Japanese Morphography: Deconstructing Hentai Kanbun (Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis, 4)

In Japanese Morphography , Gordian Schreiber takes an in-depth look at texts from pre-modern Japan written exclusively in Chinese characters as morphograms and demonstrates why the language behind the script is, in fact, to be identified as Japanese rather than Chinese. "How is it possible to write down the Japanese language exclusively in Chinese characters? And how are we then able to determine the language behind the veil of the Chinese script as Japanese? The history of writing in Japan presents us with a fascinating variety of writing styles ranging from phonography to morphography and all shades in between. In Japanese Morphography: Deconstructing hentai kanbun, Gordian Schreiber shows that texts traditionally labelled as "hentai kanbun" or "variant Chinese" are, in fact, morphographically written Japanese texts instead and not just the result of an underdeveloped skill in Chinese. The study fosters our understanding of writing system typology beyond phonographic writing"-- Provided by publisher Contents 6 Preface 8 Acknowledgments 10 List of Figures and Tables 12 Conventions 15 1 Grapholinguistic Preliminaries 20 2 Previous Scholarship and Terminological Diversity 51 3 Structure of “hentai kanbun” 68 4 Conclusions and Prospects 242 Appendix: Phonograms Used in manabon 248 References 259 Index of Terms 276 Index of Works 279