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News

  • 2015/05/19

    アイヌ語班平成27年度第１回研究発表会

    アイヌ語班の今年度第１回目の研究会発表会が6月13日、14日の2日間にわたって開催されます。プログラムはこちらからご覧ください。

     

  • 2015/02/17

    Kakarimusubi Reference list をアップデートしました

    Kakarimusubi Reference list をアップデートしました（2015年2月17日版）。 Excelファイルを文献・リソースページからダウンロードできます。

     

  • 2014/12/09

    「名詞化文献リスト」をアップデートしました

    「名詞化文献リスト」をアップデートしました（20141209版）。Excelファイルを 文献・リソースページからダウンロードできます。

     

  • 2014/09/02

    International Symposium "Crosslinguistics and linguistic crossings in Northeast Asia"

    The project will hold an International Symposium titled "Crosslinguistics and linguistic crossings in Northeast Asia" (28-29 Nov 2014) at University of Helsinki. The symposium is hosted by Helsinki Area and Language Studies Initiative (HALS), University of Helsinki, and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), Tokyo. Click here for more information.

     

  • 2014/08/18

    Blog: International Symposium "Crosslinguistics and linguistic crossings in Northeast Asia"

     

  • 2014/07/15

    Launch of the project website

    We are pleased to announce the launch of the website of the project "Typological and Historical/Comparative Research on the Languages of the Japanese Archipelago and its Environs." The website will provide updated information on the development of the project.

     

Languages of Northeast Asia show characteristics of a linguistic area or sprachbund. Shared typological features include largely head final constituent order, a high degree of morphological agglutination, and retracted tongue root [RTR] harmony. In the diachronic realm, shared features include a notable tendency for nominalized clauses to be reanalyzed as main clauses. In the southeast are languages (Japanese, Korean) with no primary laryngeal consonantal contrast, lexical pitch accent, and almost complete dependent marking. On the northern and western peripheries languages are predominantly dependent marking.

The project applies a typological perspective on the languages of the Northeast Asian sprachbund. It encompasses a “morphosyntax team”, a “phonological reconstruction team”, and a team focusing on Ainu. Together, these teams seek to add a diachronic dimension to the long tradition of sophisticated descriptive research on the languages Northeast Asia in Japan.

The morphosyntax team focuses on nominalization, as can be seen in Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, and Nivkh and Japanese. A major topic of interest for this team is the relationship between clausal nominalizations and focus constructions, as found in Yukaghir, many Ryūkyūan languages, and earlier Japanese.

The phonological reconstruction re-evaluates existing reconstructions of families such as Tungusic and Ainu in light of current research. Research on reconstruction will be carried out in cooperation with scholars working on the reconstruction of Japanese and Ryūkyūan.

The Ainu team, seeks to clarify the properties of Ainu from a typological perspective, focusing on topics as noun modification, applicative and causative structures, incorporation, and the general properties that give Ainu a “polysynthetic” profile.

Project leader
John WHITMAN
(Professor, Department of Crosslinguistic Studies, NINJAL)

Ainu language team

  • Anna Bugaeva (NINJAL)
  • Hiroshi Nakagawa (Chiba University)
  • Osami Okuda (Sapporo Gakuin University)
  • Tomomi Sato (Hokkaido University)
  • Hidetoshi Shiraishi (Sapporo Gakuin University)
  • Yasushige Takahashi (Center of Ainu & Indigenous Studies Hokkaido University)
  • Itsuji Tangiku (Center of Ainu & Indigenous Studies Hokkaido University)
  • Shiho Endo (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)
  • Mamoru Fujita
  • Mika Fukazawa (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)
  • Kazuya Kakehata (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)
  • Norihisa Kishimoto (Graduate School of Letters / Hokkaido University)
  • Miki Kobayashi (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)
  • So Miyagawa (Graduate School of Letters / Kyoto University)
  • Masako Sato (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)
  • Tero Vattukumpu (Graduate School of Letters / Kyoto University)
  • Yoshimi Yoshikawa (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences / Chiba University)

Morphosyntax team

  • Edith Aldridge (University of Washington)
  • Midori Amano (Otsuma Wemen's University)
  • Hiroshi Aoki (Kyushu University)
  • Anna Bugaeva (NINJAL)
  • Eui-sung Cho (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Chris Davis (Ryukyu Daigaku)
  • Fuyuki Ebata (niigata University)
  • Fubito Endo (Wakayama University)
  • Rei Fukui (Tokyo University)
  • Ken Hiraiwa (Meiji Gakuin Daigaku)
  • Hideto Ito (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Shinjiro Kazama (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Satoshi Kinsui (Osaka University)
  • Hideki Kishimoto (Kobe University)
  • Tomoyuki Kubo (Kyushu University)
  • Tokusu Kurebito (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Megumi Kurebito (Toyama University)
  • Kunihiko Kuroki (Keimyung University)
  • Iku Nagasaki (NINJAL)
  • Naonori Nagaya (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Yukari Nagayama (Hokkaido University)
  • Heiko Narrog (Tohoku University/NINJAL)
  • Akira Nishina (Waseda University)
  • Kunio Nishiyama (Tsukuba University)
  • Kan Sasaki (Sapporo Gakuin University)
  • Michinori Shimoji (Kyusyu University/NINJAL)
  • Takumi Tagawa (Tsukuba University)
  • Yoshiyuki Takayama (Fukui University)
  • Koichi Takezawa (Tsukuba University)
  • Atsuro Tsubomoto (University of Shizuoka)
  • Seiji Tsuji (Okayama University)
  • Honore Watanabe (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Yuko Yanagida (Tsukuba University)
  • Noriko Yoshimura (University of Shizuoka)
  • Yinji Jin(Gifu University)
  • Ekaterina Gruzdeva (University of Helsinki)

Phonological reconstruction team

  • Anna Bugaeva (NINJAL)
  • Eui-sung Cho (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Mitsuaki Endo (Aoyama Gakuin University)
  • Bjarke Frellesvig (University of Oxford)
  • Rei Fukui (Tokyo University)
  • Teruhiro Hayata
  • Hideto Ito (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Chiyuki Ito (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Shinjiro Kazama (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
  • Tomoyuki Kubo (Kyushu University)
  • Thomas Pellard (French National Centre for Scientific Research)
  • Hidetoshi Shiraishi (Sapporo Gakuin University)
  • Seiji Tsuji (Okayama University)
  • J. Marshall Unger (Ohio State University)
  • Alexander Vovin (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
  • Tatsuya Hirako (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science/Graduate School of Humanities, Kyushu University)
  • Tatiana Roon (Juzhno-Sakahlinsk Regional Museum)
 

If you have questions on our project, please feel free to contact us on the e-mail address below.
nealang2014 [at] gmail.com