<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>This is interesting. This study used a computer model based on words "known to change very slowly", which is appropriate, I think. However, I wonder if these models allowed for possible borrowing. True, it's not likely that these kinds of words would be borrowed, but it's not impossible, either.<BR></DIV>
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<B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp@gmail.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> lp <lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Wed, May 4, 2011 10:15:32 AM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> [lg policy] Finding on Dialects Casts New Light on the Origins of the Japanese People<BR></FONT><BR>May 4, 2011<BR><BR>Finding on Dialects Casts New Light on the Origins of the Japanese People<BR>By NICHOLAS WADE<BR><BR>Researchers studying the various dialects of Japanese have concluded<BR>that all are descended from a founding language taken to the Japanese<BR>islands about 2,200 years ago. The finding sheds new light on the<BR>origin of the Japanese people, suggesting that their language is<BR>descended from that of the rice-growing farmers who arrived in Japan<BR>from the Korean Peninsula, and not from the
hunter-gatherers who first<BR>inhabited the islands some 30,000 years ago.<BR><BR>The result provides support for a wider picture, controversial among<BR>linguists, that the distribution of many language families today<BR>reflects the spread of agriculture in the distant past when farming<BR>populations, carrying their languages with them, grew in numbers and<BR>expanded at the expense of hunter-gatherers. Under this theory, the<BR>Indo-European family of languages, which includes English, was spread<BR>by the first farmers who expanded into Europe from the Middle East<BR>some 8,000 years ago, largely replacing the existing population of<BR>hunter-gatherers.<BR><BR>In the case of Japan, archaeologists have found evidence for two waves<BR>of migrants, a hunter-gatherer people who created the Jomon culture<BR>and wet rice farmers who left remains known as the Yayoi culture. The<BR>Jomon people arrived in Japan before the end of the last ice age,
via<BR>land bridges that joined Japan to Asia’s mainland. They fended off<BR>invaders until about 2,400 years ago when the wet rice agriculture<BR>developed in southern China was adapted to Korea’s colder climate.<BR><BR>Several languages seem to have been spoken on the Korean Peninsula at<BR>this time, and that of the Yayoi people is unknown. The work of two<BR>researchers at the University of Tokyo, Sean Lee and Toshikazu<BR>Hasegawa, now suggests that the origin of Japonic — the language<BR>family that includes Japanese and Ryukyuan, spoken in the Ryukyu<BR>island chain south of Japan — coincides with the arrival of the Yayoi.<BR><BR>The finding, if confirmed, indicates that the Yayoi people took<BR>Japonic to Japan, but leaves unresolved the question of where in Asia<BR>the Yayoi culture or Japonic language originated before arriving in<BR>the Korean Peninsula.<BR><BR>Mr. Lee is a graduate student studying language and the mind, not
a<BR>historical linguist. He has used a statistical tree-drawing method<BR>that other biologists have applied successfully to language origins,<BR>despite some linguists’ skepticism. The method, called Bayesian<BR>phylogeny, depends on having a computer draw a large number of<BR>possible trees and sampling them to find the most probable. Each<BR>language is represented by a 200-word vocabulary composed of words<BR>known to change very slowly.<BR><BR>If any fork in the tree can be linked to a historical event, all the<BR>other branch points can be dated. In this case, Mr. Lee knew dates for<BR>Old Japanese, Middle Japanese, and the split between the Kyoto and<BR>Tokyo dialects that began in 1603 A.D. when the capital was moved from<BR>Kyoto to Edo, the early name for Tokyo.<BR><BR>Mr. Lee reasoned that Japanese would have originated with the Jomon if<BR>the root of the tree turned out to be very ancient, but with the Yayoi<BR>culture if recent. The
computer’s date of 2,182 years ago for the<BR>origin of the tree fits reasonably well with the archaeological dates<BR>for the Yayoi culture, he reported Tuesday in The Proceedings of the<BR>Royal Society.<BR><BR>John B. Whitman, an expert on Japanese linguistics who works at the<BR>National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, in Tokyo,<BR>and at Cornell University, called the new finding “solid and<BR>reasonable,” although the date of the Yayoi culture, he said, has now<BR>been pushed back to around 3,000 years after a recalibration of<BR>radiocarbon dates. That would open an 800-year gap with Mr. Lee’s date<BR>but not necessarily change his conclusion.<BR><BR>The question of Japanese origins has had political consequences, with<BR>the link to the Yayoi culture having been invoked to justify the<BR>annexation of Korea and Manchuria before World War II. After the war,<BR>the link with the Jomon culture was emphasized.<BR><BR>Quentin
Atkinson, an expert on language phylogeny at the University of<BR>Auckland, in New Zealand, said that Mr. Lee’s time scale was plausible<BR>but that if Japonic had spread through an agriculturally driven<BR>population expansion, his language tree should be much bushier at its<BR>root. Mr. Lee said that such earlier versions of Japanese might have<BR>disappeared when the island was politically unified about 1,000 years<BR>ago.<BR><BR>Genetic studies have suggested interbreeding between the Yayoi and<BR>Jomon people, with the Jomon contribution to modern Japanese being as<BR>much as 40 percent. Apparently the Yayoi language prevailed, along<BR>with the agricultural technology.<BR><BR>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/science/04language.html?ref=science<BR><BR><BR>-- <BR>**************************************<BR>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to<BR>its members<BR>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement
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