Routledge Studies in East Asian Linguistics – serie

Mimetic words, also known as ‘sound-symbolic words’, ‘ideophones’ or more popularly as ‘onomatopoeia’, constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children’s early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.

Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.

Southern Mǐn refers to a group of Chinese dialects spoken mainly in Southeast China and Taiwan. This group occupies a special position in the study of Chinese dialects, not only because of its large population of speakers (around 48 million) but also because of its preservation of various archaic linguistic features long lost in other dialects. In this book, B.C. Kwok applies the comparative method on new fieldwork data to reconstruct the common sound system of ‘Proto-Southern Mǐn’, from which all modern Southern Mǐn varieties emerged. The syllable initials, finals and tonal categories of Proto-Southern Mǐn are illustrated by more than 500 examples. In addition, this book offers an alternative view on the subgrouping of 12 Southern Mǐn varieties. It proposes that the Quánzhōu dialect and the Zhāngzhōu dialect form the two main branches of the dialect group. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars in the fields of historical linguistics and Chinese dialectology.

Anybody who reads or writes Chinese characters knows that they obey a grammar of sorts: though numerous, they are built out of a much smaller set of constituents, often interpretable in meaning or pronunciation, that are themselves built out of an even smaller set of strokes. This book goes far beyond these basic facts to show that Chinese characters truly have a productive and psychologically real lexical grammar of the same sort seen in spoken and signed languages, with non-trivial analogs of morphology (the combination of potentially interpretable constituents), phonology (formal regularities without implications for interpretation), and phonetics (articulatory and perceptual constraints). Evidence comes from a wide variety of sources, from quantitative corpus analyses to experiments on character reading, writing, and learning. The grammatical approach helps capture how character constituents combine as they do, how strokes systematically vary in different environments, how character form evolved from ancient times to the modern simplified system, and how readers and writers are able to process or learn even entirely novel characters. This book not only provides tools for exploring the full richness of Chinese orthography, but also offers new ways of thinking about the most fundamental question in linguistic theory: what is grammar?

Long and Imamura examine language contact phenomena in the Asia Pacific region in the context of early 20th-century colonial history, focusing on the effects the Japanese language continues to have over island societies in the Pacific.Beginning in the early 20th century when these islands were taken over by the Japanese Empire and continuing into the 21st century, the book examines 5,150 Japanese-origin loanwords used in 14 different languages. It delves into semantic, phonological, and grammatical changes in these loanwords that form a fundamental part of the lexicons of the Pacific Island languages, even now in the 21st century. The authors examine the usage of Japanese kana for writing some of the local languages and the pidginoid phenomena of Angaur Island. Readers will gain a unique understanding of the Japanese language’s usage in the region from colonial times through the post-war period and well into the current century.Researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of sociolinguistics, language policy, and Japanese studies will find this book particularly useful for the empirical evidence it provides regarding language contact situations and the various Japanese language influences in the Asia Pacific region. The authors also offer accompanying e-resources that help to further illustrate the examples found in the book.

Long and Imamura examine language contact phenomena in the Asia Pacific region in the context of early 20th-century colonial history, focusing on the effects the Japanese language continues to have over island societies in the Pacific.Beginning in the early 20th century when these islands were taken over by the Japanese Empire and continuing into the 21st century, the book examines 5,150 Japanese-origin loanwords used in 14 different languages. It delves into semantic, phonological, and grammatical changes in these loanwords that form a fundamental part of the lexicons of the Pacific Island languages, even now in the 21st century. The authors examine the usage of Japanese kana for writing some of the local languages and the pidginoid phenomena of Angaur Island. Readers will gain a unique understanding of the Japanese language’s usage in the region from colonial times through the post-war period and well into the current century.Researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of sociolinguistics, language policy, and Japanese studies will find this book particularly useful for the empirical evidence it provides regarding language contact situations and the various Japanese language influences in the Asia Pacific region. The authors also offer accompanying e-resources that help to further illustrate the examples found in the book.

Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.

Mimetic words, also known as ‘sound-symbolic words’, ‘ideophones’ or more popularly as ‘onomatopoeia’, constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children’s early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.

Anybody who reads or writes Chinese characters knows that they obey a grammar of sorts: though numerous, they are built out of a much smaller set of constituents, often interpretable in meaning or pronunciation, that are themselves built out of an even smaller set of strokes. This book goes far beyond these basic facts to show that Chinese characters truly have a productive and psychologically real lexical grammar of the same sort seen in spoken and signed languages, with non-trivial analogs of morphology (the combination of potentially interpretable constituents), phonology (formal regularities without implications for interpretation), and phonetics (articulatory and perceptual constraints). Evidence comes from a wide variety of sources, from quantitative corpus analyses to experiments on character reading, writing, and learning. The grammatical approach helps capture how character constituents combine as they do, how strokes systematically vary in different environments, how character form evolved from ancient times to the modern simplified system, and how readers and writers are able to process or learn even entirely novel characters. This book not only provides tools for exploring the full richness of Chinese orthography, but also offers new ways of thinking about the most fundamental question in linguistic theory: what is grammar?