The Transmission of Writing Technology between Korea and Japan in the 8th Century

Reischauer Institute Japan Forum

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Korea Institute and the Japanese Language Program

Speaker: John B. Whitman, Professor of Linguistics, Cornell University

Moderator: Wesley Jacobsen, Professor of the Practice of the Japanese Language and Director, Japanese Language Program, Harvard University

Brief summary: 
Discussions of the genealogy of writing systems – and more broadly of the transcultural spread of literacy – tend to focus on the lineage of graphs. More recent work emphasizes the nature of writing and reading as a system, and the role in early transmission of what Gershovich (1979) termed alloglottography, or vernacular reading (Whitman et al 2010): reading prestige language texts in the reader’s vernacular language. Research since Kobayashi (2002) makes a strong case for a major role of Korean, specifically Sillan models for the technology of kunten 訓點  that provides the scaffolding for vernacular reading in Japan, that is kanbun kundoku. This talk updates that case, and reopens the longer-standing and more vexed debate over abbreviated sinographs, specifically Korean kugyŏlcha 口訣字and katakana.

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