The classification of the Japanese language is uncertain and disputed. Historical linguists who specialize in Japanese agree that it is one of the two members of the Japonic language family, but remain divided as to the origins of the Japonic languages. An older view, still held by many non-specialists, is that Japanese is a language isolate. However, since the Japonic family consists of two known members, Japanese and Ryukyuan, that analysis may be inaccurate. Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... The Japonic languages are a language family believed to descend from a common language known as Proto-Japonic. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryūkyū Islands and make up a subfamily of the Japonic family. ...

External relations

As for its relation to other languages, there are several theories, presented in a descending order of probability:^[1]

Extinct Korean-peninsular languages hypothesis

The Korean-peninsular Languages hypothesis dates back to the independent discovery by two Japanese scholars in 1907 that material in the extinct Goguryeo (Koguryo) language found in historical sources on the early Korean Peninsula was obviously related to Japanese. The hypothesis proposes that Japanese is a relative of the extinct languages spoken by the Buyeo-Goguryeo (Puyo-Koguryo) cultures of Korea, southern Manchuria, and Liaodong. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested Buyeo languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) believed to also be related. Supporters of this theory do not include modern Korean as part of that family because it is thought to have derived from the ancient language of Silla and it has been shown that the Korean and Buyeo-Goguryeo (Puyo-Koguryo) languages share only a few lexical items, which are typical cultural loanwords. A recent monograph^[2] by Christopher Beckwith has now established that there are about 140 lexical items in the Goguryeo (Koguryo) corpus alone. They mostly occur in place name collocations, many of which include grammatical morphemes (including cognates of the Japanese genitive marker no and the Japanese adjective-attributive morpheme -si) and a few of which reveal syntax relationships. The majority of the identified Goguryeo (Koguryo) corpus, including all the grammatical morphemes, are clearly related to Japanese. Most discussion of this theory now centers on arguments about the identity of the speakers of the language recorded as Goguryeo (Koguryo), but so far the identification of the language with the Goguryeo (Koguryo) people, which agrees with the ancient Chinese accounts, has been shown to be the most secure historically and linguistically.^[3] An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... Korea (Korean: 한국 or 조선, see below) is a geographic area, civilization, and former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. ... Manchuria (Manchu: Manju; Traditional Chinese: 滿洲; Simplified Chinese: 满洲; pinyin: Mǎnzhōu, Russian: ) is a vast territorial region in northeast Asia. ... The Liaodong Peninsula (sim. ... This article needs cleanup. ... The Buyeo (Puyŏ) languages are a hypothetical language family that would relate the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo, Baekje and the Japonic languages, and possibly place them together as a family under the hypothetical Altaic family. ... Baekje (or Paekche) and later Nambuyeo (18 BCE – 660 CE) was a kingdom in the southwest of the Korean Peninsula. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Silla (also spelled Shilla, traditional dates 57 BCE - 935 CE) was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. ... Christopher I. Beckwith (born 1945) is a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. ...

Korean hypothesis

Scholars such as Samuel E. Martin, John Whitman and Barbara E. Riley^[4] have proposed that Japanese is a relative of Korean. This theory is partly based on the high degree of typological similarity between modern Japanese and modern Korean grammar, and supported by numerous lexical items in Japanese that appear to show regular correspondences. The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship is often subsumed into the Altaic theory (see below), though not all versions of the Altaic theory incorporate Korean. Critics of this theory have pointed out that the further back in time one goes, the less Korean and Japanese resemble each other; they have no shared innovations; and most of the shared lexical items appear to have been borrowed. Samuel Martin is a prolific author of several books on the Korean and Japanese languages. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ...

Altaic hypothesis

Japanese is often included in the proposed Altaic language family; notable scholars supporting this hypothesis include Roy Miller, Dhara Thakar, and the late Sergei Starostin. The languages to which the Japonic family is connected via the Altaic grouping include Mongolic, Tungusic, Turkic, and, according to many proponents, Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkic and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Additionally, there are a suggestive number of correspondences in vocabulary, as shown in the following table. Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... Roy Andrew Miller was long a student of languages. ... Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (b. ... The Mongolic languages are a group of thirteen languages spoken in Central Asia. ... Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungus languages) are spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ...

These examples come from Starostin's database, which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and hypothetical Altaic etymologies. While Starostin was a first-class scholar, there are weaknesses with Altaic, not the least of which is the poor quality of the vowel correspondences. Another one is the relative paucity of reconstructions for basic vocabulary terms. Furthermore, Starostin made numerous mistakes with the Japanese data, such as misidentifying Japanese words, reconstructing secondary phenomena in dialects back to the proto-language, overlooking accentual distinctions in Japanese, and ignoring the historical formation (i.e., morphological structure) of certain words. Moreover, he made mistakes with data in other Altaic languages as well. Whatever connection Japanese may have to Altaic languages cannot be demonstrated by the current state of Altaic reconstruction. Jeju dialect is the dialect used on the island of Jeju in Korea, with the exception of Chuja. ... Not to be confused with Entomology, the study of insects. ... For other uses, see Morphology. ...

Eurasiatic hypothesis

The late Joseph Greenberg argued for the inclusion of Japanese in his proposed Eurasiatic language family.^[5] In contrast to Sergei Starostin, he rejected the inclusion of Korean in Altaic. According to Greenberg, Japanese-Ryukyuan, Korean, and Ainu form a separate subgroup within Eurasiatic. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by the late Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America. ...

Like other language classifications of Greenberg's, the Eurasiatic family is often attacked on the ground that it is based on "mass lexical comparison"; however, this is a fictitious method. Greenberg's own terminology was originally "mass comparison", which he later changed to "multilateral comparison"; from his first use of it in the 1950s on, it always involved comparison of grammatical formatives as well as of lexical items. See Greenberg's Genetic Linguistics for his methodological positions.^[6] In contrast to Greenberg, most historical linguists remain convinced that systematic phonological reconstruction is necessary to establish genetic relationship between languages, and consequently have paid little attention to the Eurasiatic hypothesis. Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, beyond the limits of the traditional comparative method, or in situations where there are too many languages to practically apply the...

Creole hypothesis

The phonological similarities and geographical proximity of Japanese to the Austronesian languages have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of creole language, with an Altaic superstratum and an Austronesian substratum, or vice versa. However, different scholars have come up with lists of proposed Japanese-Austronesian cognates that do not agree with each other. This is a bad sign for this hypothesis, since different scholars working independently usually come up with similar results. Not to mention the number of words possibly identified as Austronesian is extremely small. The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a well-defined and stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many distinctive features that are not inherited from either parent. ... Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... A superstratum or superstrate is the counterpart to a substratum. ... In linguistics, a substratum (lat. ...

Austronesian hypothesis

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One of the less likely theories is that Japanese is a purely Austronesian language; this is rejected by all mainstream specialists in both Austronesian and Japanese, since the grammar, lexis, and morphology of Japanese are vastly different from those of any known Austronesian language. Proponents of this theory point out examples of convergent lexis, such as Japanese hina "doll" and hime "princess," as cognate with the Māori word hine "girl," or Japanese kaku "to write, to scratch" with the Hawaiian kākau "to write, to tattoo". However, it is important to note that many totally unrelated languages exhibit chance occurrences of convergent lexis; furthermore, these alleged "cognates" soon fall apart upon closer analysis. For example, the Japanese word hime is clearly a compound word; modern Japanese /h/ comes from earlier /p/; Hawaiian /k/ comes from earlier /t/; and no language has to write as part of its basic vocabulary. Moreover, the time depths for Japanese and Proto-Polynesian do not match, and Polynesia is far more distant from Japan than Taiwan, the proposed Austronesian homeland. If there were an Austronesian connection, it might be found closer to the Japanese Archipelago. Beyond that, the time depth for Proto-Austronesian, at roughly 6000 years BP, makes it far too old to be compared with Japanese, which may have come to the Japanese islands perhaps 2500-3000 years ago (see the Yayoi page for more). Image File history File links Information_icon. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... Māori (or Maori) is a language spoken by the native peoples of New Zealand and the Cook Islands. ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from that of the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... Carving from the ridgepole of a Māori house, ca 1840 Polynesia (from Greek: πολύς many, νῆσος island) is a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. ... Before Present (BP) years are the units of time (counted backwards to the past) used to report raw radiocarbon ages and dates referenced to the BP scale origin in the year AD 1950 (identical to 1950 CE). ... This article is about a Japanese historical era. ...

Tamil hypothesis

A few scholars have suggested that Japanese may be related to Tamil and possibly other Dravidian languages, mostly spoken in South India. This is supported by a very few scholars, such as R. Caidwell, Susumu Shiba, Susumu Ōno^[7][8] and Akira Fujiwara. Evidence for this theory is that Japanese and Tamil are both agglutinative languages and also have similar vocabularies and phonetics, though Tamil's retroflex consonants are very different from Japanese. This hypothesis has little support outside of the scholars mentioned here, and has been criticized by other scholars of Japanese and Dravidian.^{[citation needed]} Ōno was criticized for making errors in history and archaeology, and for various methodological errors in applying the comparative method,^{[citation needed]} such as positing multiple correspondences without giving conditioning factors (for example, Tamil c : Japanese s; Tamil c : Japanese ∅; and Tamil ∅ : Japanese s), and several other shortcomings in data and application of theory.^{[citation needed]} Tamil (Thamizh) is a classical language of the Dravidian language family. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages[1] that are mainly spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and by overseas Dravidians in other countries... South India is a linguistic-cultural region of India that comprises the four Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Pondicherry, whose inhabitants are collectively referred to as South Indians. ... Susumu ÅŒno Japanese: ÅŒno Susumu; born August 23, 1919) is a Tokyo-born linguist. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Sub-apical retroflex plosive In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. ... History studies the past in human terms. ... Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech/discourse) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ...

Other hypotheses

Since the late nineteenth century, various proposals have been made to link Japanese with any number of other languages, such as the Chinese languages, various West African languages, and others.^{[citation needed]} These have all been discredited. Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa. ...

Known connections and analysis

Specialists in Japanese historical linguistics all agree that Japanese is related to the Ryukyuan languages (including Okinawan); together, Japanese and Ryukyuan are grouped in the Japonic languages. Among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo et al. has the most credence; relationship to Korean is considered plausible but is still problematic; the Altaic hypothesis has less currency. Most linguists generally reject the hypotheses of Japanese being genetically related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, or Dravidian languages.^{[citation needed]} Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryūkyū Islands and make up a subfamily of the Japonic family. ... Okinawan (Okinawan Uchinaaguchi) is a Ryukyuan language spoken in Japan on the southern island of Okinawa, as well as the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kume-jima, Tonaki, Aguni, and a number of smaller islands located to the east of the main island of Okinawa. ... The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages constitute a language family that is agreed to have descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. ... Goguryeo (traditional founding date 37 BCE; probably 2nd century BCE – 668 CE) was an ancient Korean kingdom located in the northern Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages used by some 351 million speakers. ... Sino-Tibetan languages in red. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages[1] that are mainly spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and by overseas Dravidians in other countries...

References

1. ^ Vovin, Alexander. 2003. 日本語系統論の現在：これからどこへ (The Genetic Relationship of the Japanese Language: Where Do We Go from Here?). In Vovin & Toshiki Osada (eds.), 日本語系統論の現在 (Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language). Kyoto: International Center for Japanese Studies. ISSN1346-6585.
2. ^ Beckwith, Christopher I. 2004. Koguryo: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese-Koguryoic Languages, with a Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13949-4
3. ^ Beckwith, Christopher I. (2006). "Methodological Observations on Some Recent Studies of the Early Ethnolinguistic History of Korea and Vicinity." Altai Hakpo 2006, 16: 199-234. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2006). "The Ethnolinguistic History of the Early Korean Peninsula Region: Japanese-Koguryoic and Other Languages in the Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla Kingdoms." Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, 2006, Vol. 2-2: 34-64.
4. ^ Barbara E. Riley. Aspects of the Genetic Relationship of the Korean and Japanese Languages.
5. ^ Greenberg, Joseph H. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8047-3812-2. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8047-4624-9
6. ^ Greenberg, Joseph H. Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0199257713
7. ^ Ōno, Susumu. The Genealogy of the Japanese Language: Tamil and Japanese.
8. ^ Ōno, Susumu (2000). 日本語の形成. 岩波書店. ISBN 4-00-001758-6.