You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
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.
Proto-Japanese is the reconstructed language stage from which all later varieties of Japanese, including Ryukyuan, descend. It has been studied both as an end in itself (as the genetic code of the Japanese language) and as part of endeavors to clarify the genetic affiliation of Japanese. Based on the state of the field, especially as represented in Samuel E. Martin's seminal work The Japanese Language Through Time (1987), this volume singles out key areas in the reconstruction of proto-Japanese where salient progress has been or promises to be made since Martin. Contributions were invited from scholars working on the following areas: segmental phonology, use of dialect evidence, accent, morphology, and syntax. While the book first of all presents new research which advances our understanding of proto-Japanese, it also gives an overview over the state of the art in the field and its main issues.
This collection of essays is the outcome of an international symposium, jointly organised by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, and the Section of Japanese Studies of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in October 1998. It was the second in a series of three international symposia that the International Resaerch Center for Japanese Studies organised in Europe in conjunction with a European partner.The Leuven Symposium, which went under the general title of Translations of Culture, Culture of Translation, actually consisted of two parallel sessions. The first one was a workshop on Gender and Modernity in Japan. The second one was devoted to a reflection on Translati...
This volume is a tribute to Professor Vovin’s research and a summary of the latest developments in his fields of expertise.
Proto-Japanese is the reconstructed language stage from which all later varieties of Japanese, including Ryukyuan, descend. It has been studied both as an end in itself (as the genetic code of the Japanese language) and as part of endeavors to clarify the genetic affiliation of Japanese. Based on the state of the field, especially as represented in Samuel E. Martin's seminal work The Japanese Language Through Time (1987), this volume singles out key areas in the reconstruction of proto-Japanese where salient progress has been or promises to be made since Martin. Contributions were invited from scholars working on the following areas: segmental phonology, use of dialect evidence, accent, morphology, and syntax. While the book first of all presents new research which advances our understanding of proto-Japanese, it also gives an overview over the state of the art in the field and its main issues.
The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages provides a comprehensive account of the Transeurasian languages, and is the first major reference work in the field since 1965. The term 'Transeurasian' refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages that includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The historical connection between these languages, however, constitutes one of the most debated issues in historical comparative linguistics. In the present book, a team of leading international scholars in the field take a balanced approach to this controversy, integrating different theoretical frameworks, combining both functio...
This is the revised, updated and enlarged second edition of the first detailed descriptive grammar in English dedicated to the Western Old Japanese. The grammar is divided into two volumes, with the first volume dealing with sources, script, phonology, lexicon, nominals and adjectives. The second volume focuses on verbs, adverbs, particles, conjunctions and interjections.
Benjamin Smith Lyman (1835–1920) was an American geologist and mining engineer who worked for the Japanese government as a foreign expert in the 1870s. He is famous among linguists for an article about a set of Japanese morphophonemic alternations known as rendaku (sometimes translated as “sequential voicing”). Lyman published this article in 1894, several years after he returned to the United States, and it contains a version of what linguists today call Lyman’s Law. This book includes a brief biography of Lyman and explains how an amateur linguist was able to make such a lasting contribution to the field. It also reproduces Lyman’s 1894 article as well as his earlier article on the pronunciation system of Japanese, each followed by extensive commentary. In addition, it offers an English translation of a thorough critique of Lyman’s 1894 article, published in 1910 by the prominent Japanese linguist Ogura Shinpei. Lyman’s work on rendaku included much more than just Lyman’s Law, and the final chapter of this book assesses all his proposals from the standpoint of a modern researcher.
Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty – evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human lan...
This book addresses the question of how to properly handle Dōgen’s texts, a core issue that became critical during the Meiji period in which the philosophical appropriation of Dōgen became apparent inside and outside of the monastery. In present day Dōgen studies, most scholarship is informed by a number of factions representing Dōgen. The chapters herein address: the Zennist (j. zenjōka) emphasising practice, the Genzōnians (j. genzōka) shifting the attention to the close reading of Dōgen’s texts, the laity movement opening up both the texts and the practice to people in modern society, and the Genzō researchers (j. genzō kenkyūka) searching for the authenticity and truth of ...