Classification of the Japanese language
The classification of the Japanese language is uncertain and disputed. Historical linguists who specialize in Japanese agree that it is one of the two members of the Japonic language family, but remain divided as to the origins of the Japonic languages. (Japanese is often considered a language isolate, since Ryukyuan is commonly regarded as a dialect of Japanese.)
Agreed-on connections and overview
Specialists in Japanese historical linguistics all agree that Japanese is related to the Ryukyuan languages (including Okinawan); together, Japanese and Ryukyuan are grouped in the Japonic languages. Among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo et al. has the most currency; relationship to Korean (either independently or by virtue of relation to Goguryeo) is considered plausible but is still problematic; the Altaic hypothesis is less widely accepted. Most linguists generally reject the hypotheses of Japanese being genetically related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, or Dravidian languages.[citation needed]
Possible external relations
As for the relation of the Japonic family to other languages, there are several theories, presented below in approximate descending order of their current acceptance:[1]
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. 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[2] by Christopher Beckwith 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.[3]
Korean hypothesis
Scholars such as Samuel E. Martin, John Whitman and Barbara E. Riley[4] have proposed that Japanese is a relative of Korean. This theory is partly based on the high degree of typological similarity between modern Japanese and modern Korean grammar, and supported by numerous lexical items in Japanese that appear to show regular correspondences. The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship is often subsumed into the Altaic theory (see below), though not all versions of the Altaic theory incorporate Korean. Critics of this theory 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 borrowed.
Altaic hypothesis
Japanese is often included in proposed wide definitions of the Altaic language
family (narrower definitions including only Turkic, Mongolic, and
| Japanese | Turkish | gloss |
|---|---|---|
| ishi | taş | 'stone' |
| yo | dört | 'four' |
| kura | kürtün | 'saddle' |
| kir- | kir- | 'to cut' |
| inu | it | 'dog' (c.f. Manchu indahŭn, Ainu seta, Chinese 'zodiacal dog' 戌 *zyüt, Jeju 'puppy' gaŋsæŋi) |
| kuro | kara | '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.
Eurasiatic hypothesis
Joseph Greenberg argued for the inclusion of Japanese in his proposed Eurasiatic language family.[5] 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 for his methodological positions.[6] 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.
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, different scholars have come up with lists of proposed Japanese-Austronesian cognates that do not agree with each other. This is a bad sign for this hypothesis, since different scholars working independently usually come up with similar results. Furthermore, the number of words possibly identified as Austronesian is extremely small.
Austronesian hypothesis
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" with the Tagalog inom "drink." However, it is important 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).
Tamil hypothesis
A few scholars have suggested that Japanese may be related to Tamil and possibly other Dravidian languages, mostly spoken in South India. This is supported by a very few scholars, such as Robert Caldwell, Susumu Shiba, Susumu Ōno[7][8] and Akira Fujiwara. Evidence for this theory is that Japanese and Tamil are both agglutinative languages and also have similar vocabularies and phonetics, though Tamil's retroflex consonants are very different from Japanese. This hypothesis has little support outside of the scholars mentioned here, and has been criticized by other scholars of Japanese and Dravidian.[citation needed] Ōno was criticized for making errors in history and archaeology, and for various methodological errors in applying the comparative method,[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
Possible reconciliations
It is worth pointing out that not all of the hypotheses enunciated above are mutually incompatible. Very often, they involve different time depths. The more accepted positions tend to be those lower in time, while positions concerning deeper relationships tend to be more controversial at present, perhaps not too surprisingly. 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 historical linguists would endorse such a grouping, it underlines that the difficulties involved in classifying Japanese involve general methodological issues for linguistics, and will probably only be resolved in tandem with these.
References
- ^ Cf. 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 Vovin & 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. ISSN1346-6585.
- ^ 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 90-04-13949-4
- ^ Beckwith, Christopher I. (2006). "Methodological Observations on Some Recent Studies of the Early Ethnolinguistic History of Korea and Vicinity." Altai Hakpo 2006, 16: 199-234. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2006). "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, 2006, Vol. 2-2: 34-64.
- ^ Barbara E. Riley. Aspects of the Genetic Relationship of the Korean and Japanese Languages.
- ^ Greenberg, Joseph H. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8047-3812-2. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8047-4624-9
- ^ Greenberg, Joseph H. Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0199257713
- ^ Ōno, Susumu. The Genealogy of the Japanese Language: Tamil and Japanese.
- ^ Ōno, Susumu (2000). 日本語の形成. 岩波書店. ISBN 4-00-001758-6.
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