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Murayama Shichirō (25 December 1908 - 15 May 1995) was a major figure in setting the stage for research on the origin of the Japanese language. (The format of his name given here follows the customary order in Japanese culture; that is, family name followed by last name. )

There are not many known sources available to the public that record the basic personal details of the life of Murayama Shichirō. He studied at the universities in Berlin and Moscow, publishing articles about the origins of Japanese language (among other topics) in German and Russian, while the greater majority of them were published in Japanese. Initially in his academic career, Shichirō advocated for an Altaic origin of Japanese. Over time, he reshaped this view, proposing that Japanese is rather an Altaic-Austronesian hybrid. Today, through his work on etymology showing a close relation to Ryukyuan, it is more generally held that Japanese and Ryukyuan languages form a unique category together. That is, they are not strongly shown to be related to any other language group.

Major Contributions
Shichirō is largely known for his work on the origin of the Japanese language. His work culminated in providing the groundwork for comparative syntax as a means of tracing linguistic lineage, rather than only emphasizing the significance of lexical cognates between any two given languages. He also showed evidence of the Japanese-Rukyuan (Japonic) relation, a portmanteau family shown not to be related to other languages. He also used Hideyo Arisaka's Vowel Association Law as well as the observed vowel harmony in Altai as a means to begin investigating proto-Japanese lineage. Studied the oldest text document from the Korean peninsula, known as Samguk Sagi, or 三国史記 which is phonetic Ateji, meaning The Recorded History of the Three Kingdoms. From these sagas, Murayama was able to extract knowledge about the then language, Goguryeo, which he showed to have a remarkably high rate of similar words with Japanese. Even today, Korean lexicon shows many similar words. The section from this work exemplifies other eminent linguists who specialized in this subject. Obayashi Taryo (1973) shows how Murayama laid out his argumentation for Japanese as a "mixed language". On page 420-424, he lists some cross-linguistic argumentation from a phonological standpoint. On page 424, he cites the work of Otto Dempwolff for his development of Malayo-Polynesian phonemic notation (*t')

Old Japanese and the Altaic Connection
In an example of grammatical etymology from his own book, Miller shows how Murayama regarded the Old Japanese grammar particle wo, whose usage is purportedly shared between Japanese and Altai back then. Linguists at the time (1970s) contended between classifying it as an exclamatory sentence final particle or rather as a (direct) object marker. While Miller is by and large a supporter of Murayama's work, he is somewhat critical of Murayama's treatment of OJ wo as not exhaustive enough.

As for Old Japanese, a period in time which Japanese started to noticeably branch away from Altai, Murayama and Roy A. Miller gave a report on archaeology findings  within the Inariyama Kofun(a Japanese Tumulus). The findings - an sword (Inariyama Sword) with 115 golden Chinese characters (Hanzi) engraved on either side - suggest an earlier date than the then (1970s) previously supposed date of the induction of Chinese characters in Japanese usage (first as Ateji). Nicholaus Poppe writes, in an introduction to one of Miller's books, that knowledge of Chinese language turns out to be of vital importance when one investigates the early nature of the Japanese language. Murayama & Miller's article includes an X-ray photograph of the sword, showing that Hanzi had been in some kind of use in Japan as early as the 5th century. This is just one example of Murayama's collaborative work, not to mention his many other works, that were by him alone.

Contributing Linguists to the Field
Hideyo Arisaka

Taryo Obayashi

Otto Dempwolff

Roy Andrew Miller (1971)

Nicholas Poppe (1955, 1960)

Anton Boller (1857)

Susumu Ōno

Suggested Further Readings
(J. Rahder, An Etymological Dictionary of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu (Rahder 1956-61) ; Ozawa Shigeo 1968 (lexical comparisons between Japanese and Mongol); R. A. Miller, Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages (1971); Matsumoto Nobuhiro (1928); N. A Syromjatnikov (1972))\

Publications

Shichirō, Murayama, and Roy Andrew Miller. “The Inariyama Tumulus Sword Inscription.” Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1979, pp. 405–438., www.jstor.org/stable/132104.

Shichirō, Murayama. “The Malayo-Polynesian Component in the Japanese Language.” Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 1976, pp. 413–436., www.jstor.org/stable/132060.

'''村山七郎. 漂流民の言語 : ロシアへの漂流民の方言学的貢献. '''Tōkyō: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1965. Print.

Murayama, ShichiroHyōryumin no gengo : roshia e no hyōryūmin no hōgengakuteki kōken

Tōkyō: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1965. Print.

'''村山七郎. 日本語の比較研究.''' Dai 1-han. Tōkyō: ichi Shobō, 1995. Print.

Murayama, Shichiro. Nihongo no Hihakukenkyū. Dai 1-han. Tōkyō: ichi Shobō, 1995. Print.

Miller, Roy Andrew, Murayama Shichiro, and Obayashi Taryo. "The Origins of Japanese." Monumenta Nipponica 29.1 (1974): 93. Print.

Miyake M.H. "Philological Evidence for *e and *o in Pre-Old Japanese." Diachronica 20.1 (2003): 83-137. Web.

References

Brown, E. K., and Anderson, Anne. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. 2nd ed. Kidlington, Oxford, UK ; Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier, 2006. Print.