JPN494: Japanese Language and LinguisticsJPN543: 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 languag

es 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. Korea Rep.: 0.9 million2. China Rep.: 0.38 million3. Australia: 0.37 million4. 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

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 nationalityAmericans, 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

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)?

Geographical conditions Historical conditions Relatively few migration (outbound or inboun

d)“… 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)

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 conside

red 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, pure-blooded Ainu are said to number less than 1% of that figure.” (Shibatani 1990)

Korean in Japan

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 v

s. a dialect in the sense of a “variety”, “subkind” (e.g. the “standard dialect(s)”)

More on dialects

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

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

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

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”?

(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. (migr

ation 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 Braz

il)– How many of them speak Japanese?

Genetic affiliation of Japanese

“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

Human_Language_Families.png (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Human_Language_Families_%28wikicolors%29.png)

http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

Methods to establish genetic relations between two languages

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 parent-language (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)?

“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?

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

Social preconditions: large social systems? Physiological preconditions: large brain size; the stru

cture 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

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”– …

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: fro

nt-back, right-left– The absolute coordinate system(s) in Tzeltal (a Mayan lan

guage), 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

– Tzeltal and Dutch speakers are asked to do the following task:

1. They are shown three animal toys in a row (e.g., duck-cat-chicken)

2. They are asked to turn around by 180 degrees, and then to re-construct the “same” configuration of animals by memory.

3. Tzeltal speakers use the absolute frame, while Dutch speakers primarily use the relative frame.

AB

duck

dog

frog

N

More fascinating examples in Boroditsky’s survey paper