Christopher Beckwith – författare

This is the first in-depth study of the extinct Koguryo language, which was once spoken in Manchuria and northern Korea. It covers the ethnolinguistic history of the Koguryo nation, philological treatment of the sources for the language, Koguryo phonology, and a complete glossary of all Archaic Koguryo and Old Koguryo words. Special attention has been given to the theory and practice of lexically-based historical-comparative linguistics. The genetic relationship of Koguryo to Japanese is shown to be secure, unlike the non-relationship of either language to Korean or 'Altaic', and much light is shed on the ethnolinguistic origins of Japanese. The special phonological features of the underlying transcriptional language, the archaic northeastern Middle Chinese dialect once spoken in Korea, are also analyzed.

This book on the pre-modern Tibeto-Burman languages represents a movement to establish a field of Tibeto-Burman comparative-historical linguistics according to the classical Indo-European model. The book contains papers by T. Takeuchi on Old Zhang-zhung, A. Zadoks on Old Tibetan, K. Tamot on Early Classical Newari; C. Beckwith on Pyu, R. Yanson on Old Burmese, S. Chelliah and S. Ray on Early Meithei, D. Bradley on Tibeto-Burman, and C. Beckwith on Sino-Tibetan. Glossaries of several early Tibeto-Burman languages are included. It provides information, not found in any other source, on early Tibeto-Burman literary languages and their position within Tibeto-Burman as well as their relationship to Chinese and other languages.