User talk:Jbradfordwhitman

Late Old Japanese
Hi. Would you by any chance be John Whitman at Harvard? Not sure of his middle name, though. Anyway, I have reverted your change for two reasons: 1) While the periodization of a language is always problematic, this article is based on the work of Miller (1967) and Shibatani (1990) who render 中古日本語 as Late Old Japanese; also 2) if you are looking for Early Middle Japanese, please take a look at Early Middle Japanese, which will redirect you to Middle Japanese (中世日本語). For convenience it covers Early and Late. They could potentially be split if there is enough unique material to warrant it. Best regards, Bendono (talk) 13:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi. I'm John Whitman at Cornell.


 * I found the Wiki entries on EMJ and OJ (I assume they're both by you) generally superb. But the use of Late Old Japanese for 中古日本語 is truly, truly problematic. Miller 1967 is seriously out of date as a source, and he simply unthinkingly translated 中古語 as 'Late Old' (which is ridiculous). Shibatani just followed Miller.


 * As I said in my post, Martin 1987, a much more authoritative source, gives


 * 上代日本語 　Old Japanese
 * 中古日本語　 EMJ
 * 中世日本語　　LMJ
 * 近世日本語　Early Modern Japanese


 * As an earlier commentator on your page noted (perhaps Marc Miyake?), Vovin follows Martin's scheme and Bjarke Frellesvig's Historical Grammar of Japanese, to come out this year, does too. So do I. The reasons that commentator gave for following Martin's scheme are correct: the linguistic division btw 8th century and earlier Japanese is much sharper than the divisions (both phonological and syntactic) btw 中古and 中世. Consider also the Japanese. 中古and 中世 both include 中, which of course, means 'Middle'. There is absolutely no overlap between the meaning of 中古 and 'Late Old'.


 * Furthermore, by using LOJ for EMJ, and including EMJ in 中世語, you are left without corresponding English terms for the four-way Japanese periodicization 上代・中古・中世・近世. But this periodicization is absolutely standard, in 国語学 and 国文学, and it is linguistically well founded.


 * I strongly urge you to consider making this change.


 * Best,


 * Jbradfordwhitman (talk) 08:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I am well aware of your work in historical linguistics, and I must say that it is an honor to converse with you Mr. Whitman. In my meager attempt, let me welcome you to Wikipedia. There are many policies and guidelines and sometimes it can be quite frustrating to work here. But if you have the interest and time to contribute, I am sure that many articles can be greatly enriched by your experience and knowledge.

Let me give you a few hints to help you start out editing:
 * You may link to an article by placing place and  around the article name.
 * Typically responses to comments are flow from top to bottom. You may indent a paragraph by placing a : at the start. (I should not edit other people's comments, but please allow it this once.)
 * The entire history of article, including all changes, are recorded. You can access it by clicking on the history tag at the top of an article.

Old Japanese existed as an article before I started editing here. In fact, it was of such poor quality that editing it was one of the reasons that I stayed around. I think it is better, but I am still not too happy with the result. I am much happier with Middle Japanese, which I was able to write from scratch. Even though I for the most part wrote them, no editor owns any article and any one else may freely edit them as needed. Contentious edits are generally discussed until a consensus is reached.

You are an established expert in your field. While some leeway is allowed, generally articles must be derived from published, reliable resources. Various resources occasionally differ on details and scholarship improves over time. Thus it is sometimes difficult to be true to all resources.

I have now reviewed several references:
 * Martin (1987:77) uses the following grammatical divisions:
 * 上代 Old Japanese c. 700-800
 * 中古 Early Middle Japanese 800-1200
 * 中世 Late Middle Japanese 1200-1600
 * 近世 Modern Japanese 1603-1867
 * 現代 Contemporary Japanese 1867-
 * Miyake (2003:67) generally follows Martin (1987), but is slightly influenced by the historical periodizations.
 * Frellesvig (1995:11), too, is the same, except he renders 近世語 and 現代語 as Modern Japanese.
 * Nakata (1972:20-34), discussing phonological history, uses different vocabulary (古代Ⅰ~Ⅱ and 近代Ⅰ~Ⅱ), but the general periodization is the same.

So while this periodization was initially based on that of Miller (1967), enough reliable and authoritative resources as above exist to warrant a change. I have begun updating the articles as needed.

By the way, I once started a draft of Modern Japanese (draft) (easily renamed). I never had the opportunity to complete it, which is why it is a personal subpage and not in the main encyclopedia yet. Any comments or contributions are most welcome.

Hopefully you'll stick around. If you need any help, feel free to contact me. Best regards, Bendono (talk) 10:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Bendono (I hope that starting here on the talk page is appropriate),

Thanks for your your considerate and careful response. Your contributions to this area, and to Japanese literature as well, are excellent, and very important. I'm a neophyte at commenting on a Wikipedia page, but like a lot of people, I use them a lot, and if they're good, I recommend them to students. Again, thanks from the entire field.

I wrote at this juncture because I'm teaching a course on Japanese and Korean historical syntax at the LSA summer institute, starting in two weeks, and I wanted to be able to refer students to the relevant Wikipedia pages. I certainly will. During that period, you may get further comments from me and/or students in the course. To the extent I'm qualified, I'll try to say something about the EModJ page too.

Best regards, Jbradfordwhitman (talk) 23:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)