History of Japanese Language

An account of the Wa people in vol. 30 of the Weishu 魏書 (Book of Wei), Sanguozhi 三國志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), which is known in Japan as the "Giši Waǰinden 魏志倭人傳," is the oldest source that recorded dozens of Japanese words phonetically transcribed in Chinese characters. By analysing these Chinese transcriptions, this paper argued that in third-century Japanese, the bilabial obstruent /p/ (Modern Japanese /h/) was realised as a plosive [p] in the initial position and as a fricative [ɸ] in the medial position.
(This is an unpublished paper prepared for my presentation made on 25 January 2013 at a seminar of the Graduate school of Letters, Kyoto University.)

It has been repeatedly pointed out in the literature that the Old Japanese modal (past) auxiliary -kyer- has a ‘perfect’ homonym -k-yer-, which is a contraction of the auxiliary verb -ko- ‘come’ in the infinitive form followed by the stative auxiliary verb -ar- (-ki-ar- > -k-yer-) (Kinoshita et al. 2003: 259; Frellesvig 2010: 75–6; Vovin 2020: 879). As I have argued elsewhere (Kuznetsov 2021: 282–3), the two entities are in fact different stages of the same grammaticalisation path, with the ‘perfect’ usage diachronically preceding the modal (past) one. In this study, I examine how the two -k(-)yer- are used in the Man’yōshū and propose diagnostic environments where the modal (past) -kyer- can be distinguished from the ‘perfect’ -k-yer- (Section 2) and vice versa (Section 3). I also demonstrate that what has been previously referred to as the ‘perfect’ -k-yer- is actually a cluster of at least three different functions. In Section 4, I argue for a statistically significant correlation between the degree of grammaticalisation of a linguistic unit and the way it is spelt in the Man’yōshū. In Section 5, the results of this research are considered from a typological perspective.

* This research was supported by a grant from the Japan-Russia Youth Exchange Center (https://www.jrex.or.jp/).

As a result of grammaticalization two Japanese constructions containing a ventive (kuru) or an andative (iku) auxiliary verb have developed a wide range of usage types. The goal is to test a hypothesis that the more grammaticalized usage types appeared in the language earlier than the less grammaticalized ones. To test the hypothesis the following steps have been taken.

Firstly, I conducted a synchronic analysis of the two constructions in Modern Japanese, which consisted in 1) creating a classification of their usage types and 2) determining the degree of grammaticalization for each usage type. In order to do the latter, I explored the acceptability of -(r)are honorification of the two auxiliaries using a questionnaire survey. The experimental results indicate that the most grammaticalized usage type among those of kuru is the inverse type, while the most grammaticalized usage type of iku is the distributive. Also, the inverse type demonstrates a higher degree of grammaticalization than the distributive type.

Secondly, I compared these constructions with diachronically related constructions in Old (700–800 AD), Early Middle (800–1200 AD), Late Middle (LMJ, 1200–1600) and Modern (NJ, 1600–) Japanese. The data was collected from the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ) and earlier studies on the subject matter (Inoue 1962; Kojima 1998). Examples of the inverse usage type appear later in the corpus than any other usage type of kuru and the same holds for the distributive usage of iku. Crucially, the inverse type appears in the language earlier than the distributive type.

The results of the questionnaire survey and corpus analysis partially corroborate the diachronic hypothesis: as far as each verb is considered separately the most grammaticalized usage types prove to be the newest ones (the “inverse” usage for kuru and the distributive usage for iku). However, if the two verbs are put into the same category the diachronic hypothesis does not hold: the inverse usage type, which is the most grammaticalized among all, seems to have developed at an earlier stage than the distributive type, which is synchronically less grammaticalized. This indicates that the two constructions must have developed independently despite the fact that in some usages they can be viewed as members of a single grammatical category in Modern Japanese. Following (Shimizu 2010), I also hypothesize that the inverse type might have developed from the inchoative type.

This book represents the edition and translation of all known Eastern Old Japanese texts (songs in the Hitati Fudoki, Man'yōshū books fourteen, sixteen, and twenty, Azuma Asobi Uta, and one poem from the Kokin wakashū) with a cumulative dictionary and an English index to this dictionary.

The chapter addresses, after a brief historiographic overview of Ryukyuan historical linguistics, those topics on phonology (vowels, consonants, accent/tone), grammar (verbs, adjectives, case, kakari-musubi) and lexicon (pronouns, demonstratives) for which the contribution of Ryukyuan is, or has been claimed to be, important for the reconstruction of proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan (pJR), the common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan.

This article proposes an etymology of Middle Korean psʌr 'rice' that so far had no etymology. I suggest that Late Old Korean psar and Middle Korean psʌr 'rice' represent a loan from pre-proto-Japanese *wasar (> proto-Japanese *wasay > Old Japanese wase ~ wasa-) 'early rice' and this loan provides linguistic and philological evidence for this etymology.

The Old Japanese edicts in Shoku Nihongi have been intensively if not exhaustively studied. Remarkably, the readings that Motoori Norinaga assigned to them in the eighteenth century are essentially in place still today. Senmyō, due to Norinaga’s prescribing of the canon, has come to be the categorization for these sixty-two imperial rescripts. However, little to no attention has been paid either in Japan or the West to a larger number of Old Japanese edicts in senmyōtai appearing in the later National Histories. In addition, the four ninth-century official court histories inscribed in classical Chinese -- Nihon Kōki, Shoku Nihon Kōki, Nihon Montoku Tennō Jitsuroku, and Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku -- have received nothing like the interest that has been devoted over the years to Nihon Shoki and Shoku Nihongi. Stylistically these later senmyō are very much like those in Shoku Nihongi, inscribed in Old Japanese with large and small characters.

In existing reconstructions, Proto-Japanese (PJ) was thought to possess only one kind of consonant clusters, nasal–obstruent combinations (*NC), which developed into prenasalized consonants in all varieties including the well-attested Western Old Japanese (WOJ). However, a careful observation of problematic correspondences among different Japanese–Ryukyuan varieties suggests otherwise: it is actually able to show there were clusters consisting of a nasal and an approximant, two nasals, or even three consonants (*C₁NC₂) in Proto-Japanese. In this article, we present cases where such clusters should be reconstructed, along with the phonological processes closely related to the history of such clusters.

This is an early article that should be taken with a huge grain of salt. While I still believe that Japonic and  Austronesian are not genetically related, I no longer hold "Altaic" as a valid language family, either. My current thinking is that all parallels between Japonic and "Altaic" are either chance resemblances, or are due to the centuries of contact, mostly bbetween Japonic and Koreanic.

Word ama seems to be of not Japanese origin due to the following reason: kanji by which word ama is written (海人・ 海女・海士) are read according to irregular way of reading; in Okinawa such divers are named umi-n-chu, in Izu peninsula they are named kaito, both names mean “people of sea”, both are transparent for speakers of correspondent idioms, while word ama is completely dim from the point of view of Japanese language. From the other hand in Ainu language there are the following words: am-pa “to carry” lit.: “to grab and go”; am-us-pe – “crab”, lit.: “being that grabs”. It seems highly possible that the same root (i.e.: am “to grab”) is in word ama. Initially word ama had the following appearance: ʔam ʔwa “people who grab [shellfishes]” / “people with claws” and later it became ʔamma, ʔama and finally ama.

As a result of grammaticalization two Japanese constructions containing a ventive (kuru) or an andative (iku) auxiliary verb have developed a wide range of usage types. The goal is to test a hypothesis that the more grammaticalized usage types appeared in the language earlier than the less grammaticalized ones. The results of a questionnaire survey and diachronic corpus analysis show that as far as each verb is considered separately the most grammaticalized usage types are the newest ones; however, if the two verbs are put into the same category the diachronic hypothesis does not hold. This indicates that the two verbs must have developed independently despite the fact that in certain usage types they can be viewed as members of a paradigmatic opposition in contemporary Japanese.

This book presents one of the first Dutch-Japanese dictionaries together with the underlying Dutch original. The Japanese edition was published in 1822 by order of Okudaira Masataka (1781-1855), lord of the regional domain Nakatsu: "Nieuwe-gedruct bastaardt woorden-boek. Door Ooye Suntoo. Leefarts van den landsheer Nakats, t' Jedo". Okudaira had acquired Lodewijk Meijer's famous "Woordenboek" (printed in 12 editions ranging from 1663 to 1805) and decided to make the first part containing loanwords (bastaardt worden) available to Japanese scholars. The translation was done by Okudaira's physician Ōe Shunto (1787-1844), a specialist in Dutch-style medicine, under the supervision of the ingenious translator, linguist and scholar Baba Sajurō (1787-1822). In 1822 the dictionary was printed in Edo and distributed by Okudaira. Nowadays only a few copies are preserved. This edition presents the Dutch text (1688 edition) and the Japanese version in a parallel arrangement (pp. 63-440) in order to facilitate a better understanding of the success and limits Ōe Shunto's translation. An extensive preface (pp. 1-62) sheds light on the historical background, the persons involved in the translation process and the contents of both the Dutch original and the Japanese translation.
編者前書き
解説 中津『バスタールド辞書』の背景について
１ 中津藩における蘭学
2 『バスタールド辞書』出版の経緯
3 『バスタールド辞書』の編集に携わった人々
4 ローデウェイク・メイエルの『Woordenschat(語彙宝函)』
5 『バスタールド辞書』の諸相
史料および参考文献
バスタールド辞書(日本語版・オランダ語版)

Within the verbal morphology of Old Japanese (OJ) language, the verbs se- ‘to do’ and ko- ‘to come’ have a unique position. Resembling both the paradigms of vocalic and consonantal stems, they provide unique combinations of forms that might shed light on the diachronic development of the pre-OJ verb. The verb se- is especially complicated by its possible etymological connections to one of the copulas, as well as a focus particle, and shows a number of highly unexpected forms, including the main focus of the current research, two competing infinitival stems. This article aims to assemble current data on the morphology of this vital verb and discuss the possible hypotheses on the developments that led to the distribution depicted in written sources. Internal reconstruction , as well as Ryūkyūan comparative data are used in order to establish the most probable explanations.

"Sobre la etimología de mizu / mina- "agua" en japonés" "About the etymology of 'mizu' / 'mina' "water" in Old Japanese"

Modern Japanese mizu ( < myidu (old Japanese) < *min[a] tu (proto- Japanese) < *men[a] tu (proto-Japonic)) and modern Japanese mina- (< myina- (old Japanese) < *mina (proto-Japanese) < *mena (proto- Japonic)) are words obviously related. However, the history, evolution and composition of these two words present many different problems: the connection with para-Japonic *mey "river, water" attested by the Korean cronicle Samguk Sagi and with a supposed common Asian pool root *wer "water". In this paper, these and other problems are discussed, a analysis of pre-historic semantic elements is proposed and different theories are evaluated.