Re: Old Japanese

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 20:48:14 -0800, Marcus Smith <smithma@...> wrote:

>Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
>> > Shibatani is indeed the author of _The Languages of Japan_ which is an
>> > excellent introduction to Japanese and Ainu. Another good source for
>> > historical Japanese is a book by Martin, called (I believe) _Japan and
>> > other Altaic Languages_.
>>
>> Interesting! Does it actually compare it side-by-side with Altaic
>> languages? AFAIK the Japanese-Altaic connection is conjecture at best,
>> but it'd still be neat to see the justification for the conjecture.
>
>It is the source for the Japanese-Altaic hypothesis. The data is not very
>convincing though.
>
I read it quite a few years ago. IIRC, the proposed sound changes were all
reasonable, but there weren't enough examples of each to show regular
correspondences.

Jeff