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The Japan Foundation Kyoto Office Fellows’Seminar 2005 - Session 13
The Linguistic Relationship of Japanese and Korean
The Japan Foundation has invited specialists and artists involved in Japanese studies to be Fellows at the Japan Foundation. The Japan Foundation Kyoto Office will conduct the following Fellows' seminar. The speaker on this occasion is Professor J. Marshall UNGER, who comes from the United States and will speak on “The Linguistic Relationship of Japanese and Korean.”
Free of charge. No reservations needed. Maximum capacity is 50.
| Date: | October 7 (Fri.), 2005 |
| Time: | 18:00-20:00 |
| Venue: | Auditorium of Urbanex Oike Building East 2F  361-1 Kurumayacho-dori, Oike sagaru, Umeya-cho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto (The Japan Foundation Kyoto Office is at the 4th floor of the same building) *Exit 3-1 or 3-2 of Karasuma-Oike sta., Kyoto City Subway Karasuma and Tozai line *The auditorium is on the 2nd Floor. A mobile phone shop ‘au’ is on the 1st Floor of the building. |
| Language: | English (No interpreter will be present, but the Q&A session after the seminar will be held both English and Japanese.) |
| Speaker: | Professor J. Marshall UNGER (United States / The Japan Foundation Fellow 2004-2005) Professor J. Marshall UNGER received his Ph.D. in linguistics from Yale University in 1975, and is now Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. Professor UNGER came to Japan as a Japan Foundation Fellow in January 2005 and is currently conducting a research at Kobe University, in cooperation with Professor NISHIMITSU Yoshihiro.His project title is “Language Contact in Early Japanese History.” |
| Topic: | "The Linguistic Relationship of Japanese and Korean" The Japanese language came to Japan with the migrants who brought Yayoi culture.However, if Korean and Japanese are genetically related languages (i.e. came from a common source), the Yayoi migration is too historically recent to account for the large residues of etymologically unrelated words in the two languages and the differences in their morphologies. The languages must have separated much earlier. And if they are not genetically related, Korean borrowings in Japanese and similarities in syntax must be explained. In either case, knowing where and when the early Korean and Japanese speech communities came (back) into contact is of crucial importance. My research suggests that the languages of the Three Kingdoms of ancient Korea were all varieties of Old Korean, and that Old Korean did not spread into the southeastern corner of the peninsula (Silla) until sometime during 4th century CE. Other scholars have proposed alternative hypotheses, and many of us will meet to discuss them at the end of September in Hamburg, Germany. My presentation will be an explanation of some of the evidence for my hypothesis and a report on the conference. |
| Contact: | The Japan Foundation Kyoto Office Tel: 075-211-1312, Fax: 075-255-1273 |