A History of the Japanese Language

A History of the Japanese Language PDF Author: Bjarke Frellesvig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139488805
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Bjarke Frellesvig describes the development of the Japanese language from its recorded beginnings until the present day as reflected by the written sources and historical record. Beginning with a description of the oldest attested stage of the language, Old Japanese (approximately the eighth century AD), and then tracing the changes which occurred through the Early Middle Japanese (800–1200), Late Middle Japanese (1200–1600) and the Modern Japanese (1600–onwards) periods, a complete internal history of the language is examined and discussed. This account provides a comprehensive study of how the Japanese language has developed and adapted, providing a much needed resource for scholars. A History of the Japanese Language is invaluable to all those interested in the Japanese language and also students of language change generally.

A History of the Japanese Language

A History of the Japanese Language PDF Author: Bjarke Frellesvig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139488805
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Bjarke Frellesvig describes the development of the Japanese language from its recorded beginnings until the present day as reflected by the written sources and historical record. Beginning with a description of the oldest attested stage of the language, Old Japanese (approximately the eighth century AD), and then tracing the changes which occurred through the Early Middle Japanese (800–1200), Late Middle Japanese (1200–1600) and the Modern Japanese (1600–onwards) periods, a complete internal history of the language is examined and discussed. This account provides a comprehensive study of how the Japanese language has developed and adapted, providing a much needed resource for scholars. A History of the Japanese Language is invaluable to all those interested in the Japanese language and also students of language change generally.

Japanese Language

Japanese Language PDF Author: Haruhiko Kindaichi
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462902669
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
This is a book about the structure, history and evolution of the Japanese language. The Japanese Language is a classic study of one of the world's most widely used but least understood languages. Emphasizing the richness and complexity of Japanese as well as its limitations, this fine book provides a lively discussion about the uniqueness of the Japanese language. The relationship of Japanese to other languages is not well understood even by native speakers, and Professor Kindaichi sets out to define it. He concludes that Japanese is indeed only remotely related to other world languages although it shares many features in common with the languages of mainland Asia. Japanese shares with those languages a rich and detailed vocabulary for natural phenomena and an unusually complex and accurate way of expressing social relationships. Moreover, its capability to absorb innovations from abroad easily matches or exceeds that of English or German. The author, after briefly discussing the unique isolation of the Japanese language, moves on to consider the varieties of ordinary speech--dialects, jargon, sex--and role-based distinctions, and the difference between informal, formal, and literary language. He then examines the structure of Japanese pronunciations, its rhythm, and accent. The longest section of the book is devoted to the variety of the vocabulary, what can and cannot be said in Japanese. Readers who are just beginning their own study of Japanese will find this section especially fascinating, for each point is backed by examples from literature and everyday speech. Kindaichi also investigates the so-called vagueness of Japanese and traces it to its source-the unusual sentence order. This book includes: The highly debated origins of the Japanese language. Dialects, jargon, sex and role-based distinctions. Differences between informal, formal, and literary language. Structure, rhythm, and accent of pronunciation. What can and cannot be said in Japanese.

Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages

Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages PDF Author: Patrick Heinrich
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501510711
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
The UNESCO atlas on endangered languages recognizes the Ryukyuan languages as constituting languages in their own right. This represents a dramatic shift in the ontology of Japan’s linguistic make-up. Ryukyuan linguistics needs to be established as an independent field of study with its own research agenda and objects. This handbook delineates that the UNESCO classification is now well established and adequate. Linguists working on the Ryukyuan languages are well advised to refute the ontological status of the Ryukyuan languages as dialects. The Ryukyuan languages constitute a branch of the Japonic language family, which consists of five unroofed Abstand (language by distance) languages.The Handbook of Ryukyuan Languages provides for the most appropriate and up-to-date answers pertaining to Ryukyuan language structures and use, and the ways in which these languages relate to Ryukyuan society and history. It comprises 33 chapters, written by the leading experts of Ryukyuan languages. Each chapter delineates the boundaries and the research history of the field it addresses, comprises the most important and representative information.

Handbook of Japanese Syntax

Handbook of Japanese Syntax PDF Author: Masayoshi Shibatani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501501003
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 972

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Book Description
Studies of Japanese syntax have played a central role in the long history of Japanese linguistics spanning more than 250 years in Japan and abroad. More recently, Japanese has been among the languages most intensely studied within modern linguistic theories such as Generative Grammar and Cognitive/Functional Linguistics over the past fifty years. This volume presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese syntax from these three research strands, namely studies based on the traditional research methods developed in Japan, those from broader functional perspectives, and those couched in the generative linguistics framework. The twenty-four studies contained in this volume are characterized by a detailed analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with broader implications to general linguistics, making the volume attractive to both specialists of Japanese and those interested in learning about the impact of Japanese syntax to the general study of language. Each chapter is authored by a leading authority on the topic. Broad issues covered include sentence types (declarative, imperative, etc.) and their interactions with grammatical verbal categories (modality, polarity, politeness, etc.), grammatical relations (topic, subject, etc.), transitivity, nominalizations, grammaticalization, word order (subject, scrambling, numeral quantifier, configurationality), case marking (ga/no conversion, morphology and syntax), modification (adjectives, relative clause), and structure and interpretation (modality, negation, prosody, ellipsis). Chapter titles Introduction Chapter 1. Basic structures of sentences and grammatical categories, Yoshio Nitta, Kansai University of Foreign Studies Chapter 2: Transitivity, Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University Chapter 3: Topic and subject, Takashi Masuoka, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies Chapter 4: Toritate: Focusing and defocusing of words, phrases, and clauses, Hisashi Noda, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Chapter 5: The layered structure of the sentence, Isao Iori, Hitotsubashi University Chapter 6. Functional syntax, Ken-Ichi Takami, Gakushuin University; and Susumu Kuno, Harvard University Chapter 7: Locative alternation, Seizi Iwata, Osaka City University Chapter 8: Nominalizations, Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University Chapter 9: The morphosyntax of grammaticalization, Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University Chapter 10: Modality, Nobuko Hasegawa, Kanda University of International Studies Chapter 11: The passive voice, Tomoko Ishizuka, Tama University Chapter 12: Case marking, Hideki Kishimoto, Kobe University Chapter 13: Interfacing syntax with sounds and meanings, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Indiana University Chapter 14: Subject, Masatoshi Koizumi, Tohoku University Chapter 15: Numeral quantifiers, Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT Chapter 16: Relative clauses, Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka University Chapter 17: Expressions that contain negation, Nobuaki Nishioka, Kyushu University Chapter 18: Ga/No conversion, Masao Ochi, Osaka University Chapter 19: Ellipsis, Mamoru Saito, Nanzan University Chapter 20: Syntax and argument structure, Natsuko Tsujimura, Indiana University Chapter 21: Attributive modification, Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo Chapter 22: Scrambling, Noriko Yoshimura, Shizuoka Prefectural University

The Phonetics of Japanese Language

The Phonetics of Japanese Language PDF Author: P Suski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136901299
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This book gives true characters of Japanese speech sounds in reference to European speech sounds. When it was first published in 1931, it was the first book of its kind. There are only 5 Japanese vowel elements as opposed to 18 in English, 13 in French and 8 in German. There are 15 Japanese consonants, 26 in English, 22 in French & 23 in German. Because of the lesser number of elements, it follows that the wider range in vowels and consonants is heard by Japanese ears, so this volume gives average sounds uttered by Japanese in the twentieth century in relation to the English sounds.

The Structure of the Japanese Language

The Structure of the Japanese Language PDF Author: Susumu Kuno
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262110495
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
"Conventional grammars tell us when we can use given grammatical patterns. However, they almost invariably fail to tell us when we cannot use them. Many of the chapters of this book are concerned with the latter problem. They attempt to explain why some sentences that should be grammatical according to the explanations given in conventional grammars are in fact ungrammatical. In this sense, the book can be called a grammar of ungrammatical sentences.... It deals only with those problems of Japanese—and only a handful of them—that are either completely ignored or erroneously treated in conventional grammars. For these features I hope that the book will give the reader a revealing account of a kind seldom found in other Japanese grammars or in grammars of any other languages." —from the author's Preface Some features of Japanese are peculiarities of the language, while others are shared by English and various other languages of the world. At times two features, one in Japanese and one, for example, in English, that may look totally unrelated on casual inspection turn out to be a manifestation of the same principle, either syntactic or semantic, which governs the two languages. Whenever possible each feature of Japanese that the book discusses is contrasted with the features in English that are overtly or covertly related to it, and the similarities and differences that exist between the two languages with respect to this feature are examined. Thus the book can also be called a contrastive grammar of Japanese and English. The book reveals a wide variety of semantic and syntactic factors (some of them not very well known to linguists working on English) that control the usage of certain grammatical patterns. It also shows what kinds of sentences the linguist working on a nonnative language should check with native speakers of the language to prove or disprove his initial hypothesis. So in a third sense, Professor Kuno's study might be called a textbook of field methods in linguistic analysis. Because The Structure of the Japanese Language is both descriptive and analytical (the generalizations given in the book have been developed within the framework of the theory of transformational grammar but are presented without recourse to the complex formalisms of the theory), it will prove useful both as a basic handbook of supplementary reading for second-year or more advanced courses in Japanese and as a source of material for students and researchers doing work in Japanese or non-Indo-European linguistics. This is volume three in the series, Current Studies in Linguistics.

Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation

Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation PDF Author: Taro Kageyama
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501500813
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 747

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Book Description
This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology PDF Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190290269
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies. The contributors to this edited volume argue that traditional views of language in Japan are cultural constructs created by policy makers and linguists, and that Japanese society in general, and language use in particular, are much more diverse and heterogeneous than previously understood. This volume brings together studies that substantially advance our understanding of the relationship between Japanese language and gender, with particular focus on examining local linguistic practices in relation to dominant ideologies. Topics studies include gender and politeness, the history of language policy, language and Japanese romance novels and fashion magazines, bar talk, dictionary definitions, and the use of first-person pronouns. The volume will substantially advance the agenda of this field, and will be of interest to sociolinguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of Japan and Japanese.

A History of Japanese Literature

A History of Japanese Literature PDF Author: W. G. Aston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description


The Book of Japanese Language

The Book of Japanese Language PDF Author: Alex Adler
Publisher: Alexadler
ISBN: 9788409187010
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
The Book of Japanese Language is the combination of four parts in one with the aim of gathering in a single volume the necessary knowledge so that any student of Japanese can organically learn the grammatical rules of the language, the most common words, and at the same time be able to consult the great majority of grammatical forms that are used in Japanese on a daily basis.The four parts of the book are Vocabulary, Grammar Explanations, Expressing Yourself in Japanese, and Grammar Dictionary. In Vocabulary, you will find the most common Japanese words with detailed explanations. In Grammar Explanations, you will find the most important conjugations and grammatical forms along with examples to help you understand them. Expressing Yourself in Japanese lists these grammatical forms according to their usage. Finally, in Grammar Dictionary you can find summarized explanations of most Japanese grammatical forms ordered alphabetically.