Japanese language classification
Encyclopedia
The classification of the Japonic languages
(Japanese
and Ryukyuan
) is unclear. The group is traditionally considered to consist of dialects of a single language isolate
.
The possibility of a genetic relationship
to the Goguryeo
(Koguryŏ) language has the most currency. Goguryeo itself may be related to Korean
, and a Korean-Japonic grouping is widely considered.
Independent of the question of the Korean-Japonic subgrouping, both the Japonic languages and Korean are sometimes included in the Altaic
and hypothetical Eurasiatic
proposals by proponents of these linguistic macrofamilies
.
's (1916) observation that the attested Goguryeo numerals, 3, 5, 7, and 10, were very similar to Japanese. The hypothesis proposes that Japanese is a relative of the extinct language
s spoken by the Buyeo-Goguryeo cultures of Korea
, southern Manchuria
, and Liaodong. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo
, with the more poorly-attested Buyeo languages
of Baekje
and Buyeo
believed to also be related.
Supporters of this theory do not include modern Korean as part of that family because it is thought to have derived from the Silla language
and it has been shown that the Korean and Buyeo-Goguryeo languages share only a few lexical items, which are typical cultural loanwords.
A monograph by Christopher Beckwith
(2004) has established about 140 lexical items in the Goguryeo corpus
. They mostly occur in place name collocations, many of which may include grammatical morphemes (including cognate
s of the Japanese genitive marker
no and the Japanese adjective-attributive morpheme
-sa) and a few of which may show syntactical
relationships. He postulates that the majority of the identified Goguryeo corpus, including all the grammatical morphemes, is related to Japanese.
with his lexicostatistical research The Altaic Problem and the Origins of the Japanese Language (Moscow, 1991). A Japanese-Korean connection does not necessarily exclude a Japanese-Koguryo or Altaic relationship.
The possible lexical relationship between Korean and Japanese can be briefly exemplified by such basic vocabulary items, see table below and Martin 1966.
The same possible cognates are often observed in other members of the potential Altaic family, especially among the Tungusic languages
. Compare, for instance, Nanai muke "water"; giagda- "to walk on foot"; anaa, anna "not" (from Starostin's database).
Next to similarities in basic vocabulary, the hypothesis is also based on typological and grammatical similarity.
Some critics of this hypothesis (such as Alexander Vovin
) claim that there are difficulties in establishing exact phonological laws and that Japanese and Korean have few shared innovations. There are also drastic differences between the native Korean and Japanese number systems.
The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship overlaps with the extended form of the Altaic hypothesis (see below), but not all scholars who argue for one also argue for the other. For example, Samuel Martin, who was a major advocate of a Japanese-Korean relationship, only provided cautious support to the inclusion of these languages in Altaic, and Talat Tekin, an Altaicist, includes Korean in Altaic but not Japanese (Georg et al. 1999:72, 74).
, Mongolic
, and Tungusic. G.J. Ramstedt's
Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft ('Introduction to Altaic Linguistics') in 1952–1957 included Korean in Altaic. Roy Andrew Miller
's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages, published in 1971, included Japanese in Altaic as well. The most important recent work in favor of this expanded Altaic family is An Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (3 volumes) by Sergei Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak (2003).
The Altaic family is by no means generally accepted, either in its core form of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic or its expanded form of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese. The best-known critiques are those of Gerard Clauson
(1956) and Gerhard Doerfer (1963, 1988). Currently active critics include Stefan Georg
and Alexander Vovin.
Evidence for this grouping mostly lies in claimed correspondences in vocabulary, as shown in the following table, although attempts have been made to reconstruct a number of suffixes.
These examples come from Starostin's database, which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and hypothetical Altaic etymologies
.
in 1897 (Compositum und Nebensatz, pp. 106–131), who further noted structural similarities to Proto-Indo-European
.
Joseph Greenberg
(2000–2002) argued for the inclusion of Japanese in his proposed Eurasiatic language family. In contrast to Sergei Starostin, he rejected the inclusion of Korean in Altaic. According to Greenberg, Japanese-Ryukyuan, Korean, and Ainu
form a separate subgroup within Eurasiatic.
Like other language classifications of Greenberg's, the Eurasiatic family is often attacked on the ground that it is based on "mass lexical comparison"; however, this is a fictitious method. Greenberg's own terminology was originally "mass comparison", which he later changed to "multilateral comparison"; from his first use of it in the 1950s on, it always involved comparison of grammatical formatives as well as of lexical items, along with considerable attention to typologically
probable paths of sound change
(cf. Greenberg 2005).
In contrast to Greenberg, many historical linguists remain convinced that systematic phonological reconstruction is necessary to establish genetic relationship between languages, and consequently reject the Eurasiatic hypothesis.
Japonic languages
Japonic languages is a term which identifies and characterises the Japanese which is spoken on the main islands of Japan and the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. This widely accepted linguistics term was coined by Leon Serafim....
(Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Ryukyuan
Ryukyuan languages
The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic....
) is unclear. The group is traditionally considered to consist of dialects of a single language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
.
The possibility of a genetic relationship
Genetic relationship (linguistics)
In linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between languages that are members of the same language family. The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics...
to the Goguryeo
Goguryeo language
The Goguryeo language was spoken in the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo , one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. The language is also known as Old Koguryo, Koguryoic, and Koguryoan....
(Koguryŏ) language has the most currency. Goguryeo itself may be related to Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, and a Korean-Japonic grouping is widely considered.
Independent of the question of the Korean-Japonic subgrouping, both the Japonic languages and Korean are sometimes included in the Altaic
Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
and hypothetical Eurasiatic
Eurasiatic languages
Eurasiatic is a language macrofamily proposed by Joseph Greenberg that includes many language families historically spoken in northern Eurasia. The eight branches of Eurasiatic are Etruscan, Indo-European, Uralic–Yukaghir, Altaic, Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo–Aleut, spoken in...
proposals by proponents of these linguistic macrofamilies
Macrofamily
In historical linguistics, a macro-family, also called a superfamily or phylum, is defined as a proposed genetic relationship grouping together language families in a larger scale clasification.However, Campbell regards this term as superfluous, preferring language family for those clasifications...
.
Koguryoic hypothesis
The Japanese-Koguryoic proposal dates back to Shinmura IzuruShinmura Izuru
was a Japanese linguist and essayist. His is best known for his many contributions to Japanese linguistics and lexicography. In honor of him, Shinmura Izuru Prize is annually awarded to contributions to Linguistics.- Background :...
's (1916) observation that the attested Goguryeo numerals, 3, 5, 7, and 10, were very similar to Japanese. The hypothesis proposes that Japanese is a relative of the extinct language
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
s spoken by the Buyeo-Goguryeo cultures of Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, southern Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
, and Liaodong. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo
Goguryeo
Goguryeo or Koguryŏ was an ancient Korean kingdom located in present day northern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula, southern Manchuria, and southern Russian Maritime province....
, with the more poorly-attested Buyeo languages
Buyeo languages
Buyeo or Fuyu languages are a hypothetical language family that consists of ancient languages of the northern Korean Peninsula and southern Manchuria and possibly Japan. According to Chinese records, the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo, Dongye, Okjeo, Baekje—and possibly Gojoseon—were similar...
of Baekje
Baekje
Baekje or Paekche was a kingdom located in southwest Korea. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Goguryeo and Silla....
and Buyeo
Buyeo (state)
Buyeo or Puyŏ , Fuyu in Chinese, was an ancient Korean kingdom located from today's Manchuria to northern North Korea, from around the 2nd century BC to 494. Its remnants were absorbed by the neighboring and brotherhood kingdom of Goguryeo in 494...
believed to also be related.
Supporters of this theory do not include modern Korean as part of that family because it is thought to have derived from the Silla language
Silla language
The Silla language, was spoken in the ancient kingdom of Silla , one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.It is unclear if Silla was related to other languages of the Korean peninsula, such as Baekje and Goguryeo, which are sometimes grouped together as the Buyeo languages...
and it has been shown that the Korean and Buyeo-Goguryeo languages share only a few lexical items, which are typical cultural loanwords.
A monograph by Christopher Beckwith
Christopher Beckwith
Christopher I. Beckwith is a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.He received his Ph.D. degree from Indiana University in Uralic and Altaic Studies ....
(2004) has established about 140 lexical items in the Goguryeo corpus
Text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts...
. They mostly occur in place name collocations, many of which may include grammatical morphemes (including cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s of the Japanese genitive marker
Marker (linguistics)
In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word, phrase, or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not...
no and the Japanese adjective-attributive morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
-sa) and a few of which may show syntactical
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
relationships. He postulates that the majority of the identified Goguryeo corpus, including all the grammatical morphemes, is related to Japanese.
Korean hypothesis
William George Aston suggested in 1879 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society that Japanese is related to Korean. A relationship between Japanese and Korean was endorsed by the Japanese scholar Shōsaburō Kanazawa in 1910. Some other scholars took this position in the twentieth century (Poppe 1965:137). Substantial arguments in favor of a Japanese-Korean relationship were presented by Samuel Martin, a leading specialist in Japanese and Korean, in 1966 and in subsequent publications (e.g. Martin 1990). Other linguists advocating this position include John Whitman (1985) and Barbara E. Riley (2004), and Sergei StarostinSergei Starostin
Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin was a Russian historical linguist and scholar, best known for his work with hypothetical proto-languages, including his work on the reconstruction of the Proto-Borean language, the controversial theory of Altaic languages and the formulation of the Dené–Caucasian...
with his lexicostatistical research The Altaic Problem and the Origins of the Japanese Language (Moscow, 1991). A Japanese-Korean connection does not necessarily exclude a Japanese-Koguryo or Altaic relationship.
The possible lexical relationship between Korean and Japanese can be briefly exemplified by such basic vocabulary items, see table below and Martin 1966.
| Comparison with Japanese | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Japanese Old Japanese language is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language.This stage in the development of Japanese is still actively studied and debated, and key Old Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū, remain obscure in places.-Dating:... |
Japanese Japanese language is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an... |
meaning | Mid-Korean | Korean Korean language Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing... |
meaning | ||||||||
| midu | mizu | water | |myr | mul | water | ||||||||
| midu | mizu | water | |mos | mot | pond | ||||||||
| ki, ku, ko | ki(te), ku(ru), ko(nai) | to come | |ga- | ga- | to go | ||||||||
| kata- | kata- | to be hard | |gut- | gut- | to be hard | ||||||||
| wi- | i- | to sit (Old Japanese) to be (in a certain place, said of an animate being) |
|i- (after a consonant-final root) ~ zero (after a vowel-final root) | i- (after a consonant-final root) ~ zero (after a vowel-final root) | to be (copula) | ||||||||
| naɸ- | na- | to be not | |ani | ani, an | not | ||||||||
| mïna | mina | all, everyone | |man-hɔ- | manh- | to be many, to be much | ||||||||
| kasa | kasa | wide-brimmed hat, sombrero umbrella, parasol |
|gat | gat | traditional Korean top hat | ||||||||
The same possible cognates are often observed in other members of the potential Altaic family, especially among the Tungusic languages
Tungusic languages
The Tungusic languages form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain...
. Compare, for instance, Nanai muke "water"; giagda- "to walk on foot"; anaa, anna "not" (from Starostin's database).
Next to similarities in basic vocabulary, the hypothesis is also based on typological and grammatical similarity.
Some critics of this hypothesis (such as Alexander Vovin
Alexander Vovin
Alexander V. Vovin is an American linguist and philologist in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, where he is a Professor of East Asian Languages and the acting chair of the department from August 1, 2009.Alexander Vovin earned his M.A...
) claim that there are difficulties in establishing exact phonological laws and that Japanese and Korean have few shared innovations. There are also drastic differences between the native Korean and Japanese number systems.
The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship overlaps with the extended form of the Altaic hypothesis (see below), but not all scholars who argue for one also argue for the other. For example, Samuel Martin, who was a major advocate of a Japanese-Korean relationship, only provided cautious support to the inclusion of these languages in Altaic, and Talat Tekin, an Altaicist, includes Korean in Altaic but not Japanese (Georg et al. 1999:72, 74).
Altaic hypothesis
According to its proponents, Altaic is a language family consisting at a minimum of TurkicTurkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
, Mongolic
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
, and Tungusic. G.J. Ramstedt's
Gustaf John Ramstedt
Gustaf John Ramstedt was a Swedish-speaking Finnish linguist and diplomat.-Biography:Ramstedt was born in Ekenäs in Southern Finland....
Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft ('Introduction to Altaic Linguistics') in 1952–1957 included Korean in Altaic. Roy Andrew Miller
Roy Andrew Miller
Roy Andrew Miller is a linguist notable for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the Altaic group of languages....
's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages, published in 1971, included Japanese in Altaic as well. The most important recent work in favor of this expanded Altaic family is An Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (3 volumes) by Sergei Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak (2003).
The Altaic family is by no means generally accepted, either in its core form of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic or its expanded form of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese. The best-known critiques are those of Gerard Clauson
Gerard Clauson
Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson was an English civil servant, businessman, and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkish language....
(1956) and Gerhard Doerfer (1963, 1988). Currently active critics include Stefan Georg
Stefan Georg
Stefan Georg is currently Privatdozent at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany, for Altaic Linguistics and Culture Studies.- Background :...
and Alexander Vovin.
Evidence for this grouping mostly lies in claimed correspondences in vocabulary, as shown in the following table, although attempts have been made to reconstruct a number of suffixes.
| Japanese (pre-WWII orthog) |
Turkish | English gloss | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ta-ke 岳 | tepe/dağ | "mountain" | |
| i-, yo- | iyi | "good" | |
| ka-san 火山 | kazan | "volcano" | Turkish kazan alternatively means "cauldron". |
| mizu 水 | su | "water" | |
| yama 山 | yamaç | "mountain" | Turkish yamaç actually means "the hillside of the mountain". |
| ishi 石 | taş | "stone" | |
| yo 四 | dört | "four" | |
| kura 鞍 | kürtün | "saddle" | |
| yak- | ya(k)- | "to burn" | Turkish yak- is exclusively transitive ("to burn (it)", "to light (it) on fire"); intransitive counterpart is yan- |
| kir- | kır- | "to cut" | Turkish kır- actually means "to break; to split, to chop (wood); to fold; to destroy, to break (resistance, pride, desire, etc.); to reduce (price); to offend, to hurt": cf. Turkish kırma, the deverbal noun derived from the verb kır-: "a pleat, a fold; folding, collapsible; groats; hybrid, mongrel". Turkish kes- is more specifically "to cut". |
| inu 犬 | it | "dog" | cf. Manchu Manchu language Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus... indahŭn, Nanai ida, Ainu seta, Chinese "zodiacal dog" 戌 *zyüt, Jeju Jeju dialect Jeju dialect or Jeju language is the dialect used on the island of Jeju in Korea, with the exception of Chuja in the former Bukjeju County area of Jeju City. It differs greatly from the dialects of the mainland, and preserves many archaic words which have since been lost in other Korean dialects... "puppy" gaŋsæŋi |
| yaban 野蛮 | yaban | "savage" | Yabancı means "alien/foreigner" in Turkish. In Japanese Yaban-ji means "barbarian". |
| kuro 黒 | kara | "black" | cf. Ainu kur "shadow", *kur-ne > kunne "black; dark" |
| kura- | karar- | "to be dark" | cog. with preceding |
| e へ | -ye | "to" | In Turkish, "-ye" is an inflection particle at the end of the some words which add same meaning as does destination indicator e (*pe) in Japanese.(e.g. göl-e; mizuumi e) |
| sore それ | şu | "that" | |
| nani 何 | ne | "what" | cf. Ainu ne (interrogative stem) as in nep "what" and nen "who(m)," Mandarin Chinese nǎ "which," Korean nugu "who(m)" |
| Sore wa nan desu ka? それは何ですか？ |
Şu ne dir ki? | "What is that?" |
These examples come from Starostin's database, which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and hypothetical Altaic etymologies
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
.
Nostratic and Eurasiatic macrofamilies
Suggestions of connections to Japanese, Altaic and Dravidian were made by Hermann JacobiHermann Jacobi
Hermann Georg Jacobi was an eminent German Indologist.-Education:Jacobi was born in Köln on 11 February 1850...
in 1897 (Compositum und Nebensatz, pp. 106–131), who further noted structural similarities to Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
.
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
(2000–2002) argued for the inclusion of Japanese in his proposed Eurasiatic language family. In contrast to Sergei Starostin, he rejected the inclusion of Korean in Altaic. According to Greenberg, Japanese-Ryukyuan, Korean, and Ainu
Ainu language
Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....
form a separate subgroup within Eurasiatic.
Like other language classifications of Greenberg's, the Eurasiatic family is often attacked on the ground that it is based on "mass lexical comparison"; however, this is a fictitious method. Greenberg's own terminology was originally "mass comparison", which he later changed to "multilateral comparison"; from his first use of it in the 1950s on, it always involved comparison of grammatical formatives as well as of lexical items, along with considerable attention to typologically
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
probable paths of sound change
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
(cf. Greenberg 2005).
In contrast to Greenberg, many historical linguists remain convinced that systematic phonological reconstruction is necessary to establish genetic relationship between languages, and consequently reject the Eurasiatic hypothesis.
Other
- A more rarely encountered hypothesis is that Japanese is related to the Dravidian languagesDravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. The possibility that Japanese might be related to Dravidian was raised by Robert CaldwellRobert CaldwellBishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...
(cf. Caldwell 1875:413). A relationship between Japanese and Dravidian has more recently been advocated by the Japanese scholars Susumu Shiba, Akira Fujiwara, and Susumu ŌnoSusumu Onowas a Tokyo-born linguist, specializing in the early history of the Japanese language Kokugogaku. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1943, where he studied under Shinkichi Hashimoto...
(n.d., 2000). - The phonological similarities and geographical proximity of Japanese to the Austronesian languagesAustronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of very early creole languageCreole languageA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
, with an Altaic superstratum and an Austronesian substratumSubstratumIn linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
, or vice versa including Eskimo–Aleut languages influence. - One of the less accepted theories is that Japanese is a purely Austronesian language.
- Some Japanese linguists such as Nishida TatsuoNishida Tatsuois a professor emeritus at Kyoto University. His work encompasses research on a variety of Tibeto-Burman languages, he made great contributions in particular to the deciphering of the Tangut Language....
consider Japanese to be related to the Tibeto-Burman languages.
See also
- Linguistic reconstructionLinguistic reconstructionLinguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction. Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language...
- Korean languageKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
- Ainu languageAinu languageAinu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....
- Altaic languagesAltaic languagesAltaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
Works cited
- Aston, William George. 1879. "A comparative study of the Japanese and Korean languages." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Britain and Ireland, New Series 11, 317-364.
- Beckwith, Christopher I. 2004. Koguryo: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese-Koguryoic Languages. Leiden: Brill.
- Beckwith, Christopher I. 2006a. "Methodological observations on some recent studies of the early ethnolinguistic history of Korea and vicinity." Altai Hakpo 16, 199-234.
- Beckwith, Christopher I. 2006b. "The ethnolinguistic history of the early Korean peninsula region: Japanese-Koguryoic and other languages in the Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla kingdoms." (page 33 ff.) Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 2.2, 34-64.
- Caldwell, Robert. 1875. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages, second edition. London: Trübner.
- Georg, Stefan, Peter A. Michalove, Alexis Manaster Ramer, and Paul J. Sidwell. 1999. "Telling general linguists about Altaic." Journal of Linguistics 35, 65-98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, 2 volumes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 2005. Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Kanazawa, Shōsaburō. 1910. The Common Origin of the Japanese and Korean Languages. Tokyo: Sanseidō.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1966. "Lexical evidence relating Korean to Japanese." Language 12.2, 185-251.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1990. "Morphological clues to the relationships of Japanese and Korean." In Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology, edited by Philip Baldi. Berlin: de Gruyter.
- Miller, Roy Andrew. 1971. Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Ōno, Susumu. n.d. "The genealogy of the Japanese language: Tamil and Japanese."
- Ōno, Susumu. 2000. 日本語の形成. 岩波書店. ISBN 4000017586.
- Poppe, Nicholas. 1965. Introduction to Altaic Linguistics. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
- Riley, Barbara E. 2003. Aspects of the Genetic Relationship of the Korean and Japanese Languages. PhD thesis, University of Hawaii.
- Starostin, Sergei A. 1991. Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka, 'The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language'. Moscow: Nauka.
- Starostin, Sergei A., Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak. 2003. Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages, 3 volumes. Leiden: Brill. (Also: database version.)
- Trombetti, Alfredo. 1922-1923. Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli.
- Vovin, Alexander. 2003. 日本語系統論の現在：これからどこへ 'The genetic relationship of the Japanese language: Where do we go from here?'. In 日本語系統論の現在 'Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language', edited by Alexander Vovin and Toshiki Osada. Kyoto: International Center for Japanese Studies. ISSN 1346-6585.
- Whitman, John Bradford. 1985. The Phonological Basis for the Comparison of Japanese and Korean. PhD thesis, Harvard University.
Further reading
- Katsumi, Matsumoto. 2007. 世界言語のなかの日本語 Sekaigengo no nakano Nihongo, 'Japanese in the World's Languages'. Tokyo: 三省堂 Sanseido.
- Lewin, Bruno. 1976. "Japanese and Korean: The problems and history of a linguistic comparison." Journal of Japanese Studies 2.2, 389-412.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1968. "Grammatical elements relating Korean to Japanese." In Proceedings of the Eighth Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences B.9, 405-407.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1975. "Problems in establishing the prehistoric relationships of Korean and Japanese." In Proceedings, International Symposium Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Korean Liberation. Seoul: National Academy of Sciences.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1991. "Recent research on the relationships of Japanese and Korean." In Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages, edited by Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Martin, Samuel E. 1996. Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic Question. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
- Miller, Roy Andrew. 1980. Origins of the Japanese Language: Lectures in Japan during the Academic Year 1977-78. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
- Miller, Roy Andrew. 1996. Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic. Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.
- Robbeets, Martine. 2004a. "Belief or argument? The classification of the Japanese language." Eurasia Newsletter 8. Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University.
- Robbeets, Martine. 2004b. "Swadesh 100 on Japanese, Korean and Altaic." Tokyo University Linguistic Papers, TULIP 23, 99–118.
- Robbeets, Martine. 2005. Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
- Robbeets, Martine. 2007. "How the actional suffix chain connects Japanese to Altaic." Turkic Languages 11.1, 3-58.
- Schmidt, Wilhelm. 1930. "Die Beziehungen der austrischen Sprachen zum Japanischen", 'The connections of the Austric languages to Japanese'. Wiener Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik 1, 239-51.