Japanese/Korean/Tungus

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

Since I have been addressed in Sasha Vovin's posting, let me throw in a few
remarks. Basically, Sasha, this time, I'm on your side, I have no quarrel
with the notion that Japanese and Korean are related (and there might be a
relationship with Tungus after all). Your Diachronica paper helped much to
form my opinion on this, since there you managed to show morphological
evidence, just the thing which - as you correctly observe - I want to see.
(A note of caution though: I'm not an expert on neither Korean nor
Japanese, so my readiness to accept their relationship *might* have
something to do with that very fact ;-)  ...).
No, your list is impressive, but some points, I think, will have to be
clarified before you can win over most of the skeptics:
 
For Japanese you list such forms as (I believe the unasterisked forms
represent attested Old Japanese):
 
-ey < *(a)Ci< *(a)gi  (to be compared with Korean -Gi etc.)[in Diachronica
XI you give it without the bracketed initial *a, what does that mean ?]
-u < *-wi < *-bi        (to be compared with Korean * -bi, Tungus *-bi
etc.), and some minor cases where the actually compared form on the
Japanese side is a reconstruct.
 
Could you please help to clarify for us non-Japanologists, how the
proto-Japanese reconstructs are arrived at ? In all possible brevity, of
course, i.e. are there divergent dialects (old or new) which prompt them,
has Ryukyuan something to do with them, are there compelling structural
reasons which make them inevitable or what is it ? Of course it will be
difficult for us to form an opinion about those forms, without knowing the
reasons for those reconstructs. What I'm especially after is, of course,
the question:  Would they look exactly like that in a  - hypothetical -
world, where we would know nothing about Korean or Tungus ?
Please, Sasha, note that I'm not doubting that exactly this is the case, I
know that you share my views on keeping internal and external evidence
strictly apart (in other words: that you are no Ruhlenist !), I'd just like
to be sure, that's all.
While I'm at it, let me add a few observations on the Tungus in your list.
First, I think you were a little bit too pessimistic on Jurchen, since at
least some of the markers in your list can indeed be found in Jurchen texts
(the -me converb and the -ha verbal noun at least).
I'm not so happy with *-gi "causative relic" and your Manchu example. Why
don't you cite straightforwardly Evenki -gi: (with a long vowel, which is
probably  of proto-Tung. status) 'transitivizer' ? It does the job much
better, since the Manchu verb algi- you give doesn't mean "let know" at
all, but rather "to become or be known, famous", rather an
intransitive/anticausative formation to the root found in ala- "to report,
say".
The proto-Tungus negative marker (an independent particle in all
probability) is given in Diachronica XI, by you as *aana (a:na, with a long
vowel), I think that reconstruction is the one which should be preferred,
since Evenki a:chin 'not, yok' seems not to leave another choice. Btw., do
you have any idea about those obscure elements as Manchu -kU or Evenki (and
other Tungus lgs.) -chi(n) here ?  In the same Diachronica paper you give
the MK (Middle Korean ?) equivalent as /ani/, here as an(h); which is
correct ?
 
On the correspondence pattern:
-kyi < *-ki                MK -e/-a ?< *Ga/Ge      Manchu xa/xe/xo < *kV
retrospective              perfective              perfective
 
you give in Diachronica XI (*if* this is the same cognate set, I may of
course be totally wrong here),
 
as equivalent to Manchu -ha/-he/-ho < -*kV a Japanese "past marker" *-iki :
is this the same thing as "retrospective -kyi < *-ki"? In the same list you
give as MK (unasterisked, therefore attested ?) -ke-, here -e/-a ?< *Ga/Ge,
could you please clarify what is actually attested, what is reconstructed
and on what reasons ?
 
On the cognate set
-te- < *-ta-Ci-            -te-/ta-                ----
perfective                 perfective
 
we read in Diachronica XI: Jap. *-ita-Ci-, MK -te- (and Tungus *-taa-,
which I don't know well, there seem to be several dental suffixes you could
have in mind, would you mind giving an example ?). Again, which is the
state-of-the-art ?
 
Furthermore, is the MK "realis participle" -(V)n the same thing as the
*-na- suffix from Diachronica XI, which is there compared with Jap. *-in-
"perfective" ?
The "tentative/volitive" suffix from your posting (Jap. -ama-, Tung. -Vme-)
looks in your paper again a little bit differently: Jap. *-am- (OK, I
think, the latter is the reconstruct, whereas the former the attested form,
or ???) and Tung. *-m-. I'm not too familiar with that latter suffix, so
one or two examples might help a bit.
 
OK, this has become a long wish-list, most questions answer themselves for
any specialist, I'm pretty sure. But, Sasha, you have been asked to present
the nutshell evidence for the relationship, which has been doubted on this
list. Since Japanese and Korean are two major literary languages of this
planet, which *all* we non-specialists would like to know more about, I
think my questions are justified, for, if I'm going to answer the questions
of students about the genetic situation in North-East Asia I'd like to know
exactly what I'm talking about. Just imagine, if I tell a student, who
actually *knows* Japanese and Korean (synchronically): "related, and
demonstrably so !" and then begin to write "evidence" on the blackboard
which mixes attested and reconstructed forms and stuff like that, the
damage done to comparative Japanese-Korean studies might be bigger than if
I just said "isolates" or (which would in my case of course the most
appropriate thing to say) "don't know".
 
Hope, I'm not asking you too much (you may have indeed better things to do
than answering silly questions like these !), maybe the issues are of
interest not only to me alone, best wishes, i - kak vsegda - vsego
luchshego,
 
 
 
 
 
Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel/Fax +49-228-691332+