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Review
"Shibatani's wide-ranging survey of Japanese is replete with intriguing ideas...it is a significant and timely contribution to the literature from a productive and influential scholar." Linguistic Anthropology
"This combination of breadth and boldness makes for instructive and engaging reading, all in an accessible style which promises to make this work a staple on reading lists in future courses on the history and structure of the Japanese language." Wesley M. Jacobsen, Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese
"This combination of breadth and boldness makes for instructive and engaging reading, all in an accessible style which promises to make this work a staple on reading lists in future courses on the history and structure of the Japanese language." Wesley M. Jacobsen, Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese
Product Description
This book is a detailed survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan, Japanese and Ainu. No genetic relationship has been established between them, and structurally they differ significantly. Professor Shibatani has therefore divided his study into two independent parts. The first is a most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language. The second part deals extensively with Japanese. It discusses topics from the evolution of the writing system and the differences between men's and women's speech, to issues of greater theoretical complexity, such as phonology, the lexicon and word-formation, and the syntax of agglutinative morphology. As an American-trained scholar in Japan, the author is in an unique postion that affords him a dual perspective on language deriving from Western linguistic scholarship and the Japanese grammatical tradition.
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Ainu has a relatively simple phonology. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Ainu has a relatively simple phonology. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
An Excellent Reference Book
7 May 2000
Format:Paperback
Shibatani's book "the Languages of Japan" is now 10 years old, but it still proves to be an excellent resource not only for the weathered linguist, but for anyone with any interest in Japanese, Ainu, and their various dialects.
This edition gives a concise overview of Ainu and Japanese from phoentics to semantics and more. I found the chapter on Japanese dialects especially fascinating, and the first half of the book that is dedicated to Ainu is one of the most comprehensive modern works on the language of Japan's indigineous peoples.
This volume is small and thus limited in its content, but overall it still remains a valuable and excellent resource for linguists and language buffs.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Necessary Reading to Correct False Views on Language
9 Oct 2000
Format:Paperback
Linguists (especially English-speaking ones) would do well to look to the Japanese language and test their theories against it *first* before making o'erhasty generalizations about language. I turned to this book after reading Anna Wierzbicka's work on 'semantic universals' and found that it validated my ideas that there is no exact equivalent in the Japanese language for the English word 'you' (or 'Du' in German, 'tu' in French, etc.). However, Shibatani's work is enjoyable and very informative. Non-linguists can (I think) understand it without much difficulty, and students of Japanese (as well as native speakers!) may enjoy his overview of the history and development of the language. He also goes out of his way to disprove certain 'myths' about Japanese. Plus it has a bibliography of works in both Japanese and English.
I sincerely hope more books of this kind will emerge.
Good, but doesn't seem as accessible as other such Cambridge volumes
13 Jun 2006
Format:Paperback
Masayoshi Shibatani's THE LANGUAGES OF JAPAN, an entry in the Cambridge Language Surveys series, covers but two languages within its pages: Ainu and Japanese. The book is especially valuable for its inclusion of the former, as until recently little scholarship had been done on English on this endangered minority language of northern Japan.
I was especially pleased with Shibitani's survey because it is refreshingly diachronic. His first concern in presenting each language is to summarize the various disagreements over genetic affiliation. Ainu's status as an isolate seems secure and theories relating it to other languages seem quaint, but Shibitani gives what seems to be cutting-edge evidence of Japanese as an Altaic superstratum on an Austronesian substratum. The development of the modern phonology out of earlier forms is also discussed, including the problem of the Old Japanese vowel system. There's also some discussion of the evolution of the lexicon, and which dialects retain what. There may be some outcry over Shibatani's decision to consider Ryukyuan a dialect of Japanese, but in forming the survey he seems to have decided to see Japan as having two main languages on the basis of the uncertain origin of each. Since Rykyuan and Japanese are from a common source, they are grouped together. In fact, Shibatani writes, "Once a genetic relationship is established between two languages, it is a moot point whether to regard them as two languages or as two dialects of the same languages." The work also includes a substantial synchronic discussion of general grammar and word-formation.
I felt that I, in spite of his attempt to clearly present these languages, I would have gotten far more out of the book if I had better Japanese. The book is not as suitable for hobby reading by the linguistics student as other entries in the Cambridge Language Survey series. Nonetheless, it's worth look at for those interested in Japanese and the little-documented (in English at any rate) Ainu language.
I was especially pleased with Shibitani's survey because it is refreshingly diachronic. His first concern in presenting each language is to summarize the various disagreements over genetic affiliation. Ainu's status as an isolate seems secure and theories relating it to other languages seem quaint, but Shibitani gives what seems to be cutting-edge evidence of Japanese as an Altaic superstratum on an Austronesian substratum. The development of the modern phonology out of earlier forms is also discussed, including the problem of the Old Japanese vowel system. There's also some discussion of the evolution of the lexicon, and which dialects retain what. There may be some outcry over Shibatani's decision to consider Ryukyuan a dialect of Japanese, but in forming the survey he seems to have decided to see Japan as having two main languages on the basis of the uncertain origin of each. Since Rykyuan and Japanese are from a common source, they are grouped together. In fact, Shibatani writes, "Once a genetic relationship is established between two languages, it is a moot point whether to regard them as two languages or as two dialects of the same languages." The work also includes a substantial synchronic discussion of general grammar and word-formation.
I felt that I, in spite of his attempt to clearly present these languages, I would have gotten far more out of the book if I had better Japanese. The book is not as suitable for hobby reading by the linguistics student as other entries in the Cambridge Language Survey series. Nonetheless, it's worth look at for those interested in Japanese and the little-documented (in English at any rate) Ainu language.
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