Japanese as an Altaic Language: An Investigation of Japanese Genetic Affiliation through Biological Findings

要旨

Japanese is one of the language isolates (Shibatani, 1990). In the 18 century, however, Sir William Jones hypothesized all languages in the world are derived from a single mother tongue; thus they are genetically related to others (Lamb & Mitchell, 1991). Led by this hypothesis, scholars have engaged in comparing languages systematically to observe their genetic affiliations through the linguistic correspondences between them (Crystal, 1997). The genetic classification of languages in Europe was successfully achieved by their efforts; in addition, they have thought that the methods used to establish the Indo-European language family can be applied to the categorization of other languages (Crystal, 1997; Lehmann, 1992).

主題