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A History of the Japanese Language

Author : Bjarke Frellesvig

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : pages

File Size : 17,69 MB

Release : 2010-07-29

Category : Foreign Language Study

ISBN : 1139488805

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Book Description

Bjarke Frellesvig describes the development of the Japanese language from its recorded beginnings until the present day as reflected by the written sources and historical record. Beginning with a description of the oldest attested stage of the language, Old Japanese (approximately the eighth century AD), and then tracing the changes which occurred through the Early Middle Japanese (800–1200), Late Middle Japanese (1200–1600) and the Modern Japanese (1600–onwards) periods, a complete internal history of the language is examined and discussed. This account provides a comprehensive study of how the Japanese language has developed and adapted, providing a much needed resource for scholars. A History of the Japanese Language is invaluable to all those interested in the Japanese language and also students of language change generally.



Japanese Language

Author : Haruhiko Kindaichi

Publisher : Tuttle Publishing

Page : 153 pages

File Size : 10,3 MB

Release : 2011-12-20

Category : Foreign Language Study

ISBN : 1462902669

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Book Description

This is a book about the structure, history and evolution of the Japanese language. The Japanese Language is a classic study of one of the world's most widely used but least understood languages. Emphasizing the richness and complexity of Japanese as well as its limitations, this fine book provides a lively discussion about the uniqueness of the Japanese language. The relationship of Japanese to other languages is not well understood even by native speakers, and Professor Kindaichi sets out to define it. He concludes that Japanese is indeed only remotely related to other world languages although it shares many features in common with the languages of mainland Asia. Japanese shares with those languages a rich and detailed vocabulary for natural phenomena and an unusually complex and accurate way of expressing social relationships. Moreover, its capability to absorb innovations from abroad easily matches or exceeds that of English or German. The author, after briefly discussing the unique isolation of the Japanese language, moves on to consider the varieties of ordinary speech--dialects, jargon, sex--and role-based distinctions, and the difference between informal, formal, and literary language. He then examines the structure of Japanese pronunciations, its rhythm, and accent. The longest section of the book is devoted to the variety of the vocabulary, what can and cannot be said in Japanese. Readers who are just beginning their own study of Japanese will find this section especially fascinating, for each point is backed by examples from literature and everyday speech. Kindaichi also investigates the so-called vagueness of Japanese and traces it to its source-the unusual sentence order. This book includes: The highly debated origins of the Japanese language. Dialects, jargon, sex and role-based distinctions. Differences between informal, formal, and literary language. Structure, rhythm, and accent of pronunciation. What can and cannot be said in Japanese.



Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages

Author : Patrick Heinrich

Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Page : 734 pages

File Size : 16,32 MB

Release : 2015-02-17

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 1501510711

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Book Description

The UNESCO atlas on endangered languages recognizes the Ryukyuan languages as constituting languages in their own right. This represents a dramatic shift in the ontology of Japan’s linguistic make-up. Ryukyuan linguistics needs to be established as an independent field of study with its own research agenda and objects. This handbook delineates that the UNESCO classification is now well established and adequate. Linguists working on the Ryukyuan languages are well advised to refute the ontological status of the Ryukyuan languages as dialects. The Ryukyuan languages constitute a branch of the Japonic language family, which consists of five unroofed Abstand (language by distance) languages.The Handbook of Ryukyuan Languages provides for the most appropriate and up-to-date answers pertaining to Ryukyuan language structures and use, and the ways in which these languages relate to Ryukyuan society and history. It comprises 33 chapters, written by the leading experts of Ryukyuan languages. Each chapter delineates the boundaries and the research history of the field it addresses, comprises the most important and representative information.



Handbook of Japanese Syntax

Author : Masayoshi Shibatani

Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Page : 972 pages

File Size : 32,72 MB

Release : 2017-10-23

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 1501501003

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Book Description

Studies of Japanese syntax have played a central role in the long history of Japanese linguistics spanning more than 250 years in Japan and abroad. More recently, Japanese has been among the languages most intensely studied within modern linguistic theories such as Generative Grammar and Cognitive/Functional Linguistics over the past fifty years. This volume presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese syntax from these three research strands, namely studies based on the traditional research methods developed in Japan, those from broader functional perspectives, and those couched in the generative linguistics framework. The twenty-four studies contained in this volume are characterized by a detailed analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with broader implications to general linguistics, making the volume attractive to both specialists of Japanese and those interested in learning about the impact of Japanese syntax to the general study of language. Each chapter is authored by a leading authority on the topic. Broad issues covered include sentence types (declarative, imperative, etc.) and their interactions with grammatical verbal categories (modality, polarity, politeness, etc.), grammatical relations (topic, subject, etc.), transitivity, nominalizations, grammaticalization, word order (subject, scrambling, numeral quantifier, configurationality), case marking (ga/no conversion, morphology and syntax), modification (adjectives, relative clause), and structure and interpretation (modality, negation, prosody, ellipsis). Chapter titles Introduction Chapter 1. Basic structures of sentences and grammatical categories, Yoshio Nitta, Kansai University of Foreign Studies Chapter 2: Transitivity, Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University Chapter 3: Topic and subject, Takashi Masuoka, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies Chapter 4: Toritate: Focusing and defocusing of words, phrases, and clauses, Hisashi Noda, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Chapter 5: The layered structure of the sentence, Isao Iori, Hitotsubashi University Chapter 6. Functional syntax, Ken-Ichi Takami, Gakushuin University; and Susumu Kuno, Harvard University Chapter 7: Locative alternation, Seizi Iwata, Osaka City University Chapter 8: Nominalizations, Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University Chapter 9: The morphosyntax of grammaticalization, Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University Chapter 10: Modality, Nobuko Hasegawa, Kanda University of International Studies Chapter 11: The passive voice, Tomoko Ishizuka, Tama University Chapter 12: Case marking, Hideki Kishimoto, Kobe University Chapter 13: Interfacing syntax with sounds and meanings, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Indiana University Chapter 14: Subject, Masatoshi Koizumi, Tohoku University Chapter 15: Numeral quantifiers, Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT Chapter 16: Relative clauses, Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka University Chapter 17: Expressions that contain negation, Nobuaki Nishioka, Kyushu University Chapter 18: Ga/No conversion, Masao Ochi, Osaka University Chapter 19: Ellipsis, Mamoru Saito, Nanzan University Chapter 20: Syntax and argument structure, Natsuko Tsujimura, Indiana University Chapter 21: Attributive modification, Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo Chapter 22: Scrambling, Noriko Yoshimura, Shizuoka Prefectural University





Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation

Author : Taro Kageyama

Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Page : 747 pages

File Size : 26,87 MB

Release : 2016-01-29

Category : Foreign Language Study

ISBN : 1501500813

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Book Description

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.



The Structure of the Japanese Language

Author : Susumu Kuno

Publisher : MIT Press (MA)

Page : 410 pages

File Size : 32,41 MB

Release : 1973-01

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9780262110495

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Book Description

"Conventional grammars tell us when we can use given grammatical patterns. However, they almost invariably fail to tell us when we cannot use them. Many of the chapters of this book are concerned with the latter problem. They attempt to explain why some sentences that should be grammatical according to the explanations given in conventional grammars are in fact ungrammatical. In this sense, the book can be called a grammar of ungrammatical sentences.... It deals only with those problems of Japanese—and only a handful of them—that are either completely ignored or erroneously treated in conventional grammars. For these features I hope that the book will give the reader a revealing account of a kind seldom found in other Japanese grammars or in grammars of any other languages." —from the author's Preface Some features of Japanese are peculiarities of the language, while others are shared by English and various other languages of the world. At times two features, one in Japanese and one, for example, in English, that may look totally unrelated on casual inspection turn out to be a manifestation of the same principle, either syntactic or semantic, which governs the two languages. Whenever possible each feature of Japanese that the book discusses is contrasted with the features in English that are overtly or covertly related to it, and the similarities and differences that exist between the two languages with respect to this feature are examined. Thus the book can also be called a contrastive grammar of Japanese and English. The book reveals a wide variety of semantic and syntactic factors (some of them not very well known to linguists working on English) that control the usage of certain grammatical patterns. It also shows what kinds of sentences the linguist working on a nonnative language should check with native speakers of the language to prove or disprove his initial hypothesis. So in a third sense, Professor Kuno's study might be called a textbook of field methods in linguistic analysis. Because The Structure of the Japanese Language is both descriptive and analytical (the generalizations given in the book have been developed within the framework of the theory of transformational grammar but are presented without recourse to the complex formalisms of the theory), it will prove useful both as a basic handbook of supplementary reading for second-year or more advanced courses in Japanese and as a source of material for students and researchers doing work in Japanese or non-Indo-European linguistics. This is volume three in the series, Current Studies in Linguistics.



Japanese

Author : Yoko Hasegawa

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 415 pages

File Size : 32,80 MB

Release : 2015-01-08

Category : Foreign Language Study

ISBN : 1107032776

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Book Description

A succinct overview of the Japanese language, looking at grammar, vocabulary, meaning and sound structure, as well as sociolinguistics and history.



Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology

Author : Shigeko Okamoto

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 315 pages

File Size : 26,40 MB

Release : 2004-10-28

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0195347293

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Book Description

Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies. The contributors to this edited volume argue that traditional views of language in Japan are cultural constructs created by policy makers and linguists, and that Japanese society in general, and language use in particular, are much more diverse and heterogeneous than previously understood. This volume brings together studies that substantially advance our understanding of the relationship between Japanese language and gender, with particular focus on examining local linguistic practices in relation to dominant ideologies. Topics studies include gender and politeness, the history of language policy, language and Japanese romance novels and fashion magazines, bar talk, dictionary definitions, and the use of first-person pronouns. The volume will substantially advance the agenda of this field, and will be of interest to sociolinguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of Japan and Japanese.



Handbook of Historical Japanese Linguistics

Author : Bjarke Frellesvig

Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Page : 616 pages

File Size : 47,68 MB

Release : 2024-04-01

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 161451285X

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Book Description

This volume will be the first full-length exploration in any language of the details of the history of the Japanese language written by experts in the different subfields of linguistics. Overall, while including factual and background information, the volume will focus on presenting original research of lasting value. This includes presenting the latest research on better studied topics, such as segmental phonology, accent or focus constructions, as well as both introducing areas of study which have traditionally been underrepresented, such as syntax or kanbun materials, and showing how they contribute to a fuller understanding of all of the history of Japanese. Chapter titles Introduction Part I: Individual Periods of the Japanese Language Section 1: Prehistory and Reconstruction Chapter 1: Comparison with other languages (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 2: Reconstruction based on external sources: Ainu, Chinese dynastic histories, and Korean chronicles (Alexander Vovin, University of Hawai'i at Manoa) Chapter 3: Reconstruction from the standpoint of Ryukyuan (Thomas Pellard, CNRS) Chapter 4: (Morpho)phonological reconstruction (Teruhiro Hayata) Chapter 5: Morpho(phono)logical reconstruction (Bjarke Frellesvig, University of Oxford) Chapter 6: Towards the accentual reconstruction of Japanese (Akiko Matsumori, NINJAL) Section II: Old Japanese Chapter 7: Word order and alignment (Yuko Yanagida, University of Tsukuba) Chapter 8: What mokkan can tell us about Old and pre-Old Japanese (Takashi Inukai, Aichi Prefectural University) Chapter 9: Eastern Old Japanese (Kerri Russell) Section III: Early Middle Japanese Chapter 10: Morphosyntax (Yoshiyuki Takayama, Fukui University) Chapter 11: Varieties of kakarimusubi in Early Middle Japanese (Charles Quinn, The Ohio State University) Chapter 12: Linguistic variation (Takuya Okimori) Section IV: Late Middle Japanese Chapter 13: The morphosyntax of Late Middle Japanese (Hirofumi Aoki, Kyushu University) Chapter 14: Late Middle Japanese phonology, based on Korean materials (Sven Osterkamp, Bochum University) Chapter 15: Phonology, based on Christian materials (Masayuki Toyoshima) Section V: Modern Japan Chapter 16: The social context of materials on Early Modern Japanese (Michinao Morohoshi, Kokugakuin University) Chapter 17: Meiji language, including what sound recordings can tell us (Yasuyuki Shimizu) Chapter 18: Syntactic influence of European languages on Japanese (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Part II: Materials and Writing Section VI: Writing Chapter 19: Old and Early Middle Japanese writing (James Unger, The Ohio State University) Chapter 20: The continued use of kanji in writing Japanese (Shinji Konno, Seisen University) Chapter 21: History of indigenous innovations in kanji and kanji usage [particularly: kokuji and wasei kango] (Yoshihiko Inui) Chapter 22: From hentai kanbun to sorobun (Tsutomu Yada) Section VII: Kanbun-based Materials Chapter 23: Kunten texts of Buddhist provenance (Masayuki Tsukimoto, Tokyo University) Chapter 24: Kunten Texts of Secular Chinese Provenance (Teiji Kosukegawa) Chapter 25: Vernacularized written Chinese (waka kanbun) (Shingo Yamamoto, Shirayuri Women's University) Chapter 26: Early modern kanbun and kanbun kundoku (Fumitoshi Saito, Nagoya University) Chapter 27: A comparison of glossing traditions in Japan and Korea (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 28: Influence of kanbun-kundoku on Japanese (Valerio Alberizzi, Waseda University) Part III: Broader Changes over Time Section VIII: Lexis/Pragmatics Chapter 29: History of basic vocabulary (John Bentley, University of Northern Illinois) Chapter 30: History of Sino-Japanese vocabulary (Seiya Abe and Akihiro Okajima) Chapter 31: The history of mimetics in Japanese (Masahiro Ono, Meiji University) Chapter 32: The history of honorifics and polite language (Yukiko Moriyama, Doshisha University) Chapter 33: History of demonstratives and pronouns (Tomoko Okazaki) Chapter 34: History of yakuwarigo (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Chapter 35: 'Subject-Object Merger' and 'Subject-Object Opposition' as the speaker's stance: 'Subjective Construal' as 'a fashion of speaking' for Japanese speakers (Yoshihiko Ikegami, University of Tokyo) Section IX: Phonology Chapter 36: Syllable structure, phonological typology, and outstanding issues in the chronology of sound changes (Bjarke Frellesvig, Sven Osterkamp and John Whitman Chapter 37: Sino-Japanese (Marc Miyake) Chapter 38: Development of accent, based on historical sources, Heian period onwards: The formation of Ibuki-jima accent (Makoto Yanaike, Keio University) Chapter 39: The Ramsey hypothesis (Elisabeth De Boer) Section X: Syntax Chapter 40: Generative diachronic syntax of Japanese (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 41: On the merger of the conclusive/adnominal distinction (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Chapter 42: Development of case marking (Takashi Nomura, University of Tokyo) Chapter 43: Loss of Wh movement (Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo) Chapter 44: Development of delimiter/semantic particles (Tomohide Kinuhata) Chapter 45: Electronic corpora as a tool for investigating syntactic change (Yasuhiro Kondo, Aoyama Gakuin/NINJAL) Part IV: The History of Research on Japan Chapter 46: Early Japanese dictionaries (Shoju Ikeda, Hokkaido University) Chapter 47: The great dictionary of Japanese: Vocabulario ... (Toru Maruyama, Nanzan University) Chapter 48: Pre-Meiji research on Japanese (Toru Kuginuki) Chapter 49: Meiji period research on Japanese (Isao Santo)