Classification of the Japanese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The immediate classification of the Japanese language is clear: it is a Japonic language, along with the Ryukyuan languages. Traditionally, these are considered dialects of a single language isolate. However, more distant connections remain contentious amoung historical linguists. The possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo has the most currency, though the connection may actually be one of a substratum; a relationship to Korean is widely considered but is problematic; an Altaic hypothesis is less widely accepted. A very few linguists support the hypotheses of Japanese being genetically related to the Austronesian languages.

It is securely established that Japanese has no close relation to Chinese or other Sino-Tibetan languages.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Possible external relations

There are several hypotheses on the relationship of the Japonic family to other language families. These hypotheses are presented below in approximate descending order of their current acceptance (cf. Vovin 2003).

[edit] Extinct Korean-peninsular languages hypothesis

The Korean-peninsular Languages hypothesis dates back to the independent discovery by two Japanese scholars in 1907 that material in the extinct Goguryeo language found in historical sources on the early Korean Peninsula was obviously related to Japanese.[citation needed] The hypothesis proposes that Japanese is a relative of the extinct languages 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 ancient language of Silla and it has been shown that the Korean and Buyeo-Goguryeo languages share only a few lexical items, which are typical cultural loanwords. A recent monograph by Christopher Beckwith (2004) has now established that there are about 140 lexical items in the Goguryeo corpus alone. They mostly occur in place name collocations, many of which include grammatical morphemes (including cognates of the Japanese genitive marker no and the Japanese adjective-attributive morpheme -si) and a few of which reveal syntax relationships. The majority of the identified Goguryeo corpus, including all the grammatical morphemes, are clearly related to Japanese. Most discussion of this theory now centers on arguments about the identity of the speakers of the language recorded as Goguryeo, but so far the identification of the language with the Goguryeo people, which agrees with the ancient Chinese accounts, has been shown to be the most secure historically and linguistically (Beckwith 2006a, 2006b).

[edit] Korean hypothesis

Scholars such as Samuel Martin (1975), John Whitman (1985), Roy Andrew Miller (1996), and Barbara E. Riley (2004) have proposed that Japanese is a relative of Korean. This hypothesis is essentially based on the high degree of typological similarity between modern Japanese and modern Korean grammar (Beckwith 2004). The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship is often subsumed into the Altaic hypothesis (see below), though not all versions of the Altaic hypothesis incorporate Korean. Critics of this hypothesis claim that the further back in time one goes, the less Korean and Japanese resemble each other; they have no shared innovations; and most of the shared lexical items appear to have been adopted.

[edit] Altaic hypothesis

Japanese is often included in proposed wide definitions of the Altaic language family (narrower definitions including only Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic are more widely accepted); notable scholars supporting this hypothesis include Sergei Starostin (2003). The languages to which the Japonic family is connected via the Altaic grouping include Mongolic, Tungusic, Turkic, and, according to many proponents, Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkic and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Additionally, there are a suggestive number of correspondences in vocabulary, as shown in the following table.

Japanese Turkish gloss notes
ishi taş 'stone'
yo dört 'four'
kura kürtün 'saddle'
yak- yak- '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 'deverbal noun derived from the verb kır-; a pleat, a fold; folding, collapsible; groats; hybrid, mongrel.' Turkish kes- is more specifically 'to cut.'
inu it 'dog' cf. Manchu indahŭn, Nanai ida, Ainu seta, Chinese 'zodiacal dog' 戌 *zyüt, Jeju 'puppy' gaŋsæŋi
kuro kara 'black' cf. Ainu kur 'shadow', *kur-ne > kunne 'black; dark'
kura- karar- 'to be dark'

These examples come from Starostin's database, which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and hypothetical Altaic etymologies. While Starostin was a first-class scholar, there are weaknesses with Altaic, not the least of which is the poor quality of the vowel correspondences. Another one is the relative paucity of reconstructions for basic vocabulary terms. Furthermore, Starostin made numerous mistakes with the Japanese data, such as misidentifying Japanese words, reconstructing secondary phenomena in dialects back to the proto-language, overlooking accentual distinctions in Japanese, and ignoring the historical formation (i.e., morphological structure) of certain words. Moreover, he made mistakes with data in other Altaic languages as well. Whatever connection Japanese may have to Altaic languages cannot be demonstrated by the current state of Altaic reconstruction.[citation needed]

[edit] Eurasiatic hypothesis

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. See Greenberg's Genetic Linguistics (2005) for his methodological positions. In contrast to Greenberg, most historical linguists remain convinced that systematic phonological reconstruction is necessary to establish genetic relationship between languages, and consequently have paid little attention to the Eurasiatic hypothesis.

[edit] Creole hypothesis

The phonological similarities and geographical proximity of Japanese to the Austronesian languages have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of creole language, with an Altaic superstratum and an Austronesian substratum, or vice versa. However, the lists of suggested Japanese-Austronesian cognates proposed by different scholars do not agree with each other, a severe weakness for this theory. Furthermore, the number of words identified as possibly Austronesian is extremely small.

[edit] Austronesian hypothesis

 This section does not cite any references or sources. (February 2007)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

One of the less likely theories is that Japanese is a purely Austronesian language. This is rejected by all mainstream specialists in both Austronesian and Japanese, since the grammar, lexis, and morphology of Japanese are vastly different from those of any known Austronesian language. Proponents of this theory point out examples of convergent lexis, such as Japanese hina "doll" and hime "princess," as cognate with the Māori word hine "girl," or Japanese kaku "to write, to sketch" with the Hawaiian kākau "to write, to tattoo", or Japanese neh "an expression" with the Kapampangan neh "an expression", or Japanese nomu "to drink" with the Tagalog inom "drink."

It is important, however, to note that many totally unrelated languages exhibit chance occurrences of convergent lexis. Furthermore, these alleged "cognates" soon fall apart upon closer analysis. For example, the Japanese word hime is clearly a compound word; modern Japanese /h/ comes from earlier /p/; Hawaiian /k/ comes from earlier /t/; and no language has to write as part of its basic vocabulary. Moreover, the time depths for Japanese and Proto-Polynesian do not match, and Polynesia is far more distant from Japan than Taiwan, the proposed Austronesian homeland. If there were an Austronesian connection, it might be found closer to the Japanese Archipelago. Beyond that, the time depth for Proto-Austronesian, at roughly 6000 years BP, makes it far too old to be compared with Japanese, which may have come to the Japanese islands perhaps 2500-3000 years ago (see the Yayoi page for more).

Those who propose this scenario suggest that the Austronesian family once covered the islands to the north of Formosa (western Japanese areas such as the Ryūkyū Islands and Kyūshū) as well as to the south. However, there is no genetic evidence for an especially close relationship between speakers of Austronesian languages and speakers of Japonic languages, so if there was any prehistoric interaction between them, it is likely to have been one of simple cultural exchange without significant ethnic mixing. In fact, genetic analyses consistently show that the Ryukyuans between Taiwan and the main islands of Japan are genetically less similar to the Taiwanese aborigines than are the Japanese, which suggests that if there was any interaction between proto-Austronesian and proto-Japonic, it occurred on the mainland prior to the extinction of Austronesian languages on mainland China and the introduction of Japonic to Japan, not in the Ryukyus. It should also be noted that groups of peoples that inhabited ancient Japan such as the Kumaso and the Hayato are theorized by some to have spoken an Austronesian-related language, although more investigation is needed to verify this assertion.

[edit] Dravidian hypothesis

A few scholars have suggested that Japanese may be related to the Dravidian languages, mostly spoken in South India, of which the best-documented from an early date is Tamil. This is supported by a very few scholars, such as Robert Caldwell (1875:413), Susumu Shiba, Akira Fujiwara, and Susumu Ōno (n.d., 2000). Evidence for this theory is that the Japanese and Dravidian languages are both agglutinating and have similar vocabularies and sound systems, though Dravidian's retroflex consonants are very different from Japanese. This hypothesis has little support beyond the scholars mentioned here, and has been criticized by other scholars of Japanese and Dravidian. Ōno was criticized for making errors in history and archaeology, and for various methodological errors in applying the comparative method, such as positing multiple correspondences without giving conditioning factors (for example, Tamil c : Japanese s; Tamil c : Japanese ∅; and Tamil ∅ : Japanese s), and several other shortcomings in data and application of theory.

[edit] Possible reconciliations

Not all of the hypotheses enunciated above are mutually incompatible. Very often, they involve different time depths. The more accepted relationships tend to be those lower in time, while hypotheses concerning deeper relationships tend to be more controversial at present. Further, some of these hypotheses may involve correct perceptions of relationship, but not resolve the question of whether the similarities noted are due to genetic relationship or areal influence. For example, the following grouping would reconcile all of those above: Japonic-Goguryeo < Goguryeo-Silla < Altaic < Eurasiatic < Nostratic (which includes Dravidian), with an areal influence on Japonic from Austronesian. While only a minority of linguists concerned would endorse such a grouping, it underlines that the difficulties involved in classifying Japanese concern general methodological issues for linguistics, and will probably only be resolved in tandem with these.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Beckwith, Christopher I. 2004. Koguryo: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese-Koguryoic Languages, with a Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9004139494.
  • 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." Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, Vol. 2-2: 34-64.
  • Caldwell, Robert. 1875. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages, second edition, revised and enlarged. London: Trübner & Co. (Original edition: 1856.)
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0804738122.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0804746249.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2005. Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199257713.
  • 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. 1990. "Morphological clues to the relationships of Japanese and Korean." In Philip Baldi, ed., Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology. Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Martin, Samuel E. 1991. "Recent research on the relationships of Japanese and Korean." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell, eds., Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Martin, Samuel E. 1996. Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic Question. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824818091.
  • Miller, Roy Andrew. 1996. Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic. Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. ISBN 9748299694.
  • Schmidt, Wilhelm. 1930. "Die Beziehungen der austrischen Sprachen zum Japanischen", 'The Connections of the Austric Languages to Japanese'. Wien Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik 1:239-51.
  • Starostin, Sergei A., Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak. 2003. Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-13153-1.
  • 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 Alexander Vovin and Toshiki Osada (eds.), 日本語系統論の現在 'Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language'. 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.
Languages