Consonant Lenition In Korean And The Macro Altaic Question

This study describes a diachronic change of the obstruent consonants in the central area of Korea, with attention to ONSET and CODA lenitions. It is intended for students of Korean language and linguistics.

The Turkic languages are spoken today in a vast geographical area stretching from southern Iran to the Arctic Ocean and from the Balkans to the great wall of China. There are currently 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish with over 70 million speakers; other major languages covered include Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Noghay, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yellow Uyghur and languages of Iran and South Siberia. The Turkic Languages is a reference book which brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialized linguistic structures and features of the languages in the Turkic family. Seen from a linguistic typology point of view, Turkic languages are particularly interesting because of their astonishing morphosyntactic regularity, their vast geographical distribution, and their great stability over time. This volume builds upon a work which has already become a defining classic of Turkic language study. The present, thoroughly revised edition updates and augments those authoritative accounts and reflects recent and ongoing developments in the languages themselves, as well as our further enhanced understanding of the relations and patterns of influence between them. The result is the fruit of decades-long experience in the teaching of the Turkic languages, their philology and literature, and also of a wealth of new insights into the linguistic phenomena and cultural interactions defining their development and use, both historically and in the present day. Each chapter combines modern linguistic analysis with traditional historical linguistics; a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages. Written by an international team of experts, The Turkic Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, Turcology, and Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.

Contents The Editors: Preface List of Publications by Frederik Kortlandt Willem ADELAAR: Towards a Typological Profile of the Andean Languages Elisabeth DE BOER: The Origin of Alternations in Initial Pitch in ihe Verbal Paradigms of the Central Japanese (Kyoto Type) Accent Systems V.A. CHIRIKBA: Armenians and their Dialects in Abkhazia Katia CHIRKOVA: On the Position of Baima within Tibetan: A Look from Basic Vocabulary Karen STEFFEN CHUNG: Living (Happily) with Contradiction George van DRIEM: The Language Organism: Parasite or Mutualist? Roger FINCH: Mongolian /-gar/ and Japanese /-gar-/ Stefan GEORG: Yeniseic Languages and the Siberian Linguistic Area Ekaterina GRUZDEVA: How to Orient Oneself on Sakhalin: A Guide to Nivkh Locational Terms C. HOEDE: Knowledge Graph Analysis of Particles in Japanese Henning KLOTER: Facts and Fantasy about Favorlang: Early European Encounters with Taiwan's Languages Maarten KOSSMANN: Three Irregular Berber Verbs: 'Eat', 'Drink', 'Be Cooked, Ripen' Riikka LANSISALMI: Teaching Personal Reference in Japanese Elena MASLOVA: Dual Nominalisation in Yukaghir: Structural Ambiguity as Semantic Duality Roy Andrew MILLER: The Altaic Aorist in *-"Ra" in Old Korean Marc Hideo MIYAKE: Avoiding Abba: Old Chinese Syllabic Harmony Maarten MOUS: Voice in Tunen: The So-Called Passive Prefix "Be"- Irina NIKOLAEVA: Chuvan and Omok Languages? Martine ROBBEETS: If Japanese is Altaic, How can it be so Simple? Elena SKRIBNIK: Buryat Evaluative Constructions Harry STROOMER: Three Tashelhiyt Berber Texts from the Arsene Roux Archives Arie VERHAGEN: Syntax, Recursion, Productivity - A Usage-Based Perspective on the Evolution of Grammar Jeroen WIEDENHOF: Language, Brains and the Syntactic Revolution

Where does Japanese come from? The linguistic origin of the Japanese language is among the most disputed questions of language history. One current hypothesis is that Japanese is an Altaic language, sharing a common ancestor with Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. But, the opinions are strongly polarized. Especially the inclusion of Japanese into this classification model is very much under debate. Given the lack of consensus in the field, this book presents a state of the art for the etymological evidence relating Japanese to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. The different Altaic etymologies proposed in the scholarly literature are gathered in an etymological index of Japanese appended to this book. An item-by-item sifting of the evidence helps to hold down borrowings, universal similarities and coincidental look-alikes to a small percentage. When the remaining core-evidence is screened in terms of phonological regularity, the answer to the intriguing question is beginning to take shape.

Annotation. ContentsThe Editors: Preface List of Publications by Frederik Kortlandt Willem ADELAAR: Towards a Typological Profile of the Andean Languages Elisabeth DE BOER: The Origin of Alternations in Initial Pitch in ihe Verbal Paradigms of the Central Japanese (Kyôto Type) Accent SystemsV. A. CHIRIKBA: Armenians and their Dialects in AbkhaziaKatia CHIRKOVA: On the Position of Báimã within Tibetan: A Look from Basic VocabularyKaren STEFFEN CHUNG: Living (Happily) with Contradiction George van DRIEM: The Language Organism: Parasite or Mutualist?Roger FINCH: Mongolian /-gar/ and Japanese /-gar-/Stefan GEORG: Yeniseic Languages and the Siberian Linguistic AreaEkaterina GRUZDEVA: How to Orient Oneself on Sakhalin: A Guide to Nivkh Locational TermsC. HOEDE: Knowledge Graph Analysis of Particles in JapaneseHenning KLÖTER: Facts and Fantasy about Favorlang: Early European Encounters with Taiwan¿s LanguagesMaarten KOSSMANN: Three Irregular Berber Verbs: Èat¿, D̀rink¿, B̀e Cooked, Ripen¿Riikka LÄNSISALMI: Teaching Personal Reference in JapaneseElena MASLOVA: Dual Nominalisation in Yukaghir: Structural Ambiguity as Semantic DualityRoy Andrew MILLER: The Altaic Aorist in *-Ra in Old KoreanMarc Hideo MIYAKE: Avoiding Abba: Old Chinese Syllabic HarmonyMaarten MOUS: Voice in Tunen: The So-Called Passive Prefix Bé-Irina NIKOLAEVA: Chuvan and Omok Languages?Martine ROBBEETS: If Japanese is Altaic, How can it be so Simple?Elena SKRIBNIK: Buryat Evaluative ConstructionsHarry STROOMER: Three Tashelhiyt Berber Texts from the Arsène Roux ArchivesArie VERHAGEN: Syntax, Recursion, Productivity ¿ A Usage-Based Perspective on the Evolution of GrammarJeroen WIEDENHOF: Language, Brains and the Syntactic Revolution.

A History of the Korean Language is the first book on the subject ever published in English. It traces the origin, formation, and various historical stages through which the language has passed, from Old Korean through to the present day. Each chapter begins with an account of the historical and cultural background. A comprehensive list of the literature of each period is then provided and the textual record described, along with the script or scripts used to write it. Finally, each stage of the language is analyzed, offering new details supplementing what is known about its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. The extraordinary alphabetic materials of the 15th and 16th centuries are given special attention, and are used to shed light on earlier, pre-alphabetic periods.

This book deals with shared verb morphology in Japanese and other languages that have been identified as Transeurasian (traditionally: “Altaic”) in previous research. It analyzes shared etymologies and reconstructed grammaticalizations with the goal to provide evidence for the genealogical relatedness of these languages.

The languages of Europe and North and Central Asia provide a rich variety of data. In this volume, some articles are summaries of large areal typological research projects, and some articles focus on structures or constructions in a single language. However, it is common to all the articles that they investigate phenomena that have not been examined previously, or they apply a new framework to a topic. The volume will be of interest to scholars with a focus on this broad geographic region, typologists, historical linguists and discourse analysts. The uniqueness of this volume is that it brings together work on a genetically diverse set of languages that have some shared areal traits.