About the similarities between the Altaic languages and Japanese language: even though both types of language has SOV word order, that does not mean anything when we talk about the relationship between those languages, since 43% of the languages in the world has SOV order. Even with the Korean language which seems to be quit similar to the Japanese language, it can not be said that those two are related because those languages does not share the basic terms.
I am looking forward the presentations next week!
2 comments:
I agree that sentence structure is not evidence of any genetic relation between languages. I should have been more clear about that. Mass comparison of their basic vocabulary can show general relations between different languages but closer study of regular sound shifts can prove it.
The regular sound shifts could prove that many languages, for example, those classified into the Indo-European languages, were related, however, I am not too sure if it works for Japanese language, because if it does, the Japanese language would have already had a family longtime ago. He is still all alone, without any siblings or parents....:/
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