Japanese as a Contact Language

The sociolinguistic model proposed in this chapter outlines a languagecontact scenario for the origins of Japanese, in contrast to the lineal descent model which has dominated discussions of the topic. In contrast to most previous theories, I suggest that archaic Japan displayed multilingual heterogeneity involving several language communities out of whose mixture and contact evolved a pidgin-creole.

In all societies and at every time, language contact and multilingualism have been the norm. Likewise, Japan's linguistic history cannot be characterised by a linear progression nor by a single event but by successive episodes of language mixing. The view proposed here is that the Japanese language developed as a lingua franca in a multilingual environment. Thus, there is no indexable substrate language for Japanese since there was no single substrate; instead, Japanese developed from several speech communities possessing more than one language variety. In recasting Japanese as the product of heterogeneous sociolinguistic pressures, I suggest that the most suitable characterisation of Japanese is that of a pidgin-creole. The linguistic polymorphism of the Japanese is mirrored in their genetic and cultural polymorphism. The population history of Japan (see chapter 1) provides further support for the linguistic model proposed here.

Almost all studies of the origins of the Japanese language have concentrated on reconstructing an original pro to-Japanese, typologically related to a single language derivative, say Tungusic or Korean or an ancestral Austronesian. But what might a sociolinguistic reconstruction of early Japan look like?