JPN494:
JPN543:
Japanese Language and Linguistics
Advanced Japanese Language and
Linguistics
Basic Facts about
Japanese
Basic facts about Japanese:
some trivia

How many people speak Japanese (as their
primary language)?
127 million speakers (+ α) ≈
the population of Japan (+ α)
Basic facts about Japanese:
some trivia


What are languages with most speakers?
Where is Japanese ranked in the ranking of
languages with most speakers?
Chinese 13.69%, Spanish 5.05%,
English 4.84%, Hindi 2.82%, Portuguese 2.77%,
Bengali 2.68%, Russian 2.27%, Japanese 1.99%,
Standard German 1.49% (est. 2004)
(Arabic, French, Indonesian)
From CIA The World Fact Book
Basic facts about Japanese:
some trivia


How many people learn (are learning)
Japanese as a secondary language?
In which countries is Japanese “a popular
foreign language”?
Basic facts about Japanese:
some trivia
1.
2.
3.
4.
Korea Rep.: 0.9 million
China Rep.: 0.38 million
Australia: 0.37 million
U.S.A.: 0.14 million
followed by Taiwan (128K), Indonesia (85K), and
Thailand (55K).
2.3 million in total (2004) (1.6 million in 1996?)
Characteristics of the Japanese
language/society

Homogeneity
“All Japanese speak Japanese”?

Geographical & Ethnic Exclusiveness
“All Japanese speakers are Japanese (who live in
Japan)”?
Homogeneity
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At least 9X% of [Japanese] speak
[Japanese] (as their only native language)
“At least 9X% of [X] speak [Y] (as their only
native language)”
where [X] is a ethnic group or nationality
Americans, Germans, Chinese, Korean, …
Homogeneity


United States: English 82.1%, Spanish
10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and
Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7%
(From CIA The World Fact Book)
“Linguistic monopolization” (extinction of
minority languages and dialects) is
happening in many places in the world. (e.g.
France)
Exclusiveness
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
At least 9X% of [native Japanese speakers]
are nationals of [Japan].
At least 9X% of [X] are nationals of [Y].
[X] = native English speakers, native Chinese
speakers, native German speakers, native
Korean speakers ...
Why does Japanese have these two
properties
(homogeneity & exclusiveness)?
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
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Geographical conditions
Historical conditions
Relatively few migration (outbound or
inbound)
“… in historic times, the Japanese islands
have been involved rather little in migration
and ethnic mixture” (Dalby 1999: 287)
Some reservations
(A devil’s advocate would say …) (1)
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
Japan is not a mono-lingual society?
Ainu
– Ainu too is a native language to Japan, which is
genetically not related to Japanese.
– Ainu was spoken in northern Honsyu (本州),
Hokkaido (北海道), and Sakhalin, but now is
practically extinct.
– The Ainu people used to live in an independent
community with a distinctive culture, but were
conquered in the 17th century by Japan and
gradually assimilated to Japan.
More on Ainu

Ainu (cont.)
– Since the 1940’s, the “Ainu” has not been
considered a separate ethnic group in the census,
etc.
“[The contemporary Ainu population] is estimated
to be around 16,000, but as a result of
intermarriage between Ainu and Japanese, pureblooded Ainu are said to number less than 1% of
that figure.” (Shibatani 1990)
Korean in Japan
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Korean: The largest minority ethnic group in
Japan.
455 thousand Korean nationals with
“特別永住資格” (permanent resident status)
in Japan (in 2004)
plus recent migrant workers (“new-comers”)
『在日コリアンの言語相』 (真田 信治 et al.)
Some reservations
(A devil’s advocate would say …) (2)

Dialects
– “Japanese has many dialects, which are mutually
unintelligible (cf. dialects of English in North
America). Although they are called dialects, they
are more like separate (independent) languages.”
– What is a dialect? What is a language?
– a dialect as opposed to the “standard” language
vs. a dialect in the sense of a “variety”, “subkind”
(e.g. the “standard dialect(s)”)
More on dialects
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Dialectal variation is continuous (especially where
you don’t have “prescriptive grammars”).
The first major “dialectal” division:
Ryukyuan dialects vs. others
“The dialects of the present Okinawa prefecture [沖縄県]
and the islands belonging to the former Ryukyuan kingdom
[琉球王国] were sometimes called Ryukyu-go [琉球語] as if
it is opposed to Nihon-go.” (see Map 1)
The genetic relationship between them is quite transparent.
(in comparison to the one between Japanese & Korean, for
example)
More on dialects
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The second and third divisions (see Map 2)
Eastern vs. Western
Kyushu vs. Other areas in the West

Dialectology (方言学)
number of speakers, feelings about 方言 (positive vs.
negative) -- all rapidly changing
More on dialects
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Genetic relations are not a sufficient condition for two
varieties of languages to be called dialects.
What about mutual intelligibility (MI)?
How can we measure MI, in the first place?
MI is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for
two language varieties to be called “dialects”.
More on dialects

The case of Low vs. High German
–
–
–
Low German (Northern Dialect Group) vs. High
German (Southern Dialect Group that includes
Standard German)
LG and HG are not mutually intelligible, yet
considered dialects.
LG and Dutch, on the other hand, are largely
mutually intelligible, but are considered separate
languages.
More on dialects
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Serbo-Croatian (after the break-up of Yugoslavia)
→ Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian
“Dialects” of Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) (a
shared writing language)
British and American (and Australian, etc.) dialect
groups of English (each group has a “standard
dialect”)
Political conditions; esp. the presence of a shared,
“common”/“standard” dialect
“A language is a dialect with an army”?
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(To my knowledge) there is no established, objective method to
measure the “distance” (phonological, lexical, grammatical, etc.)
between two varieties of languages.
They say the similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is
comparable to the one between the Tokyo and Osaka dialects.
Varieties of English in UK, North America, Australia, etc.;
geographically distant from each other, but the spread (of speakers) is
a relatively recent event.
Among exceptions is African American Vernacular English (a.k.a.
Ebonics), which is sometimes called a socio-lect or ethno-lect.
–
Some scholars believe that AAVE developed as a pidgin/creole language,
or was heavily affected by creole languages spoken by African slaves.
(AAVE shares certain features with creole/west African languages.)
Some reservations (3)

Japanese speaking communities outside Japan
– Nikkei communities in United States, Brazil, Peru, etc.
(migration starts at the end of the 19th century)
– In Brazil, there are approx. 1.3 million Nikkei-jin (日系人)
– In United States, approx. 1 million (0.25 million in Hawaii)
– apporx. 2.5 million in total (including United States and
Brazil)
– How many of them speak Japanese?
Genetic affiliation of Japanese
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
“Japanese is something unique: one of the
major languages of the world, spoken by well
over a hundred million people, yet with no
known linguistic relatives.” (Dalby 1998)
“The origin of Japanese is among the most
disputed questions of language theory …”
(Comrie et al. 2003)
Genetic relation between Japanese and
Korean

Suggested more than once, but there is no
definitive evidence (see Shibatani 1990 for
details)
The mixture hypothesis

“On the one hand, much of Japanese grammar
resembles that of Altaic languages such as
Mongolian and Manchu. On the other hand, in its
use of prefixes and its sound system with a limited
set of consonants and a preference for open
syllables, Japanese resembles Austronesian
languages, which are thought to have originated in
the area of Taiwan; certain words also support the
Austronesian connection. These two hypothesis can
best be reconciled in terms of a mixture of Altaic and
Austronesian elements.” (Comrie et al. 2003)


Altaic languages: Turkish, Mongolian,
Manchu
Austronesian languages: languages spoken
in the area covering Madagascar, Easter
Island, Hawaii, New Zealand, Taiwan, …
(Pilipino (Tagalog), Malay, Javanese, Maori,
Tongan, …)
Language Map
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
Human_Language_Families.png
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm
ons/b/b4/Human_Language_Families_%28w
ikicolors%29.png)
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefami
lies.html
Methods to establish genetic relations
between two languages
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A group of languages can be shown to be genetically related if
groups of words can be found in each of the languages such
that:
(a) They possess corresponding phonemes [(sounds)]
(phonemes in the same position in the word) that are identical
or can be shown to derive from the parent language as the
result of regular phonological rules that have applied of each of
the languages, and
(b) the words that contain the corresponding phonemes have
meanings that are related.
- Akmajian et al. (2001:327)
Language reconstruction

Using the “comparative method” based on
corresponding phonemes, scholars have
attempted to “reconstruct” the parentlanguage (whose records/data are not
available) of known languages (whose
records/data are available).
(e.g. Proto-Indo European)
The proto-language (of all languages)?
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“Modern humans originate in Africa 100,000~
140,000 years ago – and so does human
language” (a reasonable hypothesis?)
“It appears unlikely that all languages will be
proven to be descendants of a single
ancestor [with analytical techniques like the
comparative method]” (Akmajian et al.,
2001:334)
paleontological linguistics?
Primitive languages?
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Isolated groups of people (e.g. in jungle areas of
New Guinea) have been found to have “full-fledged”
languages.
“So far, no natural language has been shown to be
more primitive than any other language in terms of
grammatical organization, expressiveness, and so
forth” (Akmajian et al. 2001:318)
Does this mean that language is part of innate
human instinct (as opposed to a cultural artifact/tool;
nativism vs. empiricism)?
The origin of language
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Social preconditions: large social systems?
Physiological preconditions: large brain size; the
structure of the larynx/vocal cords; etc.
The development of the vocal organs alone does not
explain why other higher primates do not have
language:
A sign language too is a full-fledged language – it is
a matter of debate whether a primate can “acquire” a
sign language.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
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Linguistic determinism: “Language
determines or affects the way we think”
Linguistic relativity: “Languages differ from
each other”
“The ways people think largely differ
depending on what language they speak”?
Linguistic relativity

In Japanese, unlike in English,
The subject, object, etc. of a sentence can be easily omitted.
– The verb comes at the end of the sentence.
– There is a rich system of honorifics.
– There are single items corresponding to “elder brother/younger
brother/elder sister/younger sister”
–…
–
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Do these properties have anything to do with the Japanese
culture, the Japanese mentality, and/or the way Japanese
people think?
“Folk theories” are abundant; few evidence or investigation from
the behavioral or neural scientific perspective.
Linguistic relativity

Levinson’s (1996, among others) study.
–
–
–
–
The relative coordinate system(s) in English, Japanese:
front-back, right-left
The absolute coordinate system(s) in Tzeltal (a Mayan
language), etc.: uphill (≈ “north”), downhill (≈ “south”), and (≈
“east or west”)
English-speaking communities have both the relative and
absolute frame; the former is more commonly used in
quotidian situations. In Tzeltal-speaking communities, only
the absolute frame is available.
Tzeltal speakers can easily tell “uphill” from “downhill”, even
if they are in a hotel room in N.Y.
Linguistic relativity
–
1.
2.
3.
Tzeltal and Dutch speakers are asked to do the
following task:
They are shown three animal toys in a row (e.g.,
duck-cat-chicken)
They are asked to turn around by 180 degrees,
and then to re-construct the “same” configuration
of animals by memory.
Tzeltal speakers use the absolute frame, while
Dutch speakers primarily use the relative frame.
N
duck
dog
frog
B
A
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More fascinating examples in Boroditsky’s
survey paper