Japanese: A Linguistic Introduction

by Yoko Hasegawa

This comprehensive introduction to the Japanese language consists of six parts. Following the introductory section, it explores the Japanese lexicon, grammatical foundations, major clause types, clause linkage, and language usage. The discussion of formal and structural properties of Japanese such as sound structure, vocabulary and grammar assist readers as they gain insight into historical and sociocultural aspects of Japanese; some are compared with those of English-speaking nations. An ideal choice for instructors, the book includes twenty-eight chapters, sufficient for approximately ninety hours of hands-on instruction. Each topic has been rigorously selected based on the author's experience of more than two decades teaching Japanese linguistics. The book's breadth and depth make it highly appropriate for learners of the Japanese language, for linguistics students interested in Japanese, and for researchers interested in Japanese linguistics. Online resources include exercises and supplementary multimedia materials to enhance the reader's comprehension and enjoyment.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Japanese Literature, Japan

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2014

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cambridge University Press’s “X: A Linguistic Introduction” series started off as a series of concise grammars that would allow any linguist to quickly get a gist of the given language. The series then changed, and later volumes were intended more as university textbooks by which e.g. students focusing on the philology of the given language could do a supplementary course in the linguistics of it.

This volume in the series, too, at least begins as such a textbook. And in fact, those initial chapters are maddening to read. In describing Japanese phonology and its interface with the writing system for a very general readership of people who have learned some Japanese, Hasegawa simplifies her treatment so much that even she (a recognized expert in this field) ends up sounding very tentative and uncertain about what she is saying. Timothy J. Vance’s The Sounds of Japanese is a much more thorough and enjoyable description of this aspect of the language.

This book gets much better when Hasegawa moves into morphology and other aspects of the language. It is handy to have a book that sets out the morphology of Japanese verbs all on one page, instead of dribbling them over many chapters as a course of Japanese would do. The middle section of the book consists of common sentence patterns and syntax. Then comes over a hundred pages just on pragmatics, which makes this the only reference of its kind that I know of, and I definitely should remember to go back and read this again if I ever decide to learn Japanese conversationally.

All Japanese examples here are given morpheme-by-morpheme glosses according to the Leipzig Glossing Rules. Only transliteration is used – the only place you’ll find hirangana, katakana and kanji is in the chapter expressly dealing with the writing system.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad that this exists, but I also wish the historical section were much longer—it gives a page to a page and a half each to Old Japanese, Late Old Japanese, Middle Japanese, and Early Modern Japanese, and then the very next chapter deals with modern dialectical variation (also unfortunately briefly) and demonstrates exactly how inadequate that is: the dialects show considerably more phonological variation than can be accounted for out of Old Japanese, and while Proto Japanese [sic] is name-dropped exactly once, it's only in a short, disconnected section about pitch accent patterns and her one source is from 1951. Still, it's nice the effort is made at all—diachrony in Japanese beyond the 19th century usually isn't even on the radar, in my experience.
The remaining 95% of the book is what you'd expect: a detailed but straightforward synchronic grammar of mostly Standard Japanese, with a pragmatics section that deals with politeness rather more lucidly and in more useful detail than you normally get. Hasegawa occasionally tries a bit too hard to portray herself as a fashionable modern linguist, but her execution is competent and where it's long-winded it's long-winded in a way you'll be grateful for if you're ever trying to use this as a reference instead of reading it from cover to cover.
It's typology-brained to some extent, but even if you are trying to learn Japanese to use it as a language, you'll find it an extremely useful book to have as a complement to your typical office gossip tutorial.

("Only" fifteen pages are devoted to the writing system, thankfully, though all fifteen are worth your time. I don't agree with Hasegawa's characterisation of it as "arguably the most convoluted writing system ever devised in human history", particularly in its modern incarnation—it's bad, but the use of kana and the fact that they're visually distinct from kanji puts its squarely in third place; man'yōgana, the older system without kana, takes second, but the Egyptians still have it beat. Fourth place is Book Pahlavi FYI.)

[Anja · Rating 4 out of 5]

very useful