[KS] Grammars of Korean and Japanese

[William Pore]

Re Korean and Japanese similarities

Dear List,

Some years ago my Korean linguistics professor also used to point out 
the similarities in structure between Korean and Japanese (and other 
Altaic languages), but would add that many linguistic parallels can be 
found in a comparison of Korean and American Indian languages (another 
Asian language). His point, I think, was that Korean's only linguistic 
counterpart is not Japanese. 

Will     

----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Mark Mueller <bul2mun at yahoo.com>
Date: Monday, May 30, 2005 1:17 pm
Subject: [KS] Grammars of Korean and Japanese

> Stefan Ewing wrote:
> 
> "It is true, however, that the grammars of Korean and Japanese are 
> remarkably (almost uncannily) similar.  Is this just an accidental
> consequence of their both being agglutinative, SOV
> (subject-object-verb) languages, or does it bespeak of some deeper
> long-distant connection between the two languages' ancestor(s)?  (I
> have no idea, as it's far beyond my area of knowledge.)"
> 
> I've also been amazed at the similarities between the grammars of the
> two languages. I know that this is, on one level, deceptive. Many of
> the modern particles in Japanese (e.g., the object marker -wo) that
> seem to parallel particles in Korean actually evolved from articles
> with completely different functions, as can be verified by looking at
> old texts. 
> 
> One interesting theory I've heard is that Japanese developed from a
> pidgin which had a native vocabulary knitted together with a Goguryeo
> grammar. One problem with this idea is that pidgin's around the world
> tend to look pretty similar and tend to have a shortage of grammatical
> inflections or particles (Swahili and Chinook jargon are good
> examples). Even so, this idea may point in the right direction.
> Historical linguistics may be overly influenced by the example of
> Indo-European--a language family born out of vast conquests. In some
> regions of the world, languages and cultures may have formed more like
> a quilt.
> 
> 
> 
>        	
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