Talk:Languages of East Asia

Sprachbund

Sprachbund is a reasonably good fit for the areal features including Southeast Asia in the second section, but not so much for the CJKV shared features. The word usually refers to convergent speech features whose evolution is not historically documented. The CJKV shared heritage was spread as writing not speech (in fact, a lot of it is not a good match to the target languages' speech) and the process is well documented. It is closely analogous to the spread of Latinate words to non-Romance European languages, or the spread of Greek-based vocabulary to all European languages, but nobody refers to the languages with substantial Latinate vocabulary as forming a Sprachbund.--JWB

Tonogenesis

I believe the original analysis of tonogenesis, which led to a similar analysis for Chinese, was performed on Vietnamese. Bathrobe 05:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, added, please feel free to correct or add further.--JWB 17:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, JWB

Thanks for the quick catch about my mistaken inclusion of Japanese (my last edit); I had been looking at the prior version of that text which had "East and Southeast Asian languages" instead of "Chinese and Southeast Asian languages". But is Korean very inflecting? --Dpr 03:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yup, Korean is very similar grammatically to Japanese, not so similar in (non-Sino) vocabulary.--JWB 03:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Chinese pronouns

Chinese is an exception, having stable 1st/2nd/3rd person pronouns that can be traced back thousands of years to Proto-Sino-Tibetan and are used to refer to all sorts of people, even more so since the decay of traditional respect language. I understand what you're trying to say, but isn't this only somewhat true, since there has indeed been a profusion of Chinese pronouns (many now unused) over time: e.g. 伊, 吾, 其, 之 (not even counting modern topolects and languages.) --Dpr 04:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe 吾 and 我 are thought to originally be two forms (nominative and accusative) of the same pronoun. I don't recall offhand the relations (if any) of the other pronouns you mention. Pronoun consonants are also cited as evidence for Dene-Caucasian languages in the late Sergei Starostin's OLD CHINESE BASIC VOCABULARY: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE which has sections on some pronouns:

14. I - OC has two roots for the 1st p. pronoun:

a) 我 MC ŋâ, OC *ŋhājʔ (*ŋh- is indicated by Min forms: Chaozhou ua3, Jianou ŋuoi8). This is the most common ST 1st p. pronoun (reconstructed as *ŋā or *ŋāj, the two forms probably reflecting original paradigmatic distinctions): cf. Tib. ŋa, Burm. ŋa, Kach. ŋai, Kiranti *ʔo-ŋ, *ŋa etc.; see IST 36, 62, 123, 429; STC No 285 *ŋay, No 406 *ŋa. The root has the closest parallel in Yenisseian, where *-ŋ is the regular ending of the 1st p. singular object in verbs; in initial position *ŋ-, as well as other nasal resonants, was prohibited in Proto-Yenisseian and changed to *m- > *b- (serving as a prefixed object marker or possessive affix of the 1st p.). Traces of this root in Caucasian can be perhaps observed in the Lak-Dargwa area (Lak. na, Darg. nu 'I' < PEC *n, see NCED 855). The Yenisseian languages have preserved the distinction between suppletive forms *ʔaʒV 'I' (nominative stem: PY *ʔaʒ > Ket. āt, Kott. ai, Pump. ad): *ŋV- 'me, mine' (oblique stem: PY *b-/*-ŋ > Ket. b-, Kott. b-/-ŋ) (just like they have preserved the similar opposition *ʔaw : *k- in the 2nd person). North Caucasian languages have generalized the former form (as PNC *zō 'I': Chech. so, Av. du-n, Lezg. zu-n, Abkh. sa- etc., see NCED 1084), while the Sino-Tibetan languages generalized the latter.

b) 予 MC jö, OC *la 'I, we'. The semantic difference between 我 and 予 is still unclear. Both pronouns occur in the oldest texts; although S. Y. Yakhontov considers the former inclusive, and the latter exclusive, it can hardly be proved by actual examples, and a distinction like this is rather strange in a language that does not normally distinguish number. The root has no apparent parallels in other Sino-Tibetan languages. It can, however, be a trace of the former number distinction within the system of personal pronouns. If the original meaning of the root is 'we', it can be compared with PNC (PEC) *Lǟ 'we (1st p. pl. inclusive), cf. Akhv. iƛ:i 'we' (incl.), Tsez. eli 'we', Rut. jä 'we' (incl.) etc. (see NCED 786).

26. this. OC had a whole set of demonstrative pronouns, whose meanings can be more or less precisely expressed as 'this'. are:

a) 此 MC chjé, OC *ćhejʔ = Tib. će-s 'so, thus' (PST *hĕj). Further etymology of the root is unclear.

b) 斯 MC sje, OC *se. The ST root is probably *šĕ or *šĭ, occurring with various suffixes: cf. Kach. ši33 'he, she, it', ši-ŋ31 in this way', Burm. sań 'this, that', səwʔ 'this', su 'he, she', Lush. so 'that', Tib. śo-s 'the other'. The root can be probably compared with PEC *źwV, reflected in Tsez. žo 'this', Khin. sä 'that', Darg. i-š 'this' - although root is not widespread and can be related to a nominal stem meaning 'thing' (cf. Av. žo, Lak. za), see NCED 1087-1088.

c) 是 MC é, OC *deʔ 'this is', 時 MC ɨ, OC *də 'this' (cf. also 之 MC ćɨ, OC *tə 'him, her, it', functioning as an object). The ST root is *tĕ or *t, also occurring with different suffixes: cf. Tib. do 'this', de 'that', Burm. thəw 'this', Lush. tiʔ 'that', Kach. dai33 'this, that' etc. (see IST 133, STC No 21 *day). The root can be directly compared with PNC *dV- 'that, this': Chech. dʕā, Av. do- 'that', Tsez. je-da 'this', Tab. du- 'that', Abkh. -da 'a deictic stem (that, there)' etc., see NCED 404-405. The Yenisseian parallel is PY *tu- 'this' (Ket. tu-, Yug. tu- 'this', Ar. ita-ŋ 'they'). See HGC 22. We must note that while the ST and PY root basically denote 'this' (near deixis), PNC *dV- was probably a far deixis pronoun ('that').

d) 伊 MC ʔji, OC *ʔij < PST *ʔĭ, cf. Burm. ʔi, Lush. i 'this'. The pronoun *ʔi is well known in NC languages: Chech. i-, Tsez. je-, Darg. i-, Lezg. i, Ub. jə- 'this' etc. (see NCED 214-215). We should make a general note that most deictic morphemes are quite universal, and it is generally rather easy to find probable cognates. Thus, in Indo-European we may find *so- 'that' (cf. PST *šĕ, PNC *źwV), *to- 'this, that' (cf. PST *tĕ / *t, PNC *dV, PY *tu-), *e-/*i- 'this, a deictic stem' (cf. PST *ʔĭ, PNC *ʔi). Similar morphemes can be found in a great many linguistic families, so this material must be used with caution. Similarly, in Proto-Austronesian we find the following two basic pronouns meaning 'this': a) (VL) *'ini', (PANDYMC) *ʔiníʔ (compared by P. Benedict in AT 408 with PT *ni/nay 'this'); b) (VL) *'i[t]u', (PANDYMC) *ʔitu(h) (compared in AT 406 with PT *(n)tu 'they, that'). It is certainly possible to compare *ʔi-, occurring in both of these pronouns, with PST *ʔi- and *-tu(h) - with PST *tĕ / *t. This must be, indeed, a common heritage reflecting a very archaic relationship (see below). [L. Sagart (CA 45) cites PAN *idi 'that, there' for OC 時 *də, and PAN *ati 'there (distant) for OC 之 *tə. What we said above, however, is true also for these pronominal stems.]

27. thou - 爾 MC ńé, OC *nhejʔ (for *nh- cf. the archaic form in Jianou, ni8). OC also has 汝 *nhaʔ (MC ńö) 'thou' and some other forms in *nh- probably reflecting original paradigmatic distinctions. The root is no doubt related to the basic ST 2d person pronoun *naŋ (cf. also 戎 *nhuŋ 'you, your' in OC). A direct descendant of the form with *-ŋ is perhaps OC 乃 *nhʔ < *nhŋʔ 'your' (the final *-ŋʔ is not allowed in OC, while xiesheng points to *-ŋ in the series). Cf. Burm. naŋ, Lush. naŋ, Kach. naŋ33 'thou, you' etc. (see IST 38, 118, 410, 430; STC No 407 *naŋ). The PST 2d person pronoun *nă / *năŋ does not have reliable external parallels (unless, of course, we start comparing it with demonstrative pronouns - which, in my opinion, is absolutely inadmissible; therefore, L. Sagart's (CA 23) comparison of OC *nhaʔ with PAN *ina(q) 'that, there' can not be taken seriously). The archaic paradigm of the suppletive 2d person pronoun must have been *uV (direct stem, nominative) : *K(w)V (oblique stem), cf. PY *ʔaw (direct stem) : *ku- (possessive stem, marker of the 2d p. object). In PNC we have *uō : *ʁwV with a similar distribution. Some Tibeto-Burman languages, indeed, have preserved *K(ₙ)V- in the 2d person: cf. Tib. khji-d, khjo-d 'thou, you', Burm. kwaj 'you', kha-ŋ id., Gurung kjàŋ 'thou'. But the original *uV- vanished completely, being replaced by *nă of unclear origin. Proto-Austronesian has (VL) *kav, (Capell) *kaw 'thou'; however similar, it certainly can not be compared with Tibeto- Burman (and North Caucasian / Yenisseian) *KₙV- - because, as we said above, initial *k- here is a general marker of all personal pronouns. The second part, *-aw, may be perhaps compared with Sino-Caucasian (not Sino-Tibetan!) *uV, but the matter still needs further investigation.

(end Starostin quotes) --JWB 04:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Topic-comment construction

Can someone come up with (1) a better Japanese example of Topic-Comment and (2) a non-Japanese (and preferably non-Korean) example of the same thing? I have no doubt that Chinese and other languages have something like this, but how 'unique' is it, and how much real similarity is there among these languages in this respect? Bathrobe 15:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Chinese is pretty much the same, except there is no particle delimiting the topic. Sometimes there is a pause. It's a common pattern, but you probably know Chinese better than I do and can judge the frequency. --JWB 17:29, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Topic-prominent language has Chinese examples and Talk:Linguistic typology has discussion of topic-comment in Chinese.

Some colloquial English sentence structures could be topic-comment, but it's much less common. Y. R. Chao (1968:69-70): 'The grammatical meaning of subject and predicate in a Chinese sentence is topic and comment, rather than actor and action. Actor and action can apply as a particular case of topic and comment . . . but in Chinese, the proportion of applicability of the actor-action meanings . . . is still very low, perhaps not much higher than 50 per cent, and the wider conception of topic and comment is much more appropriate. --JWB 04:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Software for the V part in CJKV

there is major software available now for Chu Nom (the Vietnamese vernacular script), and I'm not sure if it existed at the last time this page was edited. Anyone want to expand? --75.18.124.158

Looks like there is some software coverage at Chu Nom. This article (East Asian languages) is not primarily about details of Chinese-style writing systems or software. --JWB 16:37, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Confusion

I don't understand this article for a few reasons. It should be written for the general public.

1. Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese/Korean are in different language groups, so what is the purpose of this article? It doesn't show that they are actually related to each other.

• REPLY: "Relatedness" in the genetic linguistic sense is overrated (and often used by ethnocentric/racist amateurs for their own agendas). This is particularly true for the case on Altaic languages, where much of the supposed genetic link is based upon a dozen or so arbitrarily chosen "common" words. The reality is that Chinese and Japanese share 50% of their vocabulary, in addition to sharing a very literary script. The two languages may not be genetically related, but there is still a very significant linguistic relationship (in the sense of Sprachbund) between Chinese and Japanese that have developed over two millennia through convergence. Two of the most obvious points is the topic-comment sentence organization shared between Chinese and Japanese, and the big-to-small ordering of the genitive. --Naus 21:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

2. Japanese and Korean are related to Turkish, Finish? and Hungarian. They are influenced by Chinese by association of geographic area, I entirely get that. But that's no different from the SW US using more Spanish words in the English language

• REPLY: There is absolutely no consensus that Japanese or Korean is linguistically (genetic) related to Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian. There is no consensus either that the Korean language is genetically related to the Japanese. --Naus 21:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

3. Since the language groups are different, then what is this article trying to prove or achieve?

For an example, English is Germanic, but has a heavy influence from Latinate languages and then French while Latinate, also has influence from an earlier influx of people... If you are trying to say that Chinese, or some language group has a large influence on other language groups, then it should be made clear through morphology.

Like Toilet has a matching word in french is a slightly different meaning. Le toilet, which means closer to toiletry...

So I think this article needs some clarity to it. I'm not quite sure it's trying to say since it seems to be more arguing that CJKV are different languages, but then at the top says that they influence and relate to each other... please clear it up.--Hitsuji Kinno 01:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

To address your points, the purpose of the article is to show that even though the languages aren't genetically related to each other, they still share areal features due to a Sprachbund effect. I'll try to make it clearer in the article. —Umofomia 09:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Bengali

While it would seem unlikely that Bengali, an Indo-European language of the Indian Subcontinent, could be considered part of the East Asian sprachbund (E.A.S.), I was wondering if mentioning it here in some form would be worthwhile since it uses measure words, a feature of many languages of the E.A.S. Thanks --131.238.108.230 21:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing Pronouns section

After rereading the article, I decided to remove the pronouns section since it only concentrates to noting the differences among the languages. When discussing areal features, one generally notes features that are shared among the languages, not features that are different. Here is the removed section for posterity:

Personal pronouns in Japanese, Malay/Indonesian and some other languages are not stable over time, few in number, or clitics. New personal pronouns or forms of reference or address can and often do evolve from nouns as fresh ways of expressing respect or social status. Another way of viewing this phenomenon is that these languages do not have personal pronouns in the Western sense. Chinese pronouns are partly an exception, being stable 1st/2nd/3rd person pronouns that can be traced back thousands of years to Proto-Sino-Tibetan and are used to refer to all sorts of people, even more so since the decay of traditional respect/politeness language. However, many of the personal pronouns historically used in Literary Chinese are obsolete in Modern Chinese. Japanese pronouns: The Japanese language does not have pronouns as a grammatical category of words, per se; rather, the various words for "I", "you", "we", "they", and so on function as nouns for the purposes of sentence structure, grammar, and syntax. Korean pronouns pose some difficulty to speakers of English due to their complexity. The Korean language makes extensive use of speech levels and honorifics in its grammar, and Korean pronouns also change depending on the social distinction between the speaker and the person or persons spoken to. Vietnamese pronouns are more accurately forms of address. Its concept is different from that in European languages, so its forms of address do not neatly fall into the grammatical person classifications created by European grammarians.

—Umofomia 10:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The first paragraph accurately states the areal feature, but the immediately following "Japanese, Malay/Indonesian and some other languages" may obscure this. Please clarify the lead sentence rather than deleting the whole section. The following paragraphs are too wordy after multiple editors have added detail about specific languages, but with the exception of the statement about Chinese pronouns, they are giving redundant descriptions of the same shared feature, not describing differences. --JWB 07:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I see it now that you've pointed it out. I'll add back the first paragraph and the exception about Chinese. The statements about Korean and Vietnamese don't seem to add anything else so I'll leave them out. Feel free to make it better. —Umofomia 08:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Japanese doesn't have tense

"Japanese and Korean do have verb inflections for properties of the verb itself like aspect, mood, and tense, similar to those of the Ural-Altaic languages further north, but agree with Chinese and Southeast Asian languages in not marking gender, number, or any other properties of the verb arguments on the verb itself."

Japanese verbs don't have tense (only aspects, like perfective, progressive, etc). This sentence need to be changed. --Naus 22:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... you might want to have it out with Japanese Verbs#Past tense first. :)

Also, unless you've verified Korean verbs do not have tense either, the sentence is not wrong. Korean language mentions "past tense" a couple of times. --JWB 22:49, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest the "Language families" section be renamed "Language types". Speling12345 (talk) 5:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

That section is about eight language families. Kanguole 18:16, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, there is a language families page. Speling12345 (talk) 6:42, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

What is a "NEWSTATE"?

It seems to be the only appearence of this term in this sense in the entire Wikipedia, and Google doesn't provide any relevant information either. Should I replace them with "PERFECTIVE"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SchwarzKatze (talk • contribs) 02:13, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Changing that would change the meaning from the second to the first particle at the link you gave. Kanguole 09:13, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm highly suspicious about that one actually, as it's essentially the same as the firse sentence of sense 1 to me. And what's the difference of "change of state" and "action completetion" for a dynamic verb? Sentence one and three for sense 2 work because 會 and (沒)有 both indicate a state rather than an action, and are still perfectively valid sentences that express a clear idea on its own if 了 is removed and their meanings in English are the original sentences minus the bolded part, on the other hand, the second sentence requires a context and 飯 would very likely mean "rice" than being part of a pleonastic construct for "eat" in any of those cases, rendering it like "(Among other options/possibilities,) I eat rice.". Furthermore, the meaning behind them differs, for a "change of state", in sentence one and three the verbs 會 and 沒有 are ongoing states (changed into true), but in two 吃飯 is a finished action (changed into false), and if that still counts as sense 2, then isn't sense 1 a subset of sense 2?--SchwarzKatze (talk) 16:13, 18 May 2014 (UTC)