Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

Marcus Smith wrote:

>Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
>><puzzled look>  Isn't Japanese an agglutinating isolate (or next best
>>thing), like Korean, rather than an isolating language?
>
>Agglutinating?  Yes.  Isolate?  Controversial.  One of the currently most
>popular theories is that Japanese is a form of Old South Korean imported to
>Japan when the northern kingdom of Korea conquered the two southern
>kingdoms.  (Or something like that -- I'm not to current on my Japanese
>historical stuff.) >
How _current_ is this theory? (One can't keep up with everything :-( )
Certainly, "it would figure."  My knowledge of Japanese ling. history comes
from R.A. Miller's _Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages_, which does go
into the (probably) distant relationship between J. and Korean.... since he
views both as Altaic languages.




 Supposedly the original inhabitants were Austronesian
>speakers with a strict CV syllable structure.  That native language forced
>a simplification of Japanese syllable structure (it is a known fact that
>Japanese syllables have simplified) and a reduction in the number of vowels
>(also known to be true).  Personally, I have doubts about the Austronesian
>aspect.....>
So do I, though again, "it would figure".  _Everyone says_ it is so, but
I've never seen any very convincing citations of forms that show clear AN
origin.  Not even in Miller.  Perhaps the etymological scholarship is in
Japanese?

(snip)

   >One thing that is almost definitely due to Chinese is the
>classifiers used with numbers.>
To my view, that's an almost pan-East Asian feature.  Likely, though not
necessarily, a sign of Chinese influence.