The Structure And History Of Japanese: From Yamatokotoba To Nihongo (longman Linguistics Library)

Tracing the developments from Modern Japanese, back to Old Japanese of the eighth century, and to Classical Japanese of the tenth to twelfth centuries, this book considers the linguistic innovations in Japan, and the Japanese language. The introductory chapter describes the place of language and ideas about language in the cultural history of Japan. The following chapters are organised around specific linguistics topics including phonology, indexicality (so-called polite language), predate structures, topic, focus and case, and sentence structures. The grammatical structures are explained in context mostly using authentic examples, and a glossary of linguistics terms has been included to help students who may be new to the field of linguistics. Lone Takeuchi. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.