the languages of japan

w MASAYOSHI SHIBATANI ie language of Japan imi IWIRRinf^F I ANfU lAfiF .SI IRX/FYS This book is a detailed survey of the two main indigenous languages ofjapan: Japanese and Ainu. No genetic relationship has been established between them, and structurally they differ significantly. Professor Shibatani has therefore divided his study into two indepen- dent parts. The first is the most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language yet to appear in English, and includes data and texts from both classical and colloquial materials. The second part deals extensively with Japanese. It discusses topics from the evolution of the writing system and the differences be- tween men's and women's speech, to issues of greater theoretical complexity, such as phonol- ogy, including tone-analysis, the lexicon and word-formation, and the syntax of agglutinative morphology. As an American-trained scholar in Japan, the author is in a unique position that affords him a dual perspective on language deriving from Western linguistic scholarship and the Japanese grammatical tradition, which has a history of over 200 years. Professor Shibatani critically examines for the first time some modern analy- ses of such prominent features of Japanese as topic construction and verb inflection in the light of traditional scholarship. The languages ofjapan will appeal not only to those seeking a basic survey, but also to ad- vanced students and Japanese specialists in- terested in the theoretically problematic areas of the two languages, and to those working on Japan generally. Like other language surveys in this series, it makes a considerable contribution to descriptive linguistics and language typology. CAMBRIDGE LANGUAGE SURVEYS General Editors: B. Comrie, C.J. Fillmore, R. Lass, D. Lightfoot, J. Lyons, P.H. Matthews, R. Posner, S. Romainc. N.V. Smith, N. Vincent. A. Zwicky This series offers general accounts of all the major language families of the world. Some volumes are organized on a purely genetic basis, others on a geographical basis, whichever yields the most convenient and intelligible grouping in each case. Sometimes, as with the Australian volume, the two in any case coincide. Each volume compares and contrasts the typological features of the languages it deals with. It also treats the relevant genetic relationships, historical development, and sociolinguistic issues arising from their role and use in the world today. The intended readership is the student of linguistics or general linguist, but no special knowledge of the languages under consideration is assumed. Some volumes also have a wider appeal, like those on Australia and North America, where the future of the languages and their speakers raises important social and political issues. Already published: The languages of Australia R. M. W. .Dixon The languages of the Soviet Union Bernard Comrie The Mesoamcrican Indian languages Jorge A. Sudre: The Papuan languages of New Guinea William A. Foley Chinese Jerry Norman Pidgins and Creoles, volume I: Theory and structure John A. Holm Pidgins and Creoles, volume II: Reference survey John A. Holm Forthcoming titles include: The Indo-Aryan languages Colin F. Masica Korean Ho-min Sohn The languages of South-Easl Asia J.A. Matisoff Austroncsian languages R. Blust Slavonic languages R. Sussex Germanic languages R. Lass Celtic languages D. MucAutuy el al. Romance languages R. Posner The languages of Native North America Marianne Mithun The languages of the Andes Willem F.H. Adelaar and Pieter C. Muysken THE LANGUAGES OF JAPAN MASAYOSHI SHIBATANI Faculty of Letters, Kobe University X m '•.'• i % ; ; l i i i ; I • — « ';*;• p S * The nght of the Vmiertity of Cambridge to print ami irll all manner of booi.1 »ui granted by mm wit to tsH. The Untvfrtti} hat printed and published eontinboush Hnce 1394. - CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumnington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1990 First published 1990 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge British Library cataloguing in publication data Shibatani, Masayoshi The languages of Japan. - (Cambridge language surveys) I. Japan. Languages I. Title 409.52 Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data applied for ISBN 0 521 36070 6 hard covers ISBN 0 521 36918 5 paperback AO For Naomi [...]... Locations of languages surrounding Japanese 3 Map of Japan 4 Geographic division of Japanese dialects 5 Geographic division of Ryukyuan dialects 6 Bundle of isoglosses separating the Western dialects and the Eastern dialects 7 Accent in the Japanese dialects page 8 95 188 189 193 197 211 PREFACE There are arguably three indigenous languages in Japan: namely, Ainu, Japanese, and Ryukyuan However, the genetic... book would have been much the poorer Preface xv Professor Eugenie Henderson, the editor assigned to this book by Cambridge University Press, also read the entire manuscript and guided me, with remarkable patience, through the completion of the work Her offer of the use of her office at SOAS greatly facilitated the completion of part of the book My stay at the University of London was made possible... PART 1 The Ainu language 1 Introduction I I People and distribution The "Ainu" are a people living on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido whose ancestors were both physically and culturally distinct from the Japanese The prc-historical distribution of the Ainu people is not easily ascertainable, but many place names in the northern part of the main Japanese island of Honshu indicate that they might... In Uralic and Altaic languages, the harmonic sets are differentiated in terms of the backness and the roundedness of the vowels, while in many African languages the tongue-root position is a basis for harmonic sets However, in the case of Ainu there is no clear phonetic basis separating the set consisting of a and u from the one consisting of o In the above description, we used the expression "peripheral"... for the resemblance of Ainu to the other languages" (p 40) Hattori's lexicostatistical work (1959) suggests to him that even if Japanese and Korean were related, the time of split would be more than 4,000 years ago In the case of Ainu, his view is that, even if Ainu is related to Japanese, the relationship is a fairly indirect one First, Japanese and Korean are related - if related at all Then, these... great addition to the corpus of data on Ainu languages An English outline of Murasaki's grammar was published in 1978 Numerous articles on the Saru dialect have been published by Tamura Suzuko These articles together cover a substantial portion of the grammar of this dialect, which is a main dialect of the Hidaka area and a direct descendant of Classical Ainu as represented by the version of yukar "Itadorimaru",... memories of her life in her native language, the Ishikari dialect of Ainu, using the 10 The Ainu language Japanese kana syllabary together with Japanese translation Her materials of roughly 10,000 words were edited as well as transliterated into near-phonemic form by members of the Linguistics Department of Hokkaido University before being published in book form in 1983 The Ishikari dialect of the region... the main area of the Ainu habitation The Kurile Ainu, moved to Shikotan in 1884, were only forty-one in number in 1933, and it is believed that there arc no longer any direct descendants of the Kurile Ainu still living In the 1940 census, the HokkaidS Ainu numbered 16,170, and the 1935 census reported the population of the Sakhalin Ainu to be 1,512 After World War II, some of the Ainu of Sakhalin were... words with Welsh, Cornish, and a few other languages He then concludes the section by saying: "This chief argument, however, for an Aryan origin of the Ainu language will be found to lie in the Grammar rather than in vocabulary" (p 25) But, in the grammar section of the dictionary, no extensive discussion of this issue appears From their geographic proximity, Ainu and Japanese are likely candidates for... relationship between Japanese and Ryukyuan has been proven and the transparency of the relationship is such that the latter is now considered as a dialect (group) of Japanese by most scholars This leaves us with two languages to deal with, and the book title of "Ainu and Japanese" would have been less pretentious The less pretentious title, however, suggests that the book is about the genetic relationship . the entire manuscript and guided me, with remarkable patience, through the completion of the work. Her offer of the use of her office at SOAS greatly facilitated the completion of part of the. where the future of the languages and their speakers raises important social and political issues. Already published: The languages of Australia R. M. W. .Dixon The languages of the Soviet. Celtic languages D. MucAutuy el al. Romance languages R. Posner The languages of Native North America Marianne Mithun The languages of the Andes Willem F.H. Adelaar and Pieter C. Muysken THE LANGUAGES