The Languages of Japan

This book is a detailed survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan, Japanese and Ainu.

Masayoshi Shibatani (Author)

9780521369183, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 May 1990

428 pages, 12 b/w illus. 7 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.694 kg

"This combination of breadth and boldness makes for instructive and engaging reading, all in an accessible style which promises to make this work a staple on reading lists in future courses on the history and structure of the Japanese language." Wesley M. Jacobsen, Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese

This book is a detailed survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan, Japanese and Ainu. No genetic relationship has been established between them, and structurally they differ significantly. Professor Shibatani has therefore divided his study into two independent parts. The first is a most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language. The second part deals extensively with Japanese. It discusses topics from the evolution of the writing system and the differences between men's and women's speech, to issues of greater theoretical complexity, such as phonology, the lexicon and word-formation, and the syntax of agglutinative morphology. As an American-trained scholar in Japan, the author is in an unique postion that affords him a dual perspective on language deriving from Western linguistic scholarship and the Japanese grammatical tradition.

List of maps
Preface
List of abbreviations used in glosses
Part I. The Ainu Language: 1. Introduction
2. Sound structure
3. Grammatical structure
Part II. The Japanese Language: 4. Introduction
5. Genetic affiliation
6. History
7. Lexicon
8. Phonology
9. Dialects
10. Word formation
11. Grammatical structure
12. Epilogue
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF]