Classification of the Japonic languages

The classification of the Japonic languages and their external relations is unclear. Linguists traditionally consider the Japonic languages to belong to an independent family; indeed, until the classification of Ryukyuan and eventually Hachijō as separate languages within a Japonic family rather than as dialects of Japanese, Japanese was considered a language isolate.

Among more distant connections, the possibility of a genetic relationship to languages like Austronesian and or Kra–Dai, are discussed. A relation between Japonic and Koreanic is also considered plausible by some linguists, while others reject this idea.[1][2] Independent of the question of a Japonic–Koreanic connection, both the Japonic and Koreanic languages are sometimes included in the now largely discredited Altaic family.[3][4][5][6]

  1. ^ Francis-Ratte, Alexander Takenobu (2016). Proto-Korean-Japanese: A New Reconstruction of the Common Origin of the Japanese and Korean Languages (Thesis). The Ohio State University. Archived from the original on 2018-08-30. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  2. ^ Vovin, Alexander (2013). "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics. 15 (2): 222–240. doi:10.1075/kl.15.2.03vov.
  3. ^ "While 'Altaic' is repeated in encyclopedias and handbooks most specialists in these languages no longer believe that the three traditional supposed Altaic groups, Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic, are related." Lyle Campbell & Mauricio J. Mixco, A Glossary of Historical Linguistics (2007, University of Utah Press), pg. 7.
  4. ^ "When cognates proved not to be valid, Altaic was abandoned, and the received view now is that Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic are unrelated." Johanna Nichols, Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time (1992, Chicago), pg. 4.
  5. ^ "Careful examination indicates that the established families, Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, form a linguistic area (called Altaic)...Sufficient criteria have not been given that would justify talking of a genetic relationship here." R.M.W. Dixon, The Rise and Fall of Languages (1997, Cambridge), pg. 32.
  6. ^ "...[T]his selection of features does not provide good evidence for common descent....we can observe convergence rather than divergence between Turkic and Mongolic languages--a pattern than is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent," Asya Pereltsvaig, Languages of the World, An Introduction (2012, Cambridge). This source has a good discussion of the Altaic hypothesis on pp. 211-216.

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