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COULD THERE BE A KOREAN–JAPANESE LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP THEORY? SCIENCE, THE DATA, AND THE ALTERNATIVES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Christopher I. Beckwith
Christopher I. Beckwith
Affiliation:
Indiana University E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The ethnolinguistic history of early East Asia depends on the comparative-historical study of the different languages. Scholars have long studied the early interrelationships among the major languages of East Asia, but only rarely according to the theory and methodology of scientific comparative-historical linguistics and linguistic typology, in which theories are expected to conform to the data. Among the many highly contested genetic relationship proposals in the region is the “Korean-Japanese theory”. Despite nearly a century of work by some very prominent scholars, no one has given a convincing demonstration of such a relationship, partly due to the paucity of supporting data, despite the fact that the two languages in question are vibrant and well attested. Now two leading scholars of Japanese and Korean linguistics who are familiar with each other's work, J. M. Unger and A. Vovin, have almost simultaneously published new books on the topic, one in favor of the theory, one against it. The contributions and flaws of the two books, and their position relative to the development of a scientific tradition of comparative-historical linguistics, are discussed. Special attention is paid to Koguryo, the extinct Japanese-related language once spoken on the Korean Peninsula that is crucial to any discussion of the historical relationship of Japanese and Korean.

Type
State of the field
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 201 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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