Re: CHAT: Re : CHAT: Re: minimum phonemes, was Re: vrindo

On Sun, 20 Jun 1999, Matt Pearson wrote:

>
> The historical connection between Hawaiian, Tahitian, and Malay is
> far from disputed.  All three are Austronesian languages - and fairly
> closely related ones at that, since they all belong to the Malayo-
> Polynesian branch.  As for Japanese, I've heard some linguists posit
> an Austronesian substrate in the language (making Japanese historically
> an Altaic-Austronesian creole, perhaps?), but I don't know if that
> idea is very widely accepted.
>
Last time I was at a place where a lot of Japanologists were, there
wasn't a single scholar in agreement with another on the subject of
the affiliations of Japanese - though they all agreed to revile
Roy Andrew Miller...

Shibatani mentions the following theories (1990:94-95):

- Japanese is an Altaic language (or an Ural-Altaic language)
- Japanese is related to Korean. Most scholars reckon Korean is a
  member of the Altaic language family
- Japanese is connected to the Malayan-Polynesian family
- Japanese is connected to Austro-Asiatic
- Japanese is connected to the Tibeto-Burmese language family
- Connections with: Persian, Greek, Basque, Sumerian ;-).
- Japanese is an Austronesian substratum and an Altaic superstratum
- Japanese is an Austronesian-Altaic mixed language (difficult to see
  how that exactly differs from the previous).
- A relationship between Tamil and Japanese (114)

All in all, this is an area where the time-honoured phrase
'further research is necessary', is not misplaced!

---
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. _The Languages of Japan_, Cambridge.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt