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This is the revised, updated and enlarged second edition of the first detailed descriptive grammar in English dedicated to the Western Old Japanese. The grammar is divided into two volumes, with the first volume dealing with sources, script, phonology, lexicon, nominals and adjectives. The second volume focuses on verbs, adverbs, particles, conjunctions and interjections.
About the author
Alexander Vovin, currently Directeur d'études in Japanese and Inner Asian historical linguistics, an elected member of the Academia Europaea and a Laureate of 2015 prize of Japan's National Institute for Humanities (Centre des recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale), has published extensively on Japanese, Ainu, Korean, Mongolian and Tungusic, as well as other languages of East and Inner Asia. Among his major works are
A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu (Brill, 1993),
A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003),
Nihongo Keitōron no Genzai/Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language (co-edited with Osada Toshiki, the International Center for Japanese Studies, Kyōto, 2003),
Koreo-Japonica (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010),
A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese, vol. 1-2 (Global Oriental 2005, 2009, second edition Brill 2020), and a multivolume edition and translation of the
Man'yōshū, the first and the largest Japanese poetical anthology (Global Oriental/Brill, 2009). Most recently he has deciphered (together with Dieter Maue) two Mongolian inscriptions that predate the other extant Mongolian texts by at least 600 years (
Journal Asiatique 306.2 and 307.1 (2018-19),
The International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 1.1 (2019)).
