The Phonological Basis for the Comparison of Japanese and Korean

By John B. Whitman

John Bradford Whitman makes use of recent advances in the understanding of the sound systems of the earlier phases of Japanese and Korean to show that these languages have a larger stock of cognate vocabulary in common than previous studies have revealed.The author first outlines the main advances in the internal reconstruction of earlier Japanese that have taken place since the 1950s. He presents a new hypothesis regarding the relationship between the main verb conjugations of eighth-century Japanese and an earlier, primary division between vowel-final and consonant-final roots.The author then reviews the research on the internal reconstruction of Korean. Consonantal vocalization, the vowel system of Middle Korean, and competing hypotheses about the origins of the Korean vowel system and the pitch accent system of Middle Korean are addressed. Whitman concludes either that there was an extensive, earlier period of close contact between the Japanese and Korean peoples, or that Japanese and Korean have a common linguistic ancestor, or that their shared vocabulary and other common linguistic traits result from a combination of these two scenarios.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1929280025
• ISBN13: 9781929280025
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 210 Pages