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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - JapPrehistMigration (How and when was Japan settled by speakers of Japanese? Exploring the clues to Japanese prehistory preserved in old dialect divisions)

Teaser

Summary

The aim of the project is to clarify why Japanese dialects that are geographically far removed from one another show resemblances in their tone systems that cannot be analyzed as archaisms. A pattern where peripheral dialects share archaic features, results when an innovation starts in the center of a speech area and does not reach all peripheral areas. The opposite pattern, where the periphery shares certain innovations, such as in case of these dialects, is harder to explain.
A number of these dialect areas in Japan also show innovative resemblances in segmental phonology and morphology. The resemblances between the dialects could be the result of parallel independent innovations (coincidence), or they could have been transmitted from one area to the next through contact or migration.
It is thought that the Japanese language was brought to Japan in a series of west-to-east migrations of wet-rice farmers from the Korean peninsula, starting at approximately 800 BCE. Keeping this background in mind, these outlying dialect areas in Japan may contain clues as to the prehistoric migration routes through which wet-rice agriculture and the Japanese language spread through Japan.
In order to clarity whether these dialects share a common genealogy, fieldwork has been conducted on the complicated and insufficiently researched rules that determine the tone of noun compounds in these dialects. The aim is to determine whether these rules indicate a common descent, or are more likely the result of parallel independent developments.

Work performed

During the reporting period, a preliminary comparison of the tone systems, the segmental phonology, morphology and lexicon of the different dialect areas was undertaken. Lists of nouns in isolation and in compounds were selected for fieldwork, and recorded during four fieldwork expeditions conducted in five different regions of Japan.
The audio recordings were analysed, and the data entered into a database, together with data from earlier published fieldwork.

Final results

The fieldwork so far has yielded a number of new insights, leading to new research questions. To address these, additional locations have been selected or future fieldwork expeditions. The resulting data will be compared against a database of historical tone markings from the 11th to 14th century (under construction). The aim of this comparison is to reconstruct the way in which the present-day rules developed, so that it is possible to determine which features are archaic, and which are innovative (and therefore indicative of common descent).