A Preliminary Survey of Linguistic Areas in East Asia Based on Phonological Features
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Date
2021-09
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Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
Previous studies of linguistic areas have often adopted a mainly top-down approach, by first hypothesizing the existence of a linguistic area and then seeking the common linguistic features of that hypothetical area in order to justify its existence. In order to identify linguistic areas in East Asia in a different way, we adopt a mainly bottom-up approach by first investigating the values of the linguistic feature parameters of languages spoken in East Asia and then calculating those values to locate geographical clusters of languages sharing a certain degree of cross-family similarity. Based on 19 phonological features as binary parameters of 52 sample languages of East Asia, we visualize their within-family and cross-family similarities. Many of these similarities confirm the previous theories concerning linguistic areas, such as the Mainland Southeast Asia or the Qinghai-Gansu linguistic area. However, we also demonstrate some similarities that have received less attention thus far, namely between Ryukyuan and southern Sinitic languages.
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Keywords
Linguistic area, East Asia, Phonology
Citation
Joo, Ian, and Yu-Yin Hsu. "A Preliminary Survey of Linguistic Areas in East Asia Based on Phonological Features." Buckeye East Asian Linguistics, vol. 5 (September 2021), p. 52-59.