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Old Japanese

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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other Template:Nihongo is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven.

Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, which is a writing system that employs Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels.

As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order, adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modified and auxiliary verbs and particles appended to the main verb. Unlike in later periods, Old Japanese adjectives could be used uninflected to modify following nouns. Old Japanese verbs had a rich system of tense and aspect suffixes.

Sources and datingEdit

File:Genryaku Manyosyu.JPG
11th-century annotated manuscript of the Man'yōshū

Old Japanese is usually defined as the language of the Nara period (710–794), when the capital was Heijō-kyō (now Nara).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn That is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the Kojiki (712). The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki (720) and the Man'yōshū (Template:Circa), a compilation of over 4,500 poems.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Shorter samples are 25 poems in the Fudoki (720) and the 21 poems of the Bussokuseki-kahi (Template:Circa). The latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas the oldest surviving manuscripts of all the other texts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors.Template:Sfn Prose texts are more limited but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately than verse texts do. The most important are the 27 Template:Tlit ('liturgies') recorded in the Engishiki (compiled in 927) and the 62 Template:Tlit (literally 'announced order', meaning imperial edicts) recorded in the Shoku Nihongi (797).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts, such as the "Wei Zhi" portion of the Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd century AD), but the transcriptions by Chinese scholars are unreliable.Template:Sfn The oldest surviving inscriptions from Japan, dating from the 5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the Suda Hachiman Shrine Mirror, the Inariyama Sword, and the Eta Funayama Sword. Those inscriptions are written in Classical Chinese but contain several Japanese names that were transcribed phonetically using Chinese characters.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Such inscriptions became more common from the Suiko period (592–628).Template:Sfn Those fragments are usually considered a form of Old Japanese.Template:Sfn

Of the 10,000 paper records kept at Shōsōin, only two, dating from about 762, are in Old Japanese.Template:Sfn Over 150,000 wooden tablets (Template:Tlit) dating from the late 7th and early 8th century have been unearthed. The tablets bear short texts, often in Old Japanese of a more colloquial style than the polished poems and liturgies of the primary corpus.Template:Sfn

Writing systemEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Artifacts inscribed with Chinese characters dated as early as the 1st century AD have been found in Japan, but detailed knowledge of the script seems not to have reached the islands until the early 5th century. According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, the script was brought by scholars from Baekje (southwestern Korea).Template:Sfn The earliest texts found in Japan were written in Classical Chinese, probably by immigrant scribes. Later "hybrid" texts show the influence of Japanese grammar, such as the word order (for example, the verb being placed after the object).Template:Sfn

Chinese and Koreans had long used Chinese characters to write non-Chinese terms and proper names phonetically by selecting characters for Chinese words that sounded similar to each syllable. Koreans also used the characters phonetically to write Korean particles and inflections that were added to Chinese texts to allow them to be read as Korean (Idu script). In Japan, the practice was developed into Template:Tlit, a complete script for the language that used Chinese characters phonetically, which was the ancestor of modern kana syllabaries.Template:Sfn This system was already in use in the verse parts of the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

For example, the first line of the first poem in the Kojiki was written with five characters:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}}
Middle ChineseTemplate:Efn Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Old Japanese Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
eight-cloud rise.Template:Abbr
'many clouds rising'

This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds (Template:Tlit) was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the Man'yōshū (Template:Circa).Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

SyllablesEdit

In Template:Tlit, each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis reveals that 88 syllables were distinguished in early Old Japanese, typified by the Kojiki songs:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Syllables in early Old Japanese, with common man'yōganaTemplate:Efn
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Tlit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}

As in later forms of Japanese, the system has gaps where yi and wu might be expected. Shinkichi Hashimoto discovered in 1917 that many syllables that have a modern i, e or o occurred in two forms, termed types Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn These are denoted by subscripts 1 and 2 respectively in the above table. The syllables mo1 and mo2 are not distinguished in the slightly later Nihon Shoki and Man'yōshū, reducing the syllable count to 87.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Some authors also believe that two forms of po were distinguished in the Kojiki.Template:Sfn All of these pairs had merged in the Early Middle Japanese of the Heian period.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The consonants g, z, d, b and r did not occur at the start of a word.Template:Sfn Conversely, syllables consisting of a single vowel were restricted to word-initial position, with a few exceptions such as Template:Tlit 'oar', Template:Tlit 'to lie down', Template:Tlit 'to regret' (with conclusive Template:Tlit), Template:Tlit 'to age' and Template:Tlit, the adnominal form of the verb Template:Tlit 'to plant'.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Alexander Vovin argues that the non-initial syllables i and u in these cases should be read as Old Japanese syllables yi and wu.Template:Sfn

Frequencies of Old Japanese syllables in the Man'yōshūTemplate:Sfn
- k- g- s- z- t- d- n- p- b- m- y- r- w-
-a 4612 7616 3358 3473 255 5212 734 5891 6450 2195 6018 3184 4213 2581
-i1 3679 5771 762 8070 350 2195 335 7101 3489 585 5818 3901 270
-i2 690 404 756 140 589
-u 1556 4855 444 2507 904 4417 1065 1449 2905 389 2692 2190 3656
-e1 45 1145 13 1220 210 2831 727 1425 1101 203 318 644 2598 342
-e2 1011 489 959 287 1406
-o1 2441 1995 138 536 8 485 269 583 1870 75 7788 871 215 3657
-o2 3407 436 1206 122 5848 882 9618 1312 1177

The rare vowel Template:Tlit almost always occurred at the end of a morpheme. Most occurrences of Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit were also at the end of a morpheme.Template:Sfn

The Template:Tlit typically did not distinguish voiced from voiceless consonants, and wrote some syllables with characters that had fewer strokes and were based on older Chinese pronunciations imported via the Korean peninsula. For example,

TranscriptionEdit

Several different notations for the type A/B distinction are found in the literature, including:Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Common notations for the type A/B distinction
index notation i1 i2 e1 e2 o1 o2
Kindaichi, Miller, Tōdō i ï e ë o ö
Vovin i ï e ɛ o ə
modified Mathias–Miller î ï ê ë ô ö
Yale (Martin) yi iy ye ey wo o̠
Unger, Frellesvig and Whitman i wi ye e wo o

PhonologyEdit

There is no consensus on the pronunciation of the syllables distinguished by Template:Tlit.Template:Sfn One difficulty is that the Middle Chinese pronunciations of the characters used are also disputed, and since the reconstruction of their phonetic values is partly based on later Sino-Japanese pronunciations, there is a danger of circular reasoning.Template:Sfn Additional evidence has been drawn from phonological typology, subsequent developments in the Japanese pronunciation, and the comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages.Template:Sfn

ConsonantsEdit

Miyake reconstructed the following consonant inventory:Template:Sfn

Old Japanese consonants
Labial Coronal Palatal Velar
Obstruent Template:Small *Template:IPA link *Template:IPA link *Template:IPA link *Template:IPA link
Template:Small main}} main}} main}} main}}
Nasal *Template:IPA link *Template:IPA link
Liquid *{{#invoke:IPA|main}}
Approximant *Template:IPA link *Template:IPA link

The voiceless obstruents {{#invoke:IPA|main}} had voiced prenasalized counterparts {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfn Prenasalization was still present in the late 17th century (according to the Korean textbook Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ) and is found in some Modern Japanese and Ryukyuan dialects, but it has disappeared in modern Japanese except for the intervocalic nasal stop allophone {{#invoke:IPA|main}} of {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfn The sibilants {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may have been palatalized before e and i.Template:Sfn

Comparative evidence from Ryukyuan languages suggests that Old Japanese p reflected an earlier voiceless bilabial stop *p.Template:Sfn There is general agreement that word-initial p had become a voiceless bilabial fricative {{#invoke:IPA|main}} by Early Modern Japanese, as suggested by its transcription as f in later Portuguese works and as ph or hw in the Korean textbook Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ. In Modern Standard Japanese, it is romanized as h and has different allophones before various vowels. In medial position, it became {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in Early Middle Japanese and has since disappeared except before a.Template:Sfn Many scholars, following Shinkichi Hashimoto, argue that p had already lenited to {{#invoke:IPA|main}} by the Old Japanese period, but Miyake argues that it was still a stop.Template:Sfn

VowelsEdit

The Chinese characters chosen to write syllables with the Old Japanese vowel a suggest that it was an open unrounded vowel {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfn The vowel u was a close back rounded vowel {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, unlike the unrounded {{#invoke:IPA|main}} of Modern Standard Japanese.Template:Sfn

Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the A/B distinctions made in Template:Tlit. The issue is hotly debated, and there is no consensus.Template:Sfn The traditional view, first advanced by Kyōsuke Kindaichi in 1938, is that there were eight pure vowels, with the type B vowels being more central than their type A counterparts.Template:Sfn Others, beginning in the 1930s but more commonly since the work of Roland Lange in 1968, have attributed the type A/B distinction to medial or final glides {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The diphthong proposals are often connected to hypotheses about pre-Old Japanese, but all exhibit an uneven distribution of glides.Template:Sfn

Examples of reconstructions of type A/B distinctionsTemplate:Sfn
i1 i2 e1 e2 o1 o2 Author
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Kikusawa (1935)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Kindaichi (1938), Miller (1967)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Arisaka (1955)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Hattori (1958)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Lange (1968, 1973)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Unger (1977), Frellesvig and Whitman (2008)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Ōno (1982)
main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} main}} Miyake (2003)

The distinction between mo1 and mo2 was seen only in Kojiki and vanished afterwards. The distribution of syllables suggests that there may have once been *po1, *po2, *bo1 and *bo2.Template:Sfn If that was true, a distinction was made between Co1 and Co2 for all consonants C except for w. Some take that as evidence that Co1 may have represented Cwo.Template:Citation needed

AccentEdit

Although modern Japanese dialects have pitch accent systems, they were usually not shown in Template:Tlit. However, in one part of the Nihon Shoki, the Chinese characters appeared to have been chosen to represent a pitch pattern similar to that recorded in the Ruiju Myōgishō, a dictionary that was compiled in the late 11th century. In that section, a low-pitch syllable was represented by a character with the Middle Chinese level tone, and a high pitch was represented by a character with one of the other three Middle Chinese tones. (A similar division was used in the tone patterns of Chinese poetry, which were emulated by Japanese poets in the late Asuka period.) Thus, it appears that the Old Japanese accent system was similar to that of Early Middle Japanese.Template:Sfn

PhonotacticsEdit

Old Japanese words consisted of one or more open syllables of the form (C)V, subject to additional restrictions:

  • Words did not begin with r or the voiced obstruents b, d, z, and g, with the exception of a few loanwords.Template:Sfn
  • A bare vowel did not occur except for word-initially: vowel sequences were not permitted.Template:Sfn

In 1934, Arisaka Hideyo proposed a set of phonological restrictions permitted in a single morpheme. Arisaka's Law states that -o2 was generally not found in the same morpheme as -a, -o1 or -u. Some scholars have interpreted that as a vestige of earlier vowel harmony, but it is very different from patterns that are observed in, for example, the Turkic languages.Template:Sfn

MorphophonemicsEdit

Two adjacent vowels fused to form a new vowel when a consonant was lost within a morpheme, or a compound was lexicalized as a single morpheme. The following fusions occurred:

i1 + a → e1
Further examples are provided by verbs ending with the retrospective auxiliary -Template:Tlit and the verbal suffixes Template:Tlit 'conjecture' or Template:Tlit 'exist':Template:Sfn
i1 + o2 → e1
a + i → e2
o2 + i → e2
o2 + i → i2
u + i → i2
u + a → o1
u + o → o1

Adjacent vowels belonging to different morphemes, or pairs of vowels for which none of the above fusions applied, were reduced by deleting one or other of the vowels.Template:Sfn Most often, the first of the adjacent vowels was deleted:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The exception to this rule occurred when the first of the adjacent vowels was the sole vowel of a monosyllabic morpheme (usually a clitic), in which case the other vowel was deleted:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Cases where both outcomes are found are attributed to different analyses of morpheme boundaries:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Pre-Old JapaneseEdit

Internal reconstruction suggests that the stage preceding Old Japanese had fewer consonants and vowels.Template:Sfn

ConsonantsEdit

Internal reconstruction suggests that the Old Japanese voiced obstruents, which always occurred in medial position, arose from the weakening of earlier nasal syllables before voiceless obstruents:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In some cases, such as Template:Tlit 'grain', Template:Tlit 'rudder' and Template:Tlit 'knee', there is no evidence for a preceding vowel, which leads some scholars to posit final nasals at the earlier stage.Template:Sfn

Some linguists suggest that Old Japanese w and y derive, respectively, from *b and *d at some point before the oldest inscriptions in the 6th century.Template:Sfn Southern Ryukyuan varieties such as Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni have {{#invoke:IPA|main}} corresponding to Old Japanese w, but only Yonaguni (at the far end of the chain) has {{#invoke:IPA|main}} where Old Japanese has y:Template:Sfn

However, many linguists, especially in Japan, argue that the Southern Ryukyuan voiced stops are local innovations,Template:Sfn adducing a variety of reasons.Template:Sfn

Some supporters of *b and *d also add *z and *g, which both disappeared in Old Japanese, for reasons of symmetry.Template:Sfn However, there is very little Japonic evidence for them.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

VowelsEdit

As seen in Template:Section link, many occurrences of the rare vowels i2, e1, e2 and o1 arise from fusion of more common vowels. Similarly, many nouns having independent forms ending in -i2 or -e2 also have bound forms ending in a different vowel, which are believed to be older.Template:Sfn For example, Template:Tlit 'rice wine' has the form Template:Tlit in compounds such as Template:Tlit 'sake cup'.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The following alternations are the most common:

The widely accepted analysis of this situation is that the most common Old Japanese vowels a, u, i1 and o2 reflect earlier *a, *u, *i and *ə respectively, and the other vowels reflect fusions of these vowels:Template:Sfn

  • i2 < *ui, *əi
  • e1 < *ia, *iə
  • e2 < *ai
  • o1 < *ua, *uə

Thus the above independent forms of nouns can be derived from the bound form and a suffix *-i.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The origin of this suffix is debated, with one proposal being the ancestor of the obsolescent particle Template:Tlit (whose function is also uncertain), and another being a weakened consonant (suggested by proposed Korean cognates).Template:Sfn

There are also alternations suggesting e2 < *əi, such as Template:Tlit/Template:Tlit 'back' and Template:Tlit/Template:Tlit 'bud'.Template:Sfn Some authors believe that they belong to an earlier layer than i2 < *əi, but others reconstruct two central vowels *ə and *ɨ, which merged everywhere except before *i.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Other authors attribute the variation to different reflexes in different dialects and note that *əi yields e in Ryukyuan languages.Template:Sfn

Some instances of word-final e1 and o1 are difficult to analyse as fusions, and some authors postulate *e and *o to account for such cases.Template:Sfn A few alternations, as well as comparisons with Eastern Old Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, suggest that *e and *o also occurred in non-word-final positions at an earlier stage but were raised in such positions to i1 and u, respectively, in central Old Japanese.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The mid vowels are also found in some early Template:Tlit and in some modern Japanese dialects.Template:Sfn

GrammarEdit

As in later forms of Japanese, Old Japanese word order was predominantly subject–object–verb, with adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modify and auxiliary verbs and particles consistently appended to the main verb.Template:Sfn

Template:Interlinear

Nominals tended to have simple morphology and little fusion, in contrast to the complex inflectional morphology of verbs.Template:Sfn Japanese at all stages has used prefixes with both nouns and verbs, but Old Japanese also used prefixes for grammatical functions later expressed using suffixes.Template:Sfn This is atypical of SOV languages, and may suggest that the language was in the final stage of a transition from a SVO typology.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

NominalsEdit

PronounsEdit

Many Old Japanese pronouns had both a short form and a longer form with attached Template:Tlit of uncertain etymology. If the pronoun occurred in isolation, the longer form was used. The short form was used with genitive particles or in nominal compounds, but in other situations either form was possible.Template:Sfn

Personal pronouns were distinguished by taking the genitive marker Template:Tlit, in contrast to the marker Template:Tlit used with demonstratives and nouns.Template:Sfn

Demonstratives often distinguished proximal (to the speaker) and non-proximal forms marked with Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit respectively. Many forms had corresponding interrogative forms Template:Tlit.Template:Sfn

Old Japanese demonstrativesTemplate:Sfn
Proximal Non-proximal Interrogative
Nominal Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Location Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Direction Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Degree Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Manner Template:Tlit Template:Tlit –
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Time – – Template:Tlit

In Early Middle Japanese, the non-proximal Template:Tlit forms were reinterpreted as hearer-based (medial), and the speaker-based forms were divided into proximal Template:Tlit forms and distal Template:Tlit/Template:Tlit forms, yielding the three-way distinction that is still found in Modern Japanese.Template:Sfn

NumeralsEdit

In later texts, such as the Man'yōshū, numerals were sometimes written using Chinese logographs, which give no indication of pronunciation.Template:Sfn The following numerals are attested phonographically:Template:Sfn

Phonographically attested Old Japanese cardinal numerals
1 Template:Tlit 10 Template:Tlit 100 Template:Tlit 1000 Template:Tlit 10,000 Template:Tlit
2 Template:Tlit 20 Template:Tlit
3 Template:Tlit 30 Template:Tlit
4 Template:Tlit 40 Template:Tlit
5 Template:Tlit 50 (Template:Tlit) 500 Template:Tlit
6 Template:Tlit
7 Template:Tlit 70 (Template:Tlit)
8 Template:Tlit 80 Template:Tlit 800 Template:Tlit
9 Template:Tlit

The forms for 50 and 70 are known only from Heian texts.Template:Sfn

There is a single example of a phonographically recorded compound number, in Bussokuseki 2:Template:Sfn

Template:Interlinear

This example uses the classifiers Template:Tlit (used with tens and hundreds) and Template:Tlit (used with digits and hundreds).Template:Sfn

The only attested ordinal numeral is Template:Tlit 'first'.Template:Sfn In Classical Japanese, the other ordinal numerals had the same form as cardinals. This may also have been the case for Old Japanese, but there are no textual occurrences to settle the question.Template:Sfn

ClassifiersEdit

The classifier system of Old Japanese was much less developed than at later stages of the language, and classifiers were not obligatory between numerals and nouns.Template:Sfn A few bound forms are attested phonographically: Template:Tlit (used with digits and hundreds), Template:Tlit (used with tens and hundreds), Template:Tlit (for people), Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit (for grassy plants) and Template:Tlit (for days).Template:Sfn Many ordinary nouns could also be used either freely or as classifiers.Template:Sfn

PrefixesEdit

Old Japanese nominal prefixes included honorific Template:Tlit, intensive Template:Tlit from Template:Tlit 'truth', diminutive or affectionate Template:Tlit and a prefix Template:Tlit of uncertain function.Template:Sfn

SuffixesEdit

Old Japanese nominals had suffixes or particles to mark diminutives, plural number and case. When multiple suffixes occurred, case markers came last.Template:Sfn Unmarked nouns (but not pronouns) were neutral as to number.Template:Sfn The main plural markers were the general-purpose Template:Tlit and two markers restricted to animate nouns, Template:Tlit (limited to five words) and Template:Tlit.Template:Sfn

The main case particles wereTemplate:Sfn

The subject of a sentence was usually not marked.Template:Sfn There are a few cases in the Senmyō of subjects of active verbs marked with a suffix Template:Tlit, which is thought to be an archaism that was obsolete in the Old Japanese period.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

VerbsEdit

Old Japanese had a richer system of verbal suffixes than later forms of Japanese.Template:Sfn Old Japanese verbs used inflection for modal and conjunctional purposes.Template:Sfn Other categories, such as voice, tense, aspect and mood, were expressed by using optional suffixed auxiliaries, which were also inflected:Template:Sfn

Template:Interlinear

Inflected formsEdit

As in later forms of Japanese, Old Japanese verbs had a large number of inflected forms. In traditional Japanese grammar, they are represented by six forms (Template:Tlit, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) from which all the others may be derived in a similar fashion to the principal parts used for Latin and other languages:Template:Sfn

Template:Wikt-lang (irrealis)
This form never occurs in isolation but only as a stem to which several particles and auxiliaries are attached.Template:Sfn This stem originated from resegmentation of an initial {{#invoke:IPA|main}} of several suffixes (auxiliary verbs) as part of the stem.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (adverbial, infinitive)
This form was used as the infinitive.Template:Sfn It also served as a stem for auxiliaries expressing tense and aspect.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (conclusive, predicative)
This form was used as the main verb concluding a declarative sentence.Template:Sfn It was used also before modal extensions, final particles, and some conjunctional particles.Template:Sfn The conclusive form merged with the attributive form by about 1600, but the distinction is preserved in the Ryukyuan languages and the Hachijōjima dialects.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (attributive, adnominal)
This form was used as the verb in a nominalized clause or a clause modifying a noun.Template:Sfn It was also used before most conjunctional particles.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (realis, exclamatory, subjunctive)
This form was used as the main verb in an exclamatory sentence or as the verb in an adverbial clause.Template:Sfn It also served as a stem for the particles Template:Tlit (provisional) and Template:Tlit (concessive).Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (imperative)
This form expressed the imperative mood.Template:Sfn

This system has been criticized because the six forms are not equivalent, with one being solely a combinatory stem, three solely word forms, and two being both.Template:Sfn It also fails to capture some inflected forms.Template:Sfn However, five of the forms are basic inflected verb forms, and the system also describes almost all extended forms consistently.Template:Sfn

Conjugation classesEdit

Template:See also Old Japanese verbs are classified into eight conjugation classes that were originally defined for the classical Japanese of the late Heian period. In each class, the inflected forms showed a different pattern of rows of a kana table. These rows correspond to the five vowels of later Japanese, but the discovery of the A/B distinction in Old Japanese showed a more refined picture.Template:Sfn

Three of the classes are grouped as consonant bases:Template:Sfn

Template:Wikt-lang (quadrigrade)
This class of regular consonant-base verbs includes approximately 75% of verbs.Template:Sfn The class is so named because the inflections in later forms of Japanese span four rows of a Template:Tlit table, corresponding to four vowels. However, the discovery of the A/B distinction revealed that this class actually involved five different vowels in Old Japanese, with distinct vowels e1 and e2 in the exclamatory and imperative forms respectively.Template:Sfn The bases are almost all of the form (C)VC-, with the final consonant being p, t, k, b, g, m, s or r.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (n-irregular)
The three n-base verbs form a class of their own: Template:Tlit 'die', Template:Tlit 'depart' and the auxiliary Template:Tlit expressing completion of an action. They are often described as a "hybrid" conjugation because the adnominal and exclamatory forms followed a similar pattern to vowel-base verbs.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (r-irregular)
The irregular r-base verbs were Template:Tlit 'be, exist' and other verbs that incorporated it, as well as Template:Tlit 'be sitting', which became the existential verb Template:Tlit in later forms of Japanese.Template:Sfn
Conjugation of consonant-base verbsTemplate:Sfn
Verb class Irrealis Infinitive Conclusive Adnominal Exclamatory Imperative Gloss
quadrigrade Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'write'
n-irregular Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'die'
r-irregular Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'be, exist'

The distinctions between i1 and i2 and between e1 and e2 were eliminated after s, z, t, d, n, y, r and w.

There were five vowel-base conjugation classes:

Template:Wikt-lang (lower bigrade or e-bigrade)
The largest regular vowel-base class ended in e2 and included approximately 20% of verbs.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (upper bigrade or i-bigrade)
This class of bases ended in i2 and included about 30 verbs.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (upper monograde or i-monograde)
This class contains about 10 verbs of the form (C)i1-. Some monosyllabic i-bigrade verbs had already shifted to this class by Old Japanese, and the rest followed in Early Middle Japanese.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (k-irregular)
This class consists of the single verb Template:Tlit 'come'.Template:Sfn
Template:Wikt-lang (s-irregular)
This class consists of the single verb Template:Tlit 'do'.Template:Sfn

Early Middle Japanese also had a Template:Wikt-lang (lower monograde or e-monograde) category, consisting of a single verb Template:Tlit 'kick', which reflected the Old Japanese lower bigrade verb Template:Tlit.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Conjugation of vowel-base verbsTemplate:Sfn
Verb class Irrealis Infinitive Conclusive Adnominal Exclamatory Imperative Gloss
e-bigrade Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'open'
i-bigrade Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'arise'
monograde Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'see'
k-irregular Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'come'
s-irregular Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'do'

The bigrade verbs seem to belong to a later layer than other verbs.Template:Sfn Many e-bigrade verbs are transitive or intransitive counterparts of consonant-base verbs.Template:Sfn In contrast, i-bigrade verbs tend to be intransitive.Template:Sfn Some bigrade bases also appear to reflect pre-Old-Japanese adjectives with vowel stems combined with an inchoative *-i suffix:Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

CopulasEdit

Old Japanese had two copulas with limited and irregular conjugations:

Old Japanese copulasTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Infinitive Adnominal Gerund
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit

The Template:Tlit form had a limited distribution in Old Japanese, and disappeared in Early Middle Japanese. In later Japanese, the Template:Tlit form became Template:Tlit, but these forms have otherwise endured to modern Japanese.Template:Sfn

Verbal prefixesEdit

Japanese has used verbal prefixes conveying emphasis at all stages, but Old Japanese also had prefixes expressing grammatical functions, such as reciprocal or cooperative Template:Tlit (from Template:Tlit 'meet, join'), stative Template:Tlit (from Template:Tlit 'exist'), potential Template:Tlit (from Template:Tlit 'get') and prohibitive Template:Tlit, which was often combined with a suffix Template:Tlit.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Verbal auxiliariesEdit

Old Japanese had a rich system of auxiliary elements that could be suffixed to verb stems and were themselves inflected, usually following the regular consonant-stem or vowel-stem paradigms, but never including the full range of stems found with full verbs.Template:Sfn Many of these disappeared in later stages of the language.Template:Sfn

Tense and aspect were indicated by suffixes attached to the infinitive.Template:Sfn The tense suffixes were:

The perfective suffixes were Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn During the Late Middle Japanese period, the tense and aspect suffixes were replaced with a single past-tense suffix Template:Tlit, derived from Template:Tlit + Template:Tlit 'exist' > Template:Tlit.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Other auxiliaries were attached to the irrealis stem:

AdjectivesEdit

Old Japanese adjectives were originally nominals and, unlike in later periods, could be used uninflected to modify following nouns.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn They could also be conjugated as stative verbs in two classes:Template:Sfn

Conjugation of stative verbsTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Class Stem Infinitive Conclusive Adnominal Exclamatory Gloss
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'hard'
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'precious'

The second class, with stems ending in Template:Tlit, differed only in the conclusive form, whose suffix Template:Tlit was dropped by haplology.Template:Sfn Adjectives of this class tended to express more subjective qualities.Template:Sfn Many of them were formed from a verbal stem by the addition of a suffix Template:Tlit of uncertain origin.Template:Sfn

Towards the end of the Old Japanese period, a more expressive conjugation was formed by adding the verb Template:Tlit 'be' to the infinitive, with the sequence Template:Tlit reducing to Template:Tlit:Template:Sfn

Innovative conjugation of stative verbsTemplate:Sfn
Irrealis Infinitive Adnominal Gloss
Template:Tlit Template:Tlit Template:Tlit 'hard'

Many adjectival nouns of Early Middle Japanese were based on Old Japanese adjectives that were formed with suffixes Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit or Template:Tlit.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Focus constructionEdit

Old Japanese made extensive use of a focus construction, known as Template:Tlit ('hanging-tying'), that established a copular relation between a constituent marked with a focus particle and a predicate in the adnominal form, instead of the conclusive form usually found in declarative sentences.Template:Sfn The marked constituent was also typically fronted in comparison with its position in a corresponding declarative sentence.Template:Sfn The semantic effect (though not the syntactic structure) was often similar to a cleft sentence in English:Template:Sfn

Template:Interlinear

The particles involved were

The focus construction was common in Old Japanese and Classical Japanese, but disappeared after the Early Middle Japanese period.Template:Sfn It is still found in Ryukyuan languages, but is much less common there than in Old Japanese.Template:Sfn

DialectsEdit

Template:See also

File:Nara and Azuma map.svg
The capital (Nara) and the eastern provinces (hatched) in the 8th century

Although most Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Nara court in central Japan, some sources come from eastern Japan:Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

  • 230 Template:Tlit 'eastern songs', making up volume 14 of the Man'yōshū,
  • 93 (101 according to some authors) Template:Tlit 'borderguard songs' in volume 20 of the Man'yōshū, and
  • 9 songs in the Hitachi Fudoki (recorded 714–718, but the oldest extant manuscripts date from the late 17th century and show significant corruptionTemplate:Sfn).

They record Eastern Old Japanese dialects,Template:Sfn with several differences from central Old Japanese (also known as Western Old Japanese):

  • There is no type A/B distinction on front vowels i and e, but o1 and o2 are distinguished.Template:Sfn
  • Pre-Old Japanese *ia yielded a in the east, where central Old Japanese has e1.Template:Sfn
  • The adnominal form of consonant-base verbs ended in -o1, but central Old Japanese ended in -u for both the adnominal and the conclusive forms.Template:Sfn A similar difference is preserved in Ryukyuan languages, suggesting that central Old Japanese had innovated by merging those endings.Template:Sfn
  • The imperative form of vowel-base verbs attached Template:Tlit, instead of the Template:Tlit used in central Old Japanese.Template:Sfn This difference has persisted into modern eastern and western dialects.Template:Sfn
  • There was a group of distinctive negative auxiliaries Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit, but they do not seem to be the source of the different negatives in the modern eastern and western Japanese dialects.Template:Sfn
  • A significant number of words borrowed from Ainu.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

Template:Notelist

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

Works citedEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

  • {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }} Old Japanese poems, in original script and transcription, with morphological and syntactic analysis, and a linked dictionary.

Template:Altaic languages Template:Japonic languages Template:Japanese language Template:Authority control

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