In a September 21, 2021 post at this blog, I noted Niall P. Cooke, et al., "Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations" 7(38) Science Advances (September 17, 2021) that based upon modern and ancient Japanese and East Asian DNA found that:
The big point is that after the Yayoi conquered the Jomon and admixed with them ca. 1000 BCE, there was a second wave of migration to Japan during the Kofun period of Japanese history, ca. 300 CE to 538 CE, by a population similar to the modern Han Chinese people that has the source of more than 60% of the resulting populations autosomal DNA. Since that second migration event, there has been only some modest introgression of additional Han Chinese-like admixture into the Japanese gene pool. . . .we find genetic evidence that the agricultural transition in prehistoric Japan involved the process of assimilation, rather than replacement, with almost equal genetic contributions from the indigenous Jomon and new immigrants at the Kyushu site. This implies that at least some parts of the archipelago supported a Jomon population of comparable size to the agricultural immigrants at the beginning of the Yayoi period, as it is reflected in the high degree of sedentism practiced by some Jomon communities. . . .Excess affinity to the Yayoi is observable in the individuals who are genetically close to ancient Amur River populations or present-day Tunguisic-speaking populations. Our findings imply that wet rice farming was introduced to the archipelago by people who lived somewhere around the Liaodong Peninsula but who derive a major component of their ancestry from populations further north, although the spread of rice agriculture originated south of the West Liao River basin.
Today, I came across J. Marshall Unger, "No Rush to Judgment: The Case against Japanese as an Isolate" 4(3) NINJAL Project Review 211-230 (February 2014), which anticipated this development.
Unger reasons that while the development of a definite Japanese-Korean protolanguage was not sufficiently advanced to argue the hypothesis that they were sister languages on linguistic evidence alone, that the evidence taken as a whole argued strongly for this conclusion over any other. I agree with pretty much all of his reasoning, which Cooke (2021) above, closely matches.
The narrative in Unger's paper is well articulated visually:
To just hit the major headings in the analysis (which has another layer of solid thought beneath it):
1) A major population replacement occurred in Japan starting during the 1st millennium BCE.2) The population replacement was due to migrations from southern Korea that began after the Mumun cultural complex was well-established there.3) The later transition from Yayoi to Kofun culture proceeded gradually and did not involve a single or sudden disruption of the Late Yayoi culture.4) Place-names recorded in both logographic and phonographic forms show that a Japaneselike language was spoken on the Korean peninsula as late as ca. 700 CE.5) The first variety of Japanese spoken in the islands, proto-Japanese (reconstructed through dialect comparisons), dates from the Yayoi period, and began to split into dialects at the time of the Yayoi expansion ca. 200 BCE.6) Final Jomon languages influenced proto-Japanese only marginally.7) If Korean and Japanese are genetically related languages, they must have separated before the rise of Megalithic culture on the peninsula.8) East Asian languages typologically similar to Korean and Japanese of the 1st millennium CE were spoken only in the transfluvial region north of present-day Korea.9) Conditions for METATYPY — one language adapting its gross syntactic structure to that of another — were not present on the Korean peninsula prior to the Yayoi migrations.10) The proto-Korean-Japanese hypothesis is the best working hypothesis available.11) The southward movement of para-Korean speakers spawned the Yayoi migrations.12) The collapse of the Chinese commanderies doomed the survival of para-Japanese.13) Speakers of late para-Japanese introduced Old Korean and Early Middle Chinese words to Japan during the Kofun period.14) There was never a period of interaction between Japanese and Korean of sufficient duration to alter the Japanese lexicon radically.
To me it's not entirely clear that the Ainu are representative of all Jomon people, as they seem to have an additional northern (Amur-like?) component as well. Would not surprise me if the Jomon language died quite a bit before modern times.
ReplyDeleteI think that the evidence is overwhelming that proto-Japanese expansion was the proximate cause of Jomon language death and that this did not reach a large part of modern Japanese territory until quite late.
ReplyDeleteAinu may not be undiluted Jomon compared to the more core Japanese islands (either genetically or linguistically) both of which may be influenced by Northern influence, but it almost surely is related in some larger language family, and I am fairly sure that a similar language to Ainu was attested in the first millennium CE in Northern Japan south of Hokkaido. Also, on the genetic level, Ainu, at least, have a significant Jomon component using ancient DNA comparisons.
In any case, only a tiny fraction of the Japanese lexicon (probably on the order of 1% or less) and virtually no grammatical innovations in Japanese seem likely to have roots in any Ainu or Jomon language.
Imperfect as it is, Ainu is the best clue we have about the Jomon language that has to be a starting point from which any other approximation is estimated by figuring out how other Jomon languages would deviate from it, particularly given the minimal substrate influence in even Old Japanese.
A good discussion of Jomon language can be found at https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/s3orie/what_languages_did_the_jomon_people_of_japan_speak/
ReplyDeleteA personal anecdote: When I was studying Japanese in a classroom of mixed nationalities, the Korean students seemed to pick it up much more quickly and accurately. Could be they were just smarter...but it is easier to learn languages if they are closer to one's native tongue.
ReplyDeleteI eventually did get pretty fluent, but it took me 15 years to accomplish what took me 3 years in Spanish, and I never did get quite as fluent in Japanese though I speak it daily, and only have occasion to speak Spanish now a few times a month.