was a Japanese
sinologist
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...
and
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
who is best known for advocating research on
language geography
Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy i ...
,
linguistic typology
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...
, and how different
areal features
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
in the
varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
(such as
tonal distinctions) reflect
contact
Contact may refer to:
Interaction Physical interaction
* Contact (geology), a common geological feature
* Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye
* Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects
* ...
with other
language families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hi ...
.
Life and career
Mantarō J. Hashimoto was born in Sawano-mura (沢野村),
Nitta District, Gunma
Historic Map of Nitta District:1. Ōta, 2. Kuai, 3.Sawano, 4. Ojima, 5. Serada, 6. Kizaki, 7. Hosen, 8. Torinogo, 9. Godo, 10. Izushina, 11.Watauchi 12. Yabuzukahonmachi, 12.Kasakake
was formerly a rural district located in Gunma Prefecture, Ja ...
(currently
Ōta City). In 1955, he received a BA in
Chinese Literature from the
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...
, and began graduate studies, but dropped out of the doctoral course in 1960. He obtained a PhD in Linguistics from
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
in 1965, and his dissertation was on th
Phonology of ancient Chinese From 1966 to 1969, he was a visiting professor at the
University of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
,
Osaka City University
, abbreviated to , is a public university in Japan. It is located in Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka. It is one of the most prestigious universities in Japan regarding Applied Linguistics.
The university will merge with Osaka Prefecture University to form ...
, and
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
. Hashimoto became an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Asian and African Languages and Cultures,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
, often referred to as TUFS, is a specialist research university in Fuchū, Tokyo, Japan.
TUFS is primarily devoted to foreign language, international affairs and foreign studies. It also features an Asia-African institution.
History
The Uni ...
in 1970 and Professor in 1973, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Mantarō Hashimoto was married to Anne Oi-kan Yue-Hashimoto, who is currently
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of Chinese Language and Linguistics at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
.
In 2002, the International Association of Chinese Linguistics established th
Mantarō J. Hashimoto Award for Chinese Historical Phonology
Hashimoto and his research are still mentioned internationally among East Asian linguists (JCIEA 2011: 80). According to one prominent linguist of Chinese, Hashimoto blazed the trail for two fields of research: the effect that
geography
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
has on
historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
, and how
areal feature
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
s in the
varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
(previously called "
dialects
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
") reflect prolonged
language contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
with other language families (Wang 1987: 378).
Professor Hashimoto was a leading advocate of studying different areal features to gain information on the historical development of the Chinese language. He analyzed the Chinese varieties in
northern and southern China
Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions is not precisely defined and only serve to depict where there appears to be regional differences between the climates ...
and noticed the further north one traveled in China, the more the Chinese varieties began to resemble the
Altaic languages
Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic la ...
that bordered them. Conversely, as one traveled south in China, the varieties began to resemble
Austroasiatic languages
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
that bordered them in the south. Hashimoto theorized that the varieties of Chinese had been heavily influenced by the non-Chinese languages on their periphery (Wadley 1996: 99-100). For examples, northern varieties have comparatively fewer
tonal distinctions and more polysyllabic words than southern Chinese varieties with complex tonal systems and more monosyllabic words. The
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
of sentence structure is frequently
subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
in northern varieties and
subject–verb–object in southern ones.
Grammatical modifier
In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...
s contrast between to modifier-
modified word order in the north and modified-modifier in the south (Wadley 1996: 102).
Selected works
The polyglot Mantarō Hashimoto was a prolific writer of scholarly publications in Japanese, English, and Chinese (see Tsuji 1988 for details). His subjects included
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
,
lexicology,
dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , '' -logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their ass ...
,
Sinitic languages
The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...
,
Hakka Chinese
Hakka (, , ) forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people throughout Southern China and Taiwan and throughout the diaspora areas of East Asia, Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around th ...
,
Taiwanese Hokkien
Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about 70% ...
, and the influence of
Altaic languages
Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic la ...
on
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
. Some English-language examples:
The Bon-shio () Dialect of Hainan — A Historical and Comparative Study of Its Phonological Structure, First part: The Initials (1960), ''Gengo Kenkyū'' 言語研究 (''Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan'') 38: 106-135.
*"The
hP'ags-pa transcription of Chinese plosives" (1967), ''Monumenta Serica'' 26: 149-174.
*''The Hakka Dialect: A Linguistic Study of its Phonology, Syntax and Lexicon'' (1973), Cambridge University Press.
*''The
Newari Language: A Classified Lexicon of Its Bhadgaon Dialect'' (1977), Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
*"Current Developments in Sino-Vietnamese Studies" (1978), ''Journal of Chinese Linguistics'' 6.1: 1-26.
*''The Phonology of Ancient Chinese'' (1978, 1979), 2 vols., Institute for the Study of Languages & Cultures of Asia & Africa.
*"Typogeography of phonotactics and suprasegmentals in languages of the East Asian continent" (1980), ''Computational Analyses of Asian & African Languages'' 13: 153-164.
*''The
Be Language: A Classified Lexicon of Its Limkow Dialect'' (1980), Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
*"A phonological characterization of syllabic intonations in the so-called tone languages" (1981), in ''Linguistics across continents: Studies in honor of Richard S. Pittman'', ed. by Andrew B. Gonzalez and David D. Thomas, Summer Institute of Linguistics 147-155.
*
The Altaicization of Northern Chinese' (1986), in ''Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies'', ed. by John F. McCoy and Timothy Light, E. J. Brill, 76-97.
*"Hakka in
Wellentheorie Perspective" (1992), ''Journal of Chinese Linguistics'' 20.1: 1-48.
External links
Papers by Hashimoto SEAlang library The SEAlang Library, established in 2005 as an online library source for Southeast Asian linguistic reference materials, was initially funded from the Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program of the U ...
.
Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages Language Log 6 March 2009
References
*Tsuji Nobuhisa 辻伸久 (1988)
故橋本萬太郎教授 一 年譜と業績(The late Professor Hashimoto Mantarō – Chronicle of his life and achievements), ''
Journal of Asian and African Studies
The ''Journal of Asian and African Studies'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research in the fields of Asian and African studies. The journal's editor-in-chief is Nigel C. Gibson (Emerson College). It was established in 1 ...
'' 35: 201-212.
*Wadley, Stephen A. (1996), "Altaic Influences on Beijing Dialect: The Manchu Case", ''
Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 116.1: 99-104.
*Wang, William S.-Y. (1987),
Mantaro Hashimoto in memoriam, ''
Journal of Chinese Linguistics'' 15.2: 378.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hashimoto, Mantaro
Japanese sinologists
Linguists from Japan
1932 births
1987 deaths
20th-century linguists