Center for Northeast Asian Studies Tohoku University Faculty

Kuribayashi Hitoshi
Professor

Linguistics/phonetics, Mongolian language

Diachronic and Synchronic Studies of Mongolian and Other Languages in Northeast Asia

Northeast Asia is home to numerous ethnic groups, each with its own language and culture, that variously merged or broke off or influenced one another countless times throughout the centuries. In Linguistic Studies, we study the languages of this region both historically and descriptively, investigating them each on their own as well as in terms of their relationship to one another. Of these languages, the Mongolian languages, spoken widely in the Mongolian Plateau all the way to the shores of Lake Baikal in the north to the Yellow River Region in the Chinese province of Qinghai to the south, offer a wealth of written sources that use many different writing systems and that date as far back as the heyday of the Mongolian Empire in the thirteenth century.

Records in Mongolian languages, written variously in Mongol script, Phags-pa, Arabic letters, Chinese characters, and Manchu script.

Principal areas of interest
● Descriptive study of Mongolian languages
● Comparative linguistics of Mongolian languages
● History of Mongolian languages
● Mongolian philology
● Contact between Mongolian and surrounding languages

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