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The Comparative Study of the Japonic Languages

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The comparative study of the Japonic languages NINJAL International Symposium Approaches to endangered languages in Japan and Northeast Thomas Pellard Asia: Description, documentation and revitalization, Tachikawa: 6–8 August 2018 CNRS,CRLAO [email protected] Why do we compare? (5) The goal of comparative linguistics is and has always been to explain languages and their evolution (1) Goals and methods of science Another and not less important reason, which makes a • to advance our understanding of the world critical comparison of the Sanskrit with its European sis- • answering “what?” (observation) is not sufficient, we also ters, worthy to be undertaken, is the light thrown thereby need to ask “how?” and “why?” (explanation) upon each of the languages compared, and the clearer • the hallmark of the scientific method is the artificial ex- view we thence obtain of the most ancient forms of each periment, but such experiments are often not possible or respectively, and probably some conception of the original ethical in many fields, especially those who study the past and primitive signification of a great part of the grammat- and unique events: evolutionary biology, archaeology, but ical inflections common to all. It is chiefly by comparison also epidemiology, ecology, sociology, etc. that we determine as far as our sensible and intellectual • one alternative to the controlled experiment is the “nat- faculties reach, the nature of things. Frederic Schlegel justly ural experiment”, or “comparative method”: manipulation expects, that comparative grammar will give us quite new is replaced by comparison with other attested cases explications of the genealogy of languages, in a similar • comparison has a long history and has been a standard way as comparative anatomy has thrown light on natural method of enquiry in anatomy for centuries philosophy. (Bopp 1820: 2) We consider that it is worth while to examine many It is usual to call comparative grammar the grammar animals of different species because what is often more that does not only describe but as far as possible explains condensed or more concealed in one species Nature linguistic forms, because it cannot as a rule limit itself to displays more clearly and openly in another. (Regnier the examination of a single language. (Schleicher 1861: 2) de Graaf 1663, Disputatio medica de natura et usu succi Comparison is the only effective tool available to the pancreatici, cited in Cole 1944: 12) linguist for writing the history of languages. We observe results of changes, not changes themselves. It is thus only (2) In linguistics too, comparison is an invaluable tool with the help of combinations that we follow, and can 1. typological comparison: search for the universal laws, follow, the development of languages. (Meillet 1925: 11) tendencies, and possible variations of language (see the Even if we were, by some miracle, handed a complete presentation by M. Shimoji) grammar of Common Indo-European as spoken somewhere 2. historical comparison: explanation of languages by refer- in, say, 4000 B.C. (the date is meaningless), the work of the ence to their evolutionary changes, as revealed by com- Indo-Europeanist would scarcely be done. In fact, it would parison with related languages1 be barely begun. For his task would be, then as before, to relate the facts vouchsafed him to the facts of attested The historical comparative method in linguistics languages: to construct hypotheses, and to demonstrate precisely how it is possible, within a linguistic tradition or (3) Motivation and method traditions, for a language to pass from one system at one • usually, we cannot observe ling. changes, only their results point in time to another system at a later point. (Watkins • there are usually few historical records, so that we have 1973: 101) to rely on comparison with related languages, which con- stitute as many pieces of the original puzzle (6) Contrary to more or less common misunderstandings • we infer (reconstruct) an earlier state (proto-language) • proving relatedness is not much a goal as a result of from which all languages can be plausibly derived the comparative method; nobody needed to prove that • regularity of sound change and arbitrariness of form- the Indo-European languages were related: it was self- meaning associations allow to rule out coincidences evident since they shared irregularities that could only be explained through comparison (4) Alternatives to the traditional comparative method? • reconstructions are not speculative educated guesses but • mass comparison, lexical diffusion, allofams, typology- models that account for correspondences between related based classifications, etc., have not and will never produce languages and that allow to derive attested forms any reliable etymology nor explain any irregular inflection • a phylogenetic tree is not a goal nor simply pigeonholing, • i.e. they do not solve interesting problems it is a model of the historical diversification of languages 1. “Comparative linguistics” has been used in the latter sense for more than (7) The most successful example of the comparative method is 200 years. It would be very inappropriate to turn everything on its head by its application to the Indo-European languages rebranding “linguistic typology” as “comparative linguistics”, as awkwardly • the verb ‘be’ is irregular in most languages, but it recon- proposed by Haspelmath (2018). See Morpurgo Davies (1998) for a good overview of the early history of the field and Hock (1991) for a good structs as a regular verb alternating between full grade in introduction to the concepts and methodology of historical linguistics. singular forms and zero-grade in plural forms (*h₁és : *h₁s) 1 Pellard The comparative study of the Japonic languages Sanskrit Latin Gothic pIE (11) Comparison within Japonic ‘be.pres.3sg’ ásti est ist *h₁és-ti • the first historical-comparative study of Ryukyuan and Ja- ‘be.pres.3pl’ sánti sunt sind *h₁s-énti panese is Chamberlain’s (1895) grammar of Shuri Okinawan • mainly of historiographic interest today, but Chamberlain • the name of the Greek god Zeus has an irregular declen- did thought of comparative grammar as explanatory sion which can be shown to go back to an earlier regular It may be asked of what nature is the light which pattern where lengthened e-grade in strong cases altern- Luchuan [i.e. Ryukyuan] throws on Japanese. We reply ates with zero-grade in weak cases (*di̯ḗu̯- : *diu̯-), with a that it is such as, in general, sister languages shed upon sound law *di̯ > z = V in Greek each other. (Chamberlain 1895: 6) Japanese etymologies, too, mostly remained at the Greek Sanskrit pIE guessing stage. As for the accidence, grammarians could nom.sg zéus dyáus *di̯ḗu̯-s enumerate forms, but were often unable to explain gen.sg di(w)ós divás *diu̯-és them; they could imagine theories, but could not build trustworthy theories. With Luchuan to refer to the case (8) It is proven that historical-comparative linguistics do work becomes different, for Luchuan stands to Japanese in • Saussure (1879) made the bold hypothesis that some ie about the same relationship as Italian does to French forms could be better explained if we assumed that some and Spanish. (Chamberlain 1897: 56) sounds had been lost, and it was later discovered (Kuryłow- • still indebted to the breakthroughs achieved by Hattori icz 1927) that Hittite preserved in some cases Saussure’s re- Shirō, reprinted in Hattori (1959) and Hattori (2018) constructed sounds:2 ‘protect’ pIE *peh₂-s- > Hittite paḫš-, • the first attempt at a systematic reconstruction of proto- Latin pāstor, pāsco, Sanskrit pāsati Ryukyuan is Thorpe (1983), which also contains many com- • Bloomfield (1928) compared several Algonquian languages parisons with Japanese, though not all are convincing and reconstructed a cluster *çk not distinguished in any • Pellard (2019) presents an overview of the current state of language, which he later discovered to be distinguished as the field of Japanese-Ryukyuan comparative linguistics htk in Swampee Cree • for comparison with Hachijō, see Kaneda (2001), Hirako & Pellard (2013) and references therein Japonic comparative linguistics (12) Methodological problems (9) Japonic (also Japanese-Ryukyuan, Japonesian) • a distrust, if not contempt, for reconstruction and a bias • Japanese, and its endangered dialects toward philology: tendency to enshrine cherrypicked Old • Ryukyuan: ~5 endangered languages spoken in the Ryukyu Japanese forms as proto-forms and to posit ad hoc adjust- Islands, a chain of around 50 inhabited islands stretching ments rather than to resort to comparative reconstruction4 from the Southeast of Kyushu to the Northeast of Taiwan3 None of these scholars has attempted to reconstruct • Hachijō: an endangered language spoken 287 km south of the phonology and morphology of the ancestral Proto- Tokyo, in the Izu archipelago; its phylogenetic position has Ryukyuan language and to formulate the “sound laws” yet to be determined accounting for the linguistic situation found today in • the degree of diversity and the time depth of the family the islands. [… T]he comparative method […] has never can be said to be not much different form that of the been applied to these data. In Ryukyuan studies formal Romance or Slavic families (Pellard 2013; 2016a) historical statements are generally confined to arrange- Japonic ments of variant forms in hypothetical evolutionary se- ? quences, unsupported by comparative method evidence. (Thorpe 1983:
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