The Structure and History of Japanese: From Yamatokotoba to Nihongo.

• Author: Miler, Roy Andrew
• Position: Reviews of books

The Structure and History of Japanese: From Yamatokotoba to Nihongo. By LONE TAKEUCHI. Harlow, Essex: PEARSON EDUCATION LTD. [for Longmans], 1999. Pp. xxii + 255. [sterling pound]17.99.

The most striking feature of this, the first volume in the Longman Linguistics Library that deals with the "structure and history" of an individual language, is its enormous catalogue of Ca. six hundred books and articles identified as a "List of References" (pp. 221-41). Most, if not all, of these items the author cites somewhere in her text, often ten or more to the page, and frequently three or four to a single sentence. A much shorter "Glossary of Terminology" (pp. 217-20) supplies much needed definitions for some, but unfortunately not all, of her arcane linguistic lingo (e.g., "atelic," "epistemic modality," "iconic[ity]"), and of course the ever-recurring "pragmatic," this last explained not too helpfully as "what pertains to the relationship between grammar and discourse" (p. 219).

This impressively long list of references proves on inspection to have been the work of several hands, on the evidence of its many internal inconsistencies. Japanese proper names are sometimes separated with a comma to distinguish family-name from given-name, but sometimes not, leaving "Nakamura, Shikaku" immediately followed by "Nakamura Yukihiro" (p. 233). One of the Ur-sources for the list must have marked long vowels with the circumflex, the other with the macron; when they were put together no one could decide which to use, leaving the same word written hoko in one line but hoko in the next (p. 228). One of the sources must have been in Hepburn romanization, the other (or, others?) in National; again, whoever put them together did not think it worthwhile to select one system and stick with it, leaving...ni tsuite cheek-by-jowl with...ni tuite (p. 240). The sigla Kgbg (p. 240), presumably for a Japanese serial publication, is missing from the list of journal abbreviations (p. 221). The titles of serials a re often mistakenly listed as the names of publishers, or deleted from citations, making the item in question all but impossible to locate (e.g., Zachert 1932 (p. 240]; Miller 1989b [p. 232]). Others have simply been garbled out of all recognition somewhere along the line: how many will be able to guess that "Karakusu, J. (1928)" (p. 227), along with the citations of "Karakusu" in text (p. 11) and index (p. 247), all refer to a well-known article by Takakusu Junjiro (1866-1945) in BEFEO 28?

But these inconsistencies and garbled spellings in her "List of References" are as nothing compared to the capricious use to which the sources it lists are frequently put in Takeuchi's text. Given the fact that most of her Ca. six hundred "references" are invoked in multiple places, it has hardly been possible to verify all her citations. But exploration of a representative sampling of sources well known to the reviewer has led to the conclusion that in a high percentage of cases the source she cites, when it can be identified, does not say what she alleges it to say, or frequently directly contradicts the claim or point of her text in support of which she introduces the citation. On p. 14 a paper (JJS 3.1 [1977]: 251-98) is cited as documenting her claim that "the existence of eighth-century Buddhist poems" permits us to assume that "those who first wrote waka with phonograms had the example of darani (sic) in mind." The 1977 paper cited says nothing of the sort, and indeed never mentions dharani in any conn ection. Then a few lines later on this page that same paper, this time in tandem with a monograph (AOS, vol. 58 [1975]), is cited to document "the fact (sic) that precious stones were believed to have magic power" in the Old Japanese period. Again, the sources cited say nothing of the sort (the 1975: 146 mention of "an autochthonous cult role of beads and semiprecious stones" hardly documents a "fact" about beliefs in "magic powers"). Examples of misleading if not downright bogus source-citations of this variety could be quoted almost without end. They make it impossible, when all is said and done, to trust any of Takeuchi's documentation.

Some of these citation problems are no doubt the result of haste and carelessness. But others are difficult to explain except as the consequence of deliberate decisions to mislead the reader concerning the content of the secondary literature. This is a serious charge; but it is a serious matter. Nevertheless, and serious though that problem is, it is trivial when compared with the manner in which both "structure" and "history" are employed through this book, from its title-page on. Neither term is found in the author's terminological glossary, so the question of what she means by each must be addressed separately.

"Structure" as used in this book has nothing to do with parts of speech, form-classes of words, their morphology, or syntax, as these are commonly understood. Instead, it concerns entities described (but scarcely defined) as "achievement" and "activity," the former illustrated by a verb such as modern Japanese (hereafter, NJ) tuk- 'arrive at', the second by NJ oyog- 'swim'.

Takeuchi tells us that the "structural contrast" between these two...