Austronesians in the Northern Waters?

The following lines are inspired by John Kupchik’s seminal article ‘Austronesian Lights the Way’ that appears in this volume of JEAL. It demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt for the first time that there are reliable Austronesian loanwords in Japonic that reveal quite ancient and profound contacts, because without these profound contacts the borrowing of the names of the most basic celestial bodies, such as the sun and the moon, would not be possible. In my opinion, his article opened a new and an exciting direction in the Japonic historical linguistics. There are, however, two important differences between Kupchik’s article and the present one. First, while Kupchik mostly concentrated on the Amis language from Taiwan, and to a less extent on the languages of Philippines and other Western Malayo- Polynesian, my major focus is on the Philippines languages as potential donors, and much less on other Austronesian languages of the region. Second, while Kupchik looked mostly on mysterious words in the Omoro Sōshi, a collection of Old Okinawan and Amami sacred and folk poems (1531–1623 AD), this article focuses more on Old Japanese in particular and Japonic in general.

Austronesian Lights the Way: The Origins of the Words for ‘Sun’ and Other Celestial Voca bulary in Old Ryukyuan

This paper examines the evidence for historical contacts between Ryukyuans and Austronesians and uses this as a starting point to explore the borrowing of celestial vocabulary from Austronesian languages into Proto or Old Ryukyuan. The previous hypotheses for the etymology of Proto-Ryukyuan *tenda ‘sun’ are discussed in detail, and this is followed by discussions on Old Ryukyuan words meaning ‘sun’, ‘sun, light’, ‘heaven’ and ‘moon’. In all of these cases it is argued the most plausible source languages are Austronesian, based on strong phonetic and semantic correspondences, geographic proximity to the Ryukyus or the Old Ryukyuan trade route, shared celestial worship, as well as the lack of cognates in Japanese.

Polysemy and Apparent Polyfunctionality of the Sakhalin Ainu Prefixes e- and ko-

The present study focuses on the polysemous verbal prefixes e- and ko- of Sakhalin Ainu and proposes their analysis as markers of high transitivity. The author takes a compositional approach to argument structure and event structure in order to account for the main use of e- and ko- as applicative markers as well as for their less common use as markers of resultative-completive and intensive aspect. Ultimately, the analysis shows that the apparent polyfunctionality of e- and ko- arises from two separate applications at the syntax-semantics level of one same underlying function of the prefixes. The author also comments on how the Sakhalin Ainu case fits in with other cases of valence-aspect conceptual overlapping cross-linguistically and on the implications of his findings for Ainu studies specifically.

The Origin of the Name ‘Mongol’

This short note proposes that a hapax legomenon in a fifth century list of enemies of Khotan might give a half a millennium antecedent to the name of the Mongols, as an alternative, and older, name of the Mongol-speaking Rouran.