THE ORIGINS AND FORMATION OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to deal with the origins and formation of the Japanese language, in the light of mostly linguistic aspects of the neighboring languages, such as Old Korean, Old Chinese, Proto-Austronesian, and some archeological aspects. This notion is also based on a linguistic theory that the Japanese is formed through time with language contacts with the neighboring languages mentioned above. This also discusses the particular aspects of language contact of each language and language family in order to suggest that Japanese has been formed by language contacts with those languages.