単亜語/Anthropology

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Dan'a'yo returns a shared world of the w:East Asian cultural sphere. The ancient w:Imperial examination (科挙(콰교)) created a common experience across the region. Everyone read the same w:Chinese classics and learned the same law codes. Peoples from various language families were nevertheless united and could communicate. With the advent of the internet and Unicode, there is an avenue for peaceful interaction, a reunification of shared cultural and linguistic norms. By taking w:Classical Chinese and updating it, Dan'a'yo can serve as a bridge for those who have drifted apart.


WALS

WALS is the greatest cross-linguistic comparison tool out.

WALS Dan'a'yo Chinese Japanese Korean Vietnamese
Headed Mixed Mixed Final Final Initial
Adjective-Verb Stative Verbs Distinct Stative verbs Stative verbs Stative verbs
Typology Analytic Analytic Agglutinative Agglutinative Analytic
Honorifics Yes Lexical titles Yes Yes Yes
Topic-Prominent Yes Yes Yes Yes Some
Isochrony Syllable Syllable Mora Syllable Word
Pro-drop Yes Mostly Yes Yes Yes
Noun-Verb Distinct Yes No Yes Yes Yes
P T K B D G 5 Other gaps Other gaps No gaps Other gaps Other gaps
Voiced Consonants Contrast 4 Fricatives and Plosives Fricatives alone Fricatives and Plosives No Fricatives alone
Tone 13 No 4 Pitch accent No 6
Syllable Accent 14 higher pitch for first syllable Underlies Tokyo pitch accent
Morpheme Fusion 20 concatenative isolating and concatenative Exclusively concatenative Exclusively concatenative Exclusively isolating
Noun morpheme complexity 21A 1 1 1 1 0
Verb morpheme complexity 21B 1 1 1 1 1
Maximal Verb categories 22 No No 4 6 No
Marking in clauses, NPs, and whole language 23, 24, 25A Dependent Dependent Dependent Dependent None
A and P marking 25B non-zero non-zero non-zero non-zero zero
Inflections: 26 Suffixing Suffixing Suffixing Suffixing Not much
Reduplication 27 full and partial full and partial full only full and partial full and partial
Case 28 No No No No No
Verbal person/number 29 No No No No No
Plurals 33 suffix suffix suffix suffix suppletion
Plurals option 34 optional, only on humans optional, only on humans optional, only on humans optional, only on humans optional for all nouns
Plurals pronouns 35 person stem + nominal plural affix Person stem + nominal plural affix Person stem + nominal plural affix Person-number stem + nominal plural affix Person stem + pronominal plural affix
Associative Plural 36 same as additive periphrastic same as additive same as additive none
Articles 37 indefinite only indefinite only indefinite periphrastic indefinite both
Clusivity 39 No Yes No No Some
Deixis 41 Three-way Two-way Three-way Three way Three way defective
Demonstratives 42
Gender 44 Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns No Pronouns
Pronoun politeness 45 drop binary forms drop drop drop
Indefinite pronoun 46 interrogative mixed interrogative interrogative interrogative
Reflexive = intense 47 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Cases distinguished 49 4 No 8 7 No
Cases on phrases 50 Yes No Yes Yes No
Markers 51 Postposition not exactly Postpositions Postpositions not exactly
Distributive numerals 54 suffix? No suffixing suffixing No
Classifier 55 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Genitive/Adj/Rel. Clause 60 Fully collapse? weakly differentiated Some morphological difference highly differentiated Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed
Lone adjectives 61 marked on next? marked on next word depends on conjugation class marked on next word marked on previous word
Action Nominal Clause 62 No No double possessive sentential Template:1
And=With 63 No Yes Yes No No
Noun-And=Verb-And 64 No No No No Yes
TAM marker 69 suffix suffix and prefix suffixing suffixing prefix
Special Prohibative 71 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Possibility 74 verbal construction verbal construction verbal affix other verbal construction
Word order 81 SVO SVO SOV SOV SVO
Subject Verb 82 SV SV SV SV SV
Object Verb 83 VO VO OV OV VO
Object Oblique Verb 84 XVO XVO / VOX XOV XOV VOX
Adposition 85 Postpositions not exactly Postpositions Postpositions not exactly
Genitive vs noun 86 Genitive-Noun Genitive-Noun Genitive-Noun Genitive-Noun Noun-Genitive
Adjective-Noun 87 Adjective-Noun Adjective-Noun Adjective-Noun Adjective-Noun Noun-Adjective
Demonstrative-Noun 88 Demonstrative-Noun Demonstrative-Noun Demonstrative-Noun Demonstrative-Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Numeral-Noun 89 Numeral-Noun Numeral-Noun Numeral-Noun Numeral-Noun Numeral-Noun
Relative Clause-Noun 90 Relative Clause-Noun Relative Clause-Noun Relative Clause-Noun Relative Clause-Noun Noun-Relative Clause
Polar Question Particle 92 Final Final Final No Final
Wh-word in situ 93 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Adverbial Subordinator and Clause 94 Final Mixed Final Final Initial
Object adposition 95 OV and post mixed OV and post OV and post VO and pre
VO RC Noun 96 VO-RC-N VO-RC-N OV-RC-N OV-RC-N VO-N-RC
VO Adj Noun 97 VO-Adj-N VO-Adj-N OV-Adj-N OV-Adj-N VO-N-Adj
Morphosyntax 98, 99 N-A Neutral N-A N-A Neutral
Ditransitives 105 indirect-direct Mixed indirect-direct indirect-direct double object
Interrogative 116 Particles Particle Particle Verb morphology Particle
Possession 117 Topic Topic Location Location Topic

Also, common nouns precede proper nouns in apposition.


Languages

The language communities that Dan'a'yo seeks to incorporate and unify are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese. Korea and Japan have long formed a sprachbund already, and have many calques and grammatical features in common. They even share some vocabulary. There are those who think they are genetically related, but that has yet to be conclusively proven.

There is some additional similarities that must occur with southern Sino-Tibetan languages, but that is not a design goal, merely a consequence.

Proto

There is no proto-language which all our source languages are supposedly descended from. Our ancient form is Classical Chinese, which is well-known and actually exists in documented form.

Correspondences of initial consonants
Middle Chinese Sino-Vietnamese Sino-Korean Sino-Japanese Mandarin Cantonese 単亜語/Anthropology
Go-on Kan-on Tōsō-on
Labials 幫 p p > b p/pʰ ɸ > h ɸ > h ɸ > h p/f p/f p
滂 pʰ pʰ/f pʰ/f
並 b b b > b/ph/v pʰ/p/f pʰ/p/f
明 m m > m/v m m b[1] m m/w m m
Dentals 端 t t > đ t/tʰ t t t t t t
透 tʰ tʰ > th
定 d d > đ d tʰ/d tʰ/d
泥 n n n n d[2] n n n~l n
來 l l l r r r l l l
Retroflex nasal 娘 ɳ n n~ø n d n n~l ny
Retroflex stops 知 ʈ ʈ > tr tʰ/tɕ/tɕʰ t t s ts t
徹 ʈʰ ʂ > s tʂʰ tsʰ
澄 ɖ ɖ > tr d tʂʰ, tʂ tsʰ, ts
Dental sibilants 精 ts s > t s s ts, tɕ ts j
清 tsʰ ɕ > th tsʰ, tɕʰ tsʰ
從 dz s > t z tsʰ, tɕʰ, ts, tɕ tsʰ, ts
心 s s s s s s
邪 z z tsʰ, ts z, ʑ
俟 ʐ s z tʂʰ, s tsʰ, ts sy
Retroflex sibilants 莊 tʂ ʈ > tr tɕ/tɕʰ s tʂ, ts ts j
初 tʂʰ ʂ > s tʂʰ, tsʰ tsʰ
崇 dʐ z tʂʰ, tsʰ, tʂ, ʂ tsʰ, ts, s
生 ʂ s s ʂ, s s sy
Palatals 章 tɕ c > ch tɕ/tɕʰ ts j
昌 tɕʰ tʃ > x tʂʰ tsʰ
禪 dʑ ɕ > th s z tʂʰ, ʂ tsʰ, ts, s
書 ɕ s ʂ s sy
船 ʑ z s tʂʰ, ʂ s
日 ny ɲ > nh z > ∅ n z z ɻ, ʔ j ny
以 j d ø j j j, w~ʋ j, w y
Velars 見 k k > c/g k/h k k k k, tɕ k, kʷ k
溪 kʰ kʰ > kh kʰ, tɕʰ h, f, kʰ, kʰʷ
群 g ɡ > c k g kʰ, tɕʰ, k, tɕ kʰ, kʰʷ, k, kʷ
疑 ŋ ŋ > ng h g g ʔ~ɰ, j, w~ʋ, n ŋ, ʔ, j ø
Laryngeals 影 ʔ ʔ > y ʔ, j, w~ʋ ʔ, j, w
曉 h h h k k x, ɕ h, f, j h
匣 ɦ ɣ > g/w x, ɕ h, w
云 ɦj v, h ø j j j, w~ʋ j, w ø

Phonologies

Korean has a tense/lax system which is completely unknown to the others in the region. Japanese alone contrasts voiced/unvoiced, instead of aspirated/un-aspirated like the rest. The Chineses have contour tones which are much more complicated than JK pitch accent system. All these features must be ignored as they have no common parallels.

Korean has the most robust phonotactics, with CVC syllables allowing many kinds of consonants in the coda. Mandarin has only /n/ and /ŋ/ there. Japanese has gemination – which doubles the next voiceless stop, and a homorganic nasal – which can be /m/, /n/, or /ŋ~ɴ/. In short, a rough compromise is possible, with everyone having to learn something, but nothing like what it would take to learn any other language.

Orthographies

Chinese characters have roughly stayed the same for 1,000 years, but some changes have crept in. The most overreaching is the Simplified characters of mainland China, which are utterly dependent upon Mandarin pronunciation and incompatible with the region as a whole. Korean uses ancient versions, which are sometimes grossly out of date and far more obtuse than what others write. A strong, compromise position is to use Japanese Shinjitai, which has mild updates and simplifications to some characters.

A phonetic alphabet is hard to agree upon. Japanese hiragana and katakana are no capable of indicating precise coda consonants. Bopomofo is a decent phonographic system, however it is not well-known. Extended-Bopomofo is even less so, and would have to use many rare characters. Korean Hangul is generally well-suited. However, find /u/ is not supported, and must be accomplished by a work-around at present.

Prolegomena

Multilingual dictionary sources – such as Wiktionary – already document much of the vocabulary in common across the Far East Asian region. Selection of a limited number of Chinese characters must involve a kind of voting process.

Implementation

Japan is well-positioned to begin education of Dan'a'yo at an early age. Korean politics are unfortunately embroiled over a senseless debate about the national character of learning Chinese characters, a holdover from the war and the product of pride. Chinese standard education frowns upon teaching grammar, but there is a revival of Classical education. Many teaching resources are still needed.


  1. ^ Yields m- in syllables ending in original -ng.
  2. ^ Yields n- in syllables ending in original -ng