Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > The "controversial" was what I meant by "next best thing."  Sorry.  :-p
> > I've heard several theories on Japanese and Korean and where they fit
> > into the world's languages, but my understanding was that no one really
> > had a consensus.
>
>It's been my impression that the Japanese-Korean connection is pretty
>well-accepted, it's just theories about where they fit in regards to
>other languages that's controversial.  Or am I completely wrong here?
Here's the assessment by Shibatani in "Languages of Japan"

"Thus, while most people feel that Japanese and Korean are related and that
these two languages are related to the Altaic languages, no conclusive
evidence has been present either for such connections or for others.... The
enormity of the task requires cooperation among the scholars concerned
rather than the bickering that characterizes many recent publications in
this field."

I understand there is a detailed discussion in "Korean" by Ho-min Sohn in
the series "Cambridge Language Surveys"

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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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