In a special Focus-to-Predicate concord construction (kakari musubi), specific focus particles called kakari joshi correlate with predicate conjugational endings, or musubi, other than regular finite forms, creating special illocutionary effects, such as emphatic assertion or question. In Old Japanese, a particle ka, s(/z)ö, ya, or namu triggers an adnominal ending, while kösö calls for a realis ending. In Old Okinawan, ga or du prompts an adnominal ending, while sɨ associates with realis endings. Kakari musubi existed in Proto-Japonic but died out in the Japanese branch; however, it is still preserved in its sister branch, Ryukyuan, in the Okinawan language.
This concord phenomenon, observed in only a few languages of the world, presents diverse issues concerning its evolution from origin to demise, the functional and semantic differences of its kakari particles (e.g., question-forming Old Japanese ka vs. ya) and positional (sentence-medial vs. sentence-final) contrast. Furthermore, kakari musubi bears relevance to syntactic constructions such as clefts and nominalizations. Finally, some kakari particles stemming from demonstratives offer worthy data for theory construction in grammaticalization or iconicity. Because of its far reaching relevance, the construction has garnered attention from both formal and functional schools of linguistics.
Article
Focus-Predicate Concord kakari musubi Constructions in Japanese and Okinawan
Rumiko Shinzato
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Morphology in Japonic Languages
Taro Kageyama
Due to the agglutinative character, Japanese and Ryukyuan morphology is predominantly concatenative, applying to garden-variety word formation processes such as compounding, prefixation, suffixation, and inflection, though nonconcatenative morphology like clipping, blending, and reduplication is also available and sometimes interacts with concatenative word formation. The formal simplicity of the principal morphological devices is counterbalanced by their complex interaction with syntax and semantics as well as by the intricate interactions of four lexical strata (native, Sino-Japanese, foreign, and mimetic) with particular morphological processes. A wealth of phenomena is adduced that pertain to central issues in theories of morphology, such as the demarcation between words and phrases; the feasibility of the lexical integrity principle; the controversy over lexicalism and syntacticism; the distinction of morpheme-based and word-based morphology; the effects of the stage-level vs. individual-level distinction on the applicability of morphological rules; the interface of morphology, syntax, and semantics, and pragmatics; and the role of conjugation and inflection in predicate agglutination. In particular, the formation of compound and complex verbs/adjectives takes place in both lexical and syntactic structures, and the compound and complex predicates thus formed are further followed in syntax by suffixal predicates representing grammatical categories like causative, passive, negation, and politeness as well as inflections of tense and mood to form a long chain of predicate complexes. In addition, an array of morphological objects—bound root, word, clitic, nonindependent word or fuzoku-go, and (for Japanese) word plus—participate productively in word formation. The close association of morphology and syntax in Japonic languages thus demonstrates that morphological processes are spread over lexical and syntactic structures, whereas words are equipped with the distinct property of morphological integrity, which distinguishes them from syntactic phrases.
Article
Origins of the Japanese Language
Alexander Vovin
The Northeast Asia is one of the unique points on the globe where there are many language isolates and portmanteau families. From a conservative point of view, the Japanese language is a member of such a portmanteau family that has recently and increasingly been called Japonic in the Western literature. While Japanese is unquestionably a member of this Japonic language family, which consists of two Japanese languages (Japanese itself and the moribund Hachijō language) and four or five relatively closely related Ryūkyūan languages (Amami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, and possibly Yonaguni), attempts have also been made to establish a genetic relationship between Japanese and various other language families. Most of these attempts have been amateurish, a major exception being the Koreo-Japonic hypothesis, which still remains unproven as well. It is also quite likely that the Japonic language family (or, more precisely, Insular Japonic) is the only linguistic grouping whose genetic relationship can be established beyond any doubt. A genetic relationship is also likely to exist between Japonic and a number of fragmentarily attested languages that once flourished in the south and center of the Korean Peninsula, but that died out no later than 9th century A.D. The paucity of material available does not allow one to establish solid predictive-productive regular correspondences in many cases, but intuitively the genetic relationship seems to be a matter of fact. Anything beyond intuition, however, lies in the realm of conjecture and speculation. The alleged Koreo-Japonic relationship is best explained by a centuries-long contact relationship rather than by common origin, given such factors as the virtual absence of any kind of shared paradigmatic morphology, as well as by multiple problems in establishing the real (and not imaginable or made-to-fit) regular correspondences. The Japanese-“Altaic” hypothesis is even more speculative and far-fetched. Consequently, the conclusion is that the Japanese language or the Japonic language family has no demonstrable relationship with any other language family or language isolate on the planet.
