Japanese History And Language

[Ursus]

Is anyone familiar with the Sengoku period of Japanese history? (I am also interested in the Heian period and the dynamic of Kyoto, but thats not really connected to the main topic here.) I am particularly interested in the various intellectual cross germinations that occurred between European and Japanese cultures. It seems like a fertile ground for exploring what happens to scientific knowledge assimilated into a society without any significant philosophical base to speak of (except the militant nihilism of the pseudo-philosophy of Buddhism). I know for example that the brief mitigated contact between the Dutch traders and Japanese thinkers produced a rather brief miniature renaissance in Japan, but that it was brutally and quickly snuffed out.

As well it looks like a good point to start tracking the Eastern mystics’ influence on Western thinking (Even the corrupt concept of “sustainable development” seems to have had a place in 16-17th century Japan).

Where did signs of this corruption first appear? It doesn’t look like Art was affected until the 19th century (unless I missed something), I can then only assume either other fields fell victim first or at some point a tide of mysticism was unleashed upon Europe. Was this infiltration a pre-Kantian development?

Also, is anyone here familiar with the language? There are some aspects of it I would like to discuss, mostly revolving around some strange omissions and methods of communication. It seems like the language is tailor made for speaking in the present tense on the perceptual level. Is this a feature common to pictographic languages?

I fully intend to put up some concrete examples as soon as I can gauge whether anyone is even interested in talking about this.

[DavidOdden]

It seems like the language is tailor made for speaking in the present tense on the perceptual level. Is this a feature common to pictographic languages?

The expression of time and event relations, and how such relations are compressed into specific tenses, varies considerably across languages, and there is a respectable body of evidence that -ta vs. -ru reflect differences in event relations rather than absolute time. Since tense inflections aren't conveyed in kanji, there's no reason to think that the semantics of the so-called "present" tense in Japanese has some connection with the writing system.

[Ursus]

If I understand your argument correctly, yes, the Japanese language does not rely on concepts but rather percepts when communicating time and event relations; and that this is independent of the kanji writing system.

My confusion arises when one considers the history of the written language. The kanji system was inconsistently adopted from Chinese, and required the later development of hiragana and katakana. Although the language doesn't have a consistent relationship to the written component would this not be the cause of a host of cognitive problems? Would it be logical to believe that the spoken language influenced selectivity in the adoption of a foreign writing system? And if so, how?

[DavidOdden]

If I understand your argument correctly, yes, the Japanese language does not rely on concepts but rather percepts when communicating time and event relations; and that this is independent of the kanji writing system.

No, in fact no language can exist without concepts. Language is fundamentally conceptual. Time is a architypical concept: it is a mental extraction based on and integrating very many concrete percepts (events which you have observed). The basic difference between English and Japanese really just has to do with different conventions for those concepts which are expressed by a suffix (or verb plus auxiliary), versus those that require more complicated multi-word means to express. It's kind of like the ser / estar difference in Spanish, which seems hopeless if you try to understand it in terms of "What does it mean in English". We don't make that difference in English.

My confusion arises when one considers the history of the written language.  The kanji system was inconsistently adopted from Chinese, and required the later development of hiragana and katakana.  Although the language doesn't have a consistent relationship to the written component would this not be the cause of a host of cognitive problems?

For people trying to write what they actuallt, yes. The main cognitive problem would be people saying "Boy, what a stupid way to write! We say 'tabemasho', 'tabemasureba, 'tabenai', 'taberu', 'tabetai' and those Chinese guys they just say 'chr'. Fortunately, we're clever and we can figure out a way to write the stuff that has no Chinese characters". It had no effect on the grammatical structure of the language, since that is causally independent of the writing system. Before that, it like try write English not use any grammar suffix, because Chinese no have suffix.

Would it be logical to believe that the spoken language influenced selectivity in the adoption of a foreign writing system?  And if so, how?

It would not be logical to believe that unless you knew some reason for thinking that is so -- I'm trying to discourage you from engaging in unjustified rationalization that is not supported by observation. Fortunately, I've got an observational basis, so I can point you to some observations. It is very common in the develpment of writing systems that when a source writing system diverges significantly in structure from a recipient language's system, then the original writing system can be adapted in some way. The development of kana from Chinese characters would be an example; similarly, the development of the Greek alphabet from Semitic, Uighur from Aramaic, Persian from Arabic, and so on.

[Ursus]

No, in fact no language can exist without concepts

Whoops! Thats a SERIOUS semantic error on my part. I meant to say concepts based upon directly observed percepts without seeming to have formed a seperate extension to relate to concepts of a purely abstract nature (i.e. future), for example -ta vs. -ru with -ru representing both the present and future tense. Which to me is a strange grammatical choice, unless of course there is some bit of information I am missing. A distinct likelyhood

I'm trying to discourage you from engaging in unjustified rationalization that is not supported by observation. Fortunately, I've got an observational basis

Both of which I am grateful for!

Another question I would have is in regards to never having made the shift to a completly phonetic alphabet despite having access to one, and the distinct advantages it had over a pictographic one.