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Foreword to the New Edition

Nippongo (The Japanese Language) was originally published in 1957 in Japan, and translated into English and published in 1978. I read this accessible and very insightful book for the first time while I was in college in Japan. It was before I became familiar with linguistic theories in the U.S. Now I am fortunate to be given an opportunity to read it again and discuss how pertinent to current linguistic theories Kindaichi’s original insights are.

First, I would like to remind readers to read the author’s preface and the translator’s notes so that his essays can be placed into the context and time period of when this book was originally written. Being mindful of the historical context will allow his remarks to be interpreted appropriately.

PART I: The Position of Japanese presents Kindaichi’s view towards the Japanese language. He first discusses the origin of the language. As Shibatani’s (1990) textbook title, The Languages of Japan, suggests, there is more than one language in Japan. They are Ainu and Japanese, which are considered unrelated whereas Ryukyuan is considered a dialect of Japanese. Generally speaking, Japanese is regarded as related to Korean, but Kindaichi thinks that supporting evidence for this view is insuffcient. Recently, Vovin (2009) also challenged this general view and argued against the idea that Japanese and Korean share the same ancestry. Unger (2009), on the other hand, supports the common origin hypothesis of the languages. Given new linguistic, methodological, and archeological developments, this again became a hot topic of debate.

PART II: Aspects of Speech refers to pragmatic and socio-linguistic aspects of the language. Speech styles commonly discussed in relation to politeness and gender issues deal with empowerment, but commonly accepted speech styles change over time as the society changes. Certain forms are registered as part of grammar. For instance, an appropriate honorific verbal form appears when the subject referent is exalted. This subject-verb agreement can be considered similar to morpho-syntactic subject-verb agreement seen in many languages including English. Osterhout and Inoue (2007), however, found in their study about the brain’s electrical activity (Event Related Potentials) that the brain activity for the subject-verb agreement in honorification (i.e., the appropriate use of honorific form) is not the same as that observed with the English subject-verb agreement. Furthermore, this brain activity on agreement was only seen among those who often used the honorific language. As we know, it takes time for Japanese speakers to acquire the honorific language. This is because of its situational complexity. Therefore, it was not strange for the study to find honorification grammaticalized among only those who were familiar with this type of language. Given the diversity of dialects and their media exposure today, speech styles have changed and so have people’s feeling toward them. In particular, men’s and women’s languages are moving toward more neutral styles, and given societal needs, more politically correct expressions are expected to increase in the near future, though not to the extent of those found in American English. Historical difference in speech style can be seen in this section.

PART III: Pronunciation offers segmental and suprasegmental analyses of the language. For instance, it discusses the difference between seion and dakuon, which is not necessarily the same as the difference between voiceless and voiced consonants. It refers to Norinaga’s finding that voiced consonants and the /r/ series do not appear at the beginning of a word in ancient Japanese. This reminds me of the fact that /r/ resists palatalization in Japanese mimetics (Tsujimura 2007). These may be related and may suggest the underlying restriction of /r/ in Japanese. Kindaichi also discusses the bimoraic rhythm of the language and the pitch characteristic of the word initial mora. The latter is well-known as Haraguchi’s (1977) Initial Lowering Rule in the Tokyo dialect. He also mentions that low pitch indicates word/phrase break, which relates to the “down step” prosodic characteristic. As can be seen, these segmental and prosodic characteristics Kindaichi discusses have been studied in more depth in recent years, and Optimality theoretic applications may be found from his insightful discussions as well.

PART IV: Vocabulary easily attracts both those who study the language, but have not studied theoretical linguistics, and those who study linguistics. Various characteristics of words are discussed in this section. Although one has to consider the time period in which this book was written, Kindaichi’s insights are applicable to the current diverse linguistic issues surrounding Japanese words. Japan annually identifies the most popular word, but does that popular word become a permanent part of the language? As the society changes rapidly, new words are created and disappear. In the age of abundant media and cyber-communication, cell phone text messages and blogs and discussion boards on the World Wide Web and 2 channel bring very interesting and innovative uses of letters as well as words (e.g., k for OK, for “envious”, kwsk for “in detail”). Furthermore, morpho-phonological rules for word abbreviations (e.g., clipping) such as those discussed in Kubozono (2002) and Mutsukawa (2009) reveal the nature of the language, which has not changed very much.

PART V: Sentence Construction offers various perspectives on sentences, not only related to syntax, but also discourse analyses. The sentence length and the word order of the language bring an interesting challenge to sentence processing theories, e.g., serial vs. parallel processing, incremental vs. delay processing, and memory load (see Nakayama [1999] and Nakayama, Mazuka, and Shirai [2006]). Part V also looks at sentences from the discourse perspective. When phonologically null pronouns are used, when ellipsis occurs, and how the topic of the sentences moves in the discourse, e.g., centering, are all still being investigated in current linguistic theories.

The Japanese Language is a gold mine for those who are studying Japanese linguistics and looking for topics to investigate. Although the book was written more than half a century ago, many characteristics of the language discussed in it have been analyzed in a new light in recent years, and the book remains pertinent in current linguistic theories. This is an indication of how insightful Kindaichi was. I hope those who read The Japanese Language for the first time and those who are reading it again find this book as illuminating and insightful as I have found it to be.

—MINEHARU NAKAYAMA

Professor, Japanese Linguistics

The Ohio State University

Editor, Journal of Japanese Linguistics

References

Haraguchi, S. (1977) The Tone Pattern of Japanese: An Autosegmental Theory of Tonology. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

Kubozono, H. (2002) Shingo-wa kooshite tsukurareru. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Mutsukawa, M. (2009) Japanese Loanword Phonology. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.

Nakayama, M. (1999) Sentence processing. In N. Tsujimura (ed.), The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics. 398–424. Boston: Blackwell.

Nakayama, M. R. Mazuka, and Y. Shirai (eds.) (2006) Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics Vol. 2: Japanese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Osterhout, L. and K. Inoue (2007) What the Brain’s Electrical Activity Can Tell Us about Language Processing and Language Learning. In T. Sakamoto (ed.) Communicating Skills of Intention. 293–309. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.

Shibatani, M. (1990) The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tsujimura, N. (2007) An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Unger, J. M. (2009) The Role of Contact in the Origins of the Japanese and Korean Languages. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Vovin, A. (2009) Koreo-Japonica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin. Center for Korean Studies Monograph. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.