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Proto-Japonic Language
Proto-Japonic, also known as Proto-Japanese or Proto-Japanese–Ryukyuan, is the reconstructed language ancestral to the Japonic language family. It has been reconstructed by using a combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative method to Old Japanese (both the central variety of the Nara area and Eastern Old Japanese dialects) and the Ryukyuan languages. The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori. Background The Japonic language family comprises Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan; Hachijō, spoken on Hachijō-jima, Aogashima, and the Daitō Islands; and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from the Korean peninsula around 700 to 300 BC by wet-rice farmers of the Yayoi culture and spread throughout the Japanese archipelago, replacing indigenous languages. The oldest attested form is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japonic Languages
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan () is a language family comprising Japanese language, Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC. There is some fragmentary evidence suggesting that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula (see Peninsular Japonic) in the early centuries AD. Possible genetic relationships with many other language familie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yayoi Culture
The Yayoi period (弥生時代, ''Yayoi jidai'') (c. 300 BC – 300 AD) is one of the major historical periods of the Japanese archipelago. It is generally defined as the era between the beginning of food production in Japan and the emergence of keyhole-shaped burial mounds (前方後円墳, ''zenpō-kōen-fun''). Chronologically, it spans from around the 10th century BCE or 9th–8th century BCE to the mid-3rd century CE. Following the Jōmon period, which was characterized by a hunter-gatherer economy, the Yayoi period marked the transition to a productive economy based on wet-rice agriculture. In the latter half of the late Yayoi period (around the 1st century CE), large regional powers emerged throughout western Japan, including the Tokai and Hokuriku regions. By the end of the 2nd century, the political entity known as Wa-koku (倭国) had formed. It is generally considered that the Yayoi period transitioned into the Kofun period around the mid-3rd century, although the pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bilabial Consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita, though all of these have a labial–velar approximant /w/. Varieties The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ... (IPA) are: Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: . Other varieties The extensions to the IPA also define a () for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips audibly parting would be . The IPA chart shades out ''bilabial lateral consonants'', wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comparative Reconstruction
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages. The comparative method emerged in the early 19th century with the birth of Indo-European studies, then took a definite scientific approach with the works of the Neogrammarians in the late 19th–ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Pitch Accent
Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, the word for "river" is in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the second mora, but in the Kansai dialect it is . A final or is often devoiced to or after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant. The Japanese term is , and it refers to pitch accent in languages such as Japanese and Swedish. It contrasts with , which refers to stress. An alternative term is which contrasts with . Standard Japanese Normative pitch accent, essentially the pitch accent of the Tokyo Yamanote dialect, is considered essential in jobs such as broadcasting. The current standards for pitch accent are presented in special accent dictionaries for native speakers such as the ''Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten'' () and the ''NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Ji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Dialects
The of the Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including modern capital Tokyo) and Western (including old capital Kyoto), with the dialects of Kyushu and Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all. The Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa Prefecture and the southern islands of Kagoshima Prefecture form a separate branch of the Japonic family, and are not Japanese dialects, although they are sometimes referred to as such. The setting of Japan with its numerous islands and mountains has the ideal setting for developing many dialects. History Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since the Old Japanese era. The '' Man'yōshū'', the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, includes poems written in dialects of the capital (Nara) and eastern Japan, but other dialects were not recorded. The compiler included ''azuma uta'' ("eastern songs") that show that eastern dialect traits were dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Martin (linguist)
Samuel Elmo Martin (29 January 1924 – 28 November 2009) was an American linguist known for seminal work on the languages of East Asia, a professor at Yale University, and the author of many works on the Korean language, Korean and Japanese language, Japanese languages. Biography Martin was born in Pittsburg, Kansas on 29 January 1924, and grew up in Emporia, Kansas. During World War II he was trained as a Japanese Language Officer, and was stationed in Japan at the end of the war. After the war, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in Oriental Languages. He graduated in 1947, but stayed on at Berkeley to study for a master's degree in linguistics under Chao Yuen Ren, which he completed in 1949. He then went to Yale University to study for a PhD in Japanese Linguistics under Bernard Bloch (linguist), Bernard Bloch. He completed his dissertation on Japanese morphophonemics in 1950 (published as a monograph by the Linguistic Society of America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satsuma Domain
The , briefly known as the , was a Han system, domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of Kagoshima, located in the south of the island of Kyushu. The Satsuma Domain was ruled for its existence by the ''Tozama daimyō, Tozama'' ''daimyō'' of the Shimazu clan, who had ruled the Kagoshima area since the 1200s, and covered territory in the Provinces of Japan, provinces of Satsuma, Ōsumi Province, Ōsumi and Hyūga Province, Hyūga. The Satsuma Domain was assessed under the ''Kokudaka'' system and its value peaked at 770,000 ''koku'', the second-highest domain in Japan after the Kaga Domain.Conrad Totman, Totman, Conrad. (1993) ''Early Modern Japan'', p. 119 The Satsuma Domain was one of the most powerful and prominent of Japan's domains during the Edo period, conquering the Ryukyu Kingdom as a vassal state after the invasion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyu Kingdom
The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 to 1879. It was ruled as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of Ming dynasty, imperial Ming China by the King of Ryukyu, Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island to end the Sanzan period, and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands and Sakishima Islands. The Ryukyu Kingdom played a central role in the maritime history, maritime trade networks of medieval East Asia and Southeast Asia despite its small size. The Ryukyu Kingdom became a vassal state of the Satsuma Domain of Japan after the invasion of Ryukyu in 1609 but retained ''de jure'' independence until it was transformed into the Ryukyu Domain by the Empire of Japan in 1872. The Ryukyu Kingdom was Ryukyu Disposition, formally annexed and dissolved by Japan in 1879 to form Okinawa Prefecture, and the Ryukyuan monarchy was integrated into the new Kazoku, Japanese nobility. History Origins of the Kingdom In the 14th century small domains s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gusuku Culture
The is an era in the history of the Ryukyu Islands, an island chain now part of Japan. The period corresponds to the spread of agriculture and Japonic culture from Japan alongside increased social organization, eventually leading to endemic warfare and the construction of the namesake fortresses. Following the Shellmidden Period, the Gusuku is generally described as beginning in the 11th century after a dramatic social and economic shift over the previous centuries. The Shellmidden–Gusuku transition has been linked to Japonic-speaking migrants and influence from a Japanese trade outpost on the island of Kikai, leading to the emergence of the Proto-Ryukyuan language, the common ancestor of the modern Ryukyuan languages. The period saw widespread agriculture across the archipelago, including the cultivation of foxtail millet, rice, barley, and wheat. Trade occurred with China, Korea, and Japan, including imports of ceramics and the export of mother of pearl. A unique form of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okinawan Language
Okinawan (, , , ), or more precisely Central Okinawan, is a Northern Ryukyuan languages, Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the Okinawa Island, island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama Islands, Kerama, Kumejima, Okinawa, Kumejima, Tonaki, Okinawa, Tonaki, Aguni, Okinawa, Aguni and a number of smaller peripheral islands. Central Okinawan distinguishes itself from the speech of Northern Okinawa, which is classified independently as the Kunigami language. Both languages are listed by UNESCO as Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, endangered. Though Okinawan encompasses a number of local dialects, the Shuri, Okinawa, Shuri–Naha variant is generally recognized as the ''de facto'' standard, as it had been used as the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom since the reign of King Shō Shin (1477–1526). Moreover, as the former capital of Shuri was built around the royal palace, the language used by the royal court became the reg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
