have had back and front allophones ([q] and [k], [ɢ] and [g]) according to their environments, and the lenis stops /b/, /d/ and /g/ may have tended towards fricatives intervocalically. Vowels Like most of its descendants, Proto-Turkic exhibited vowel harmony, distinguishing vowel qualities a, e, ı, o, u vs. ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, as well as two vowel quantities. Here, macrons represent long vowels. The existence of a mid back unrounded *e is not accepted by all scholars, nor is that of a mid front unrounded *ë. The phonemicity of the distinction between the two close unrounded vowels, i.e. front *ï and back *ı, is also rejected by some. Morphology This section deals mainly with Róna-Tas (1998). However, some of his reconstructions of Proto-Turkic have some Common Turkic features like substituting *-z for palatalized *-ŕ. Nouns Plural of nouns are formed by the suffix *-lAr, however, the Chuvash plural -sem <> seems to be a late replacement. Reconstructable possessive suffixes in Proto-Turkic includes *-m, *-ŋ, and *-(s)i, plurals of the possessors are formed by *-z in Common Turkic languages. Verbs The reconstructable suffixes for the verbs include: Aorist: *-Vr Past: *-dI Negative suffix: *-mA : *-m < *-män < *bän : *-n < *sän : *-∅ < *ï : *-mïz/*-bïz < *bïz : *-sïz < *sïz Proto-Turkic also involves derivation with grammatical voice suffixes, as in cooperative *körüš, middle *körün, passive *körül, and causative *körtkür. Vocabulary Pronouns Numbers References Sources Further reading Dybo, A.V. (2014). "Early contacts of Turks and problems of Proto-Turkic reconstruction". In: Tatarica: Language, 2, p. 7-17. External links Agglutinative languages Turkic languages Turkic