Japanese as a Hybrid Altaic-Chinese Language

ALPATOV, Vladimir Mikhailovich
(35th Meeting of the PIAC, Taipei 1992)

Japanese is a language of the Altaic family but it was influenced by the Austronesian substratum. Later it was under the great influence of Chinese. There are many borrowings from Chinese to Japanese which are strictly separated from the rest of the words. The Chinese sub–system is not only the lexical one: it has many peculiarities in several levels of the linguistic system. That language can be considered as a hybrid language. Long vowels, long consonants and diphthongs are peripheral in the Altaic sub–system but they are quite usual in the Chinese one. The syllabic structure of morphemes of the Altaic sub-system is not strict but only the morphemes consisted of one or two moras are possible in the Chinese one. Compound words and derivates are numerous only in the Chinese sub-system. However all the syntactic rules are Altaic.