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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear List: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I fear Professor Bentley is being unfair to my colleague
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>CHris Beckwith in his recent posting. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Beckwith actually does not "claim that Japanese is a<BR>Koguryo language"
but that Japanese is genetically<BR>related to Koguryo (more precisely, he says
that the<BR>Japanese-Ryukyuan and Puyo-Koguryoic language families<BR>are
genetically related), which is very far from being<BR>the same thing. Bentley's
remarks about Beckwith's<BR>supposed "lack of knowledge about Japanese
historical<BR>phonology" are uncalled for. It would be sufficient to<BR>say that
Beckwith's views about Japanese historical<BR>phonology are different from
Bentley's, and to argue<BR>specific points to show how Beckwith's forms are
wrong<BR>and Bentley's are right. <BR><BR>Bentley says of Beckwith's etymology
of Japanese _me_<BR>'eye', "It is unclear why this etymology is brought<BR>up,
as he has no Koguryo word for 'eye' in his<BR>database, unless this is simply an
attempt to<BR>ultimately relate Japanese back to Chinese." But<BR>Beckwith's
goal is not unclear, it is openly<BR>proclaimed in the chapter title and the
beginning of<BR>the chapter. His aim is to show that the languages<BR>discussed
share some vocabulary and some other<BR>developments, the aim being to try and
find where the<BR>Proto-Japanese-Koguryoic people might have come from.<BR>He
clarifies the purpose of the etymologies on the<BR>second page of the chapter,
where he says, "The<BR>phonological characteristics of most such
words<BR>indicate they were borrowed into Japanese-Koguryoic<BR>from Chinese and
other languages..." The same applies<BR>to Beckwith's etymology of Japanese _ti_
'blood,<BR>milk', which is in the same chapter. Whether or not<BR>Beckwith's
etymologies are correct may be debatable,<BR>but Bentley claims he _knows_ what
is correct: "The<BR>true etymology of 'eye' would be *ma-i or
perhaps<BR>*ma-Ci." Bentley's discussion is restricted to two<BR>words which are
not evidence of the Japanese-Koguryoic<BR>theory presented in the book (and are
not presented as<BR>such), so he is criticizing Beckwith for trying to
do<BR>something with them that he is not trying to do. How<BR>can they then
cause any 'suspicion' about the book's<BR>goals and conclusions, which are
entirely different? <BR><BR>I know that Beckwith's book is a difficult
read<BR>(especially for a non-linguist), but it is an<BR>important book. It, and
Beckwith, deserve better<BR>treatment,.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Mike Robinson</FONT><BR><BR><BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=TC0JRB1@wpo.cso.niu.edu href="mailto:TC0JRB1@wpo.cso.niu.edu">John
Bentley</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws
href="mailto:Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws">Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:08
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [KS] Languages in
Korea</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Mr. Atkinson brings up an interesting though controversial
question.<BR><BR>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Unfortunately, I don't think there is any one easy
answer. Scholars</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">are generally divided on the question, not because
of the methodology</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">so much as the lack of data on previous historical
polities and</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">the languages spoken by those people.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">This question posed by Mr. Atkinson perhaps needs
to be defined</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">a bit better, as the terminology is part of the
issue. The difference</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">concerns what scholars consider a language and
what they consider</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">a dialect. Leaving politics aside, most scholars
at least pay lip service</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">to the idea that a language is mutually
unintelligible to another, while</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">a dialect differs from another dialect in some
vocabulary or morphology,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">but is still intelligible to speakers of a related
dialect. A dialect is a</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">handy word, because each dialect is thus a part of
the language family.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">This is a helpful tool for national unity and what
not. This basic</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">definition of language and dialect, however, would
turn many European </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">*languages* into mere dialects, while many
dialects in China would </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">now become full-blown languages. And there's
your problem.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">In Japan linguists call the Ryukyuan languages
dialects, even though</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">these are unintelligible to any mainland Japanese
speaker. In fact,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">as a Ryukyuanist, I believe there are at least
four 'languages' in the</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Ryukyus. But the term 'language' implies
nationality, and that opens </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">up a can of worms, so people agree to call
Ryukyuan a set of dialects.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">I am not sure where Mr. Atkinson's friend came up
with the number</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">six, but if we stick to a basic linguistic
definition of language, we</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">may be able to claim anywhere from five to twenty
languages on the</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">peninsula during the three kingdom period. The
problem is that some</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">who make claims about what language was what on
the peninsula </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">are not being completely open and honest, as we
have no written records </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">*in the languages* of Paekche, Koguryo, Kaya
(Kara), Silla, or peninsular Wa. </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">So how do they know? I have written about the
language of Paekche, and </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">have provided information and etymology for
roughly 80 words from the </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Paekche corpus (Bentley, New Look at Paekche
Korean: data from Nihon</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">shoki, Language Research (Ohak yon'gu), vol. 36.2,
417-443). But we have </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">very little surviving data on morphology or syntax
or other data that would help</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">us see Paekche as a language, and not merely a
list of words. My own work</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">has suggested that Paekche and Silla were related
'languages', but that</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">is simply a scholarly hypothesis, not a fact. I
don't go around claiming that</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">this is proven.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Lately Chris Beckwith has come out with a very
provocative book titled,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Koguryo: the language of Japan's continental
relatives (Brill 2004). It is</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">not my intention to review the book here, but
suffice it to say this</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">relationship (the claim that Japanese is a Koguryo
language) is based</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">on the tenuous comparison of about 140 Koguryo
etyma. To me this is like</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">looking at the skin of an elephant through a
microscope and trying to</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">guess what the animal is. It is not impossible,
mind you, just highly</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">difficult, and requires great skill.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Just to give one reservation I have with
Beckwith's work: it bothers me</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">to see his lack of knowledge about Japanese
historical phonology (which </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">forms half of this theory). Let me give just two
examples. Beckwith </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">reconstructs Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan 'eye' as
*mika or *miak (2004:157-58).</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">This is based *entirely* on the Hateruma island
word miN (N is a velar nasal) 'eye'. </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">He sees the velar nasal going back to a velar -k.
This is then compared with Old </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Chinese *mek 'eye' and Old Tibetan myig 'eye'.
Gary Oyler, in 1997, did an MA</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">thesis on the problem of -N in Hateruma, and
concluded that the -N is secondary.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">It only occurs word finally, and there is no
pattern to which words have the N and</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">which do not. It is completely random. My own work
has found this same phenomenon </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">in Yonaguni, an island not far from Hateruma, but
the N is attached to different </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">nouns than those in Hateruma (so the development
of this nasal was independent</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">on the two islands). This velar nasal is
simply a relic of morphology that the speakers </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">have reanalyzed as part of the noun, kind of
like American speakers spelling hafta</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">(< have to), where they treat two original
words as one. It *cannot* be reconstructed </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">as part of the proto-form. The true etymology of
'eye' would be *ma-i or perhaps *ma-Ci. </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">So Beckwith also has the vowels wrong. This
destroys the comparison with Chinese</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">and Tibetan. It is unclear why this etymology is
brought up, as he has no Koguryo </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">word for 'eye' in his database, unless this is
simply an attempt to ultimately relate</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Japanese back to Chinese.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Another problem is his grouping of homonyms.
He reconstructs a Proto-Japanese </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">form *tiu 'liquid' based on ti 'blood, milk'
(2004:154). The accent for ti 'blood' and </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">ti 'milk' are different, so I seriously doubt
these two words have a common etymology.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Also internal reconstruction suggests that
'blood' may go back to *to-i, while 'milk' goes </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">back to an earlier *tu-i (cf. Sam Martin's
Japanese Language Through Time, Yale Univ.,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">1987:545). Again, Beckwith provides this etymology
to make a connection with</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Chinese, but as all his Chinese cognates have /i/
as the nuclear vowel, these etymologies </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">also must be rejected.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Thus, if Beckwith's grasp of Japanese historical
phonology has serious weaknesses,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">then I am suspicious of his other conclusions.
This does not mean his theory is wrong, </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">mind you, but it has not solved the problem,
in my opinion. I know others have claimed</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">that Koguryo and Japanese may be related, and I do
not intend to refute that claim. All </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">I want is for the work to be well-grounded in the
historical linguistic methodology </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">(as well as phonology), and take account of what
we already know about Japanese </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">historical phonology and its development. It is
sad there are so many who really do not </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">understand the languages of Ryukyuan (but quote
etyma from these languages as</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">proof of X or Y), as these hold the key, I
believe, to helping us better understand</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">the relationship of Japonic (Japanese and
Ryukyuan) to its neighbors.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">In the end, Mr. Atkinson should ask his friend who
the source of this claim</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">about a) the peninsula had six languages, and b)
one migrated to Japan is.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">We should remember that while Chinese and
peninsular records talk about</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">the Wa, we do not even know what language the Wa
spoke. It could have</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">been Ryukyuan, or Western Japanese, Eastern
Japanese, or Central Japanese.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Or it could have been a language that eventually
died out. There are so many yet-to-be-</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">answered questions regarding this thorny debate.
But that is probably what makes</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">it so popular as a topic of dicussion.</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Best,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">John R. Bentley</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Northern Illinois
University</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>