10-2 Midori-cho, Tachikawa City, Tokyo, 190-8561
Copyright (c) 2009 National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
2015/05/19
2015/02/17
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(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
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
2014/07/15
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)