"Professor Alexander V. Vovin's fruitful research has brought incomparable results to the fields of Asian linguistics and philology throughout the past four decades. In this volume, presented in honour of Professor Vovin's 60th birthday, twenty-two authors present new research regarding Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Khitan, Yakut, Mongolian, Chinese, Hachijō, Ikema Miyakoan, Ainu, Okinawan, Nivkh, Eskimo-Aleut and other languages. The chapters are both a tribute to his research and a summary of the latest developments in the field"--

This volume is a tribute to Professor Vovin’s research and a summary of the latest developments in his fields of expertise.

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.

This volume will be the first full-length exploration in any language of the details of the history of the Japanese language written by experts in the different subfields of linguistics. Overall, while including factual and background information, the volume will focus on presenting original research of lasting value. This includes presenting the latest research on better studied topics, such as segmental phonology, accent or focus constructions, as well as both introducing areas of study which have traditionally been underrepresented, such as syntax or kanbun materials, and showing how they contribute to a fuller understanding of all of the history of Japanese. Chapter titles Introduction Part I: Individual Periods of the Japanese Language Section 1: Prehistory and Reconstruction Chapter 1: Comparison with other languages (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 2: Reconstruction based on external sources: Ainu, Chinese dynastic histories, and Korean chronicles (Alexander Vovin, University of Hawai'i at Manoa) Chapter 3: Reconstruction from the standpoint of Ryukyuan (Thomas Pellard, CNRS) Chapter 4: (Morpho)phonological reconstruction (Teruhiro Hayata) Chapter 5: Morpho(phono)logical reconstruction (Bjarke Frellesvig, University of Oxford) Chapter 6: Towards the accentual reconstruction of Japanese (Akiko Matsumori, NINJAL) Section II: Old Japanese Chapter 7: Word order and alignment (Yuko Yanagida, University of Tsukuba) Chapter 8: What mokkan can tell us about Old and pre-Old Japanese (Takashi Inukai, Aichi Prefectural University) Chapter 9: Eastern Old Japanese (Kerri Russell) Section III: Early Middle Japanese Chapter 10: Morphosyntax (Yoshiyuki Takayama, Fukui University) Chapter 11: Varieties of kakarimusubi in Early Middle Japanese (Charles Quinn, The Ohio State University) Chapter 12: Linguistic variation (Takuya Okimori) Section IV: Late Middle Japanese Chapter 13: The morphosyntax of Late Middle Japanese (Hirofumi Aoki, Kyushu University) Chapter 14: Late Middle Japanese phonology, based on Korean materials (Sven Osterkamp, Bochum University) Chapter 15: Phonology, based on Christian materials (Masayuki Toyoshima) Section V: Modern Japan Chapter 16: The social context of materials on Early Modern Japanese (Michinao Morohoshi, Kokugakuin University) Chapter 17: Meiji language, including what sound recordings can tell us (Yasuyuki Shimizu) Chapter 18: Syntactic influence of European languages on Japanese (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Part II: Materials and Writing Section VI: Writing Chapter 19: Old and Early Middle Japanese writing (James Unger, The Ohio State University) Chapter 20: The continued use of kanji in writing Japanese (Shinji Konno, Seisen University) Chapter 21: History of indigenous innovations in kanji and kanji usage [particularly: kokuji and wasei kango] (Yoshihiko Inui) Chapter 22: From hentai kanbun to sorobun (Tsutomu Yada) Section VII: Kanbun-based Materials Chapter 23: Kunten texts of Buddhist provenance (Masayuki Tsukimoto, Tokyo University) Chapter 24: Kunten Texts of Secular Chinese Provenance (Teiji Kosukegawa) Chapter 25: Vernacularized written Chinese (waka kanbun) (Shingo Yamamoto, Shirayuri Women's University) Chapter 26: Early modern kanbun and kanbun kundoku (Fumitoshi Saito, Nagoya University) Chapter 27: A comparison of glossing traditions in Japan and Korea (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 28: Influence of kanbun-kundoku on Japanese (Valerio Alberizzi, Waseda University) Part III: Broader Changes over Time Section VIII: Lexis/Pragmatics Chapter 29: History of basic vocabulary (John Bentley, University of Northern Illinois) Chapter 30: History of Sino-Japanese vocabulary (Seiya Abe and Akihiro Okajima) Chapter 31: The history of mimetics in Japanese (Masahiro Ono, Meiji University) Chapter 32: The history of honorifics and polite language (Yukiko Moriyama, Doshisha University) Chapter 33: History of demonstratives and pronouns (Tomoko Okazaki) Chapter 34: History of yakuwarigo (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Chapter 35: 'Subject-Object Merger' and 'Subject-Object Opposition' as the speaker's stance: 'Subjective Construal' as 'a fashion of speaking' for Japanese speakers (Yoshihiko Ikegami, University of Tokyo) Section IX: Phonology Chapter 36: Syllable structure, phonological typology, and outstanding issues in the chronology of sound changes (Bjarke Frellesvig, Sven Osterkamp and John Whitman Chapter 37: Sino-Japanese (Marc Miyake) Chapter 38: Development of accent, based on historical sources, Heian period onwards: The formation of Ibuki-jima accent (Makoto Yanaike, Keio University) Chapter 39: The Ramsey hypothesis (Elisabeth De Boer) Section X: Syntax Chapter 40: Generative diachronic syntax of Japanese (John Whitman, NINJAL) Chapter 41: On the merger of the conclusive/adnominal distinction (Satoshi Kinsui, Osaka University) Chapter 42: Development of case marking (Takashi Nomura, University of Tokyo) Chapter 43: Loss of Wh movement (Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo) Chapter 44: Development of delimiter/semantic particles (Tomohide Kinuhata) Chapter 45: Electronic corpora as a tool for investigating syntactic change (Yasuhiro Kondo, Aoyama Gakuin/NINJAL) Part IV: The History of Research on Japan Chapter 46: Early Japanese dictionaries (Shoju Ikeda, Hokkaido University) Chapter 47: The great dictionary of Japanese: Vocabulario ... (Toru Maruyama, Nanzan University) Chapter 48: Pre-Meiji research on Japanese (Toru Kuginuki) Chapter 49: Meiji period research on Japanese (Isao Santo)

The Studies in Japanese and Korean Historical and Theoretical Linguistics and Beyond presented in honour of Prof. John B. Whitman includes contributions by a range of mid-generation to senior scholars among his closest colleagues and collaborators representing the front line of contemporary research in the areas of historical and theoretical linguistics of Japanese and Korean as well of Chinese, Turkish, and Russian. Particularly, in all these areas it deals with still ongoing debates about the important issues in historical and theoretical linguistics concerning these languages that are reflected in articles often representing opposing points of view. This book can serve as a good introduction to the current state-of-art and the most essential problems in the fields it covers.

Routledge Handbook of East Asian Translation showcases new research and developments in translation studies within the East Asian context. This handbook draws attention to the diversity of scholarship on translation in East Asia, and its relevance to a variety of established and emerging fields. It focuses on hitherto less-explored interactions, such as intra-Asian translation encounters, translation of minority languages, and translation between East Asian and non-European languages, while also contributing to a thriving body of historical scholarship on East Asian translation traditions. Contributions reflect a growing awareness of the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity within nations, and the reality of multilingualism and plurilingualism among many communities in East Asia. A wide variety of translatorial practices are discussed, including the creative use of Chinese in Japanese-language novels, the use of translation to evade censorship online, community theatre translation, and translation of picture books. The volume also includes contributions by practitioners, who reflect on their experiences of translation and of developing training programmes for community interpreters. This handbook will appeal to researchers and students of translation and interpreting studies. Chapters are likely to be of value to those working, not only in East Asian studies, but also disciplines such as literary studies, global cultural studies, and LGBT+ studies.

Azuma Old Japanese is an areal term for the two major dialects of Eastern (‘Azuma’) Japan during the eighth century: Eastern Old Japanese and Töpo-Suruga Old Japanese. This volume is an exhaustive, comparative reference grammar based on the linguistic data contained in the Man’yōshū poetic anthology (759 CE). It contains chapters dedicated to the different lexical categories, the lexicon, the phonology, and the historical development. This volume serves to fill the last remaining gap in English language scholarship on the grammar of premodern Japanese dialects, and significantly contributes to our understanding of the historical development of the earliest attested Japanese dialects. It also contains an extensive reconstruction of Proto-Japanese.

In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. In Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated methods of script adaptation. This comparative study reveals the universal principles at work in the borrowing of logographic scripts. By analyzing and explaining these principles, Handel advances our understanding of how early writing systems have functioned and spread, providing a new framework that can be applied to the history of scripts beyond East Asia, such as Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform.

This conference volume unites a wide range of scholars working in the fields of history, archaeology, religion, art, and philology in an effort to explore new perspectives and methods in the study of primary sources from premodern South and Southeast Asia. The contributions engage with primary sources (including texts, images, material artefacts, monuments, as well as archaeological sites and landscapes) and draw needed attention to highly adaptable, innovative, and dynamic modes of cultural production within traditional idioms. The volume works to develop categories of historical analysis that cross disciplinary boundaries and represent a wide variety of methodological concerns. By revisiting premodern sources, Asia Beyond Boundaries also addresses critical issues of temporality and periodization that attend established categories in Asian Studies, such as the “Classical Age” or the “Gupta Period”. This volume represents the culmination of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project Asia Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State, a research consortium of the British Museum, the British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies, in partnership with Leiden University.