Old Japanese

本稿では、上代中央語におけるヤ行のエ・ア行のエの区別、すなわちエ甲・エ乙の区別との歴史的な関係を中心に、日琉祖語に遡れるという宮古語来間方言の保守的な要素を紹介する。その環境は主に宮古祖語の*a で始まる二重母音である。
他の宮古諸方言における二重母音ai が来間方言の長母音eːに相当する場合を検討する。宮古諸方言と上代中央語との比較を通して、areː「洗え」のように、来間方言の命令形はエ甲に対応する痕跡を保っていると論じる。一方、宮古語多良間方言において長母音eːが現れるのは接続形 ― 已然形対応形 ― である。これは上代中央語の命令形にエ甲、已然形にエ乙が現れていたような、日琉祖語から継承した区別と思われる。宮古祖語で前者を*aje、後者を*ae と再建する。さらに、来間方言の受身・可能形に-ari と-reːという２形式があり、これらも甲乙の区別に相当し、上代の-ru と-je 形式に対応しているとする。

This dissertation aims to decipher the consonants system of Old Korean in Baekje which is based upon the phonological correspondences of Sinographic readings which can be attested in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese chronicles, epigraphs and wooden tablets.
  Chapter Ⅰ firstly discusses the histrory of phonological studies on Old Korean in Baekje from the late of 19th century to the contemporary era which can be divided into two phases: The Embryonic Phase (1879~1970) and The Development Phase (1971~). The Embryonic Phase started with the toponymy research of Korean Peninsula by Japanese scholars during the Japanese colonial period. The Development Phase (1971~) was initiated by the publications of Baekjemunhwa, Baekjeyeongu, MahanBaekjemunhwa in South Korea, mostly including some short introductory papers, Samguksaki(1145) Jiriji based studies, Nihonshoi(720) based studied, and all chronicles combined studies, epigraphs and wooden tablets based studies.
  Secondly, the detailed methodologies are proposed, which include the background of history studies on Baekje; the background of historical linguistics which is the theoretical basis of the phonological correspondences of Sinographic readings in lexicons of Old Korean in Baekje; the entire sequence of this study including the textual research of all first-hand materials, the collection of all Baekjeic lexicons and phonographic morphemes, the match-made of the phonological correspondences of Sinographic readings in Old Korean in Baekje, based on archaeological, historical, toponymy studies, and the phonological analysis of Sinographic readings.
  In Chapter Ⅱ, textual research was carried out thoroughly. The materials used include all Baekjeic first-hand materials of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Chronicles from the late 3rd century to 13th century, as well as epigraph materials and wooden tablets in both China and Korea. Also, Old Korean Proper Nouns such as place names, personal names, and Kings names were collected to pick out all phonographs of Old Korean in Baekje for phonological analysis in the phonological correspondences of Sinographic readings.
  Moreover, to decipher the consonants system of Old Korean in Baekje, the explanations of all phonographs in Guangyun are based on Yu(2008), the Chinese phonological systems include the Minimal Old Chinese, Late Han, Middle Chinese which are mainly based on the reconstructions in Schuessler(2009). The historical Korean phonological systems include Old Korean, Middle Korean, Middle Sino-Korean which are mainly based on the studies of Park(1971), Lee(1972, 1998, 2011), Lee(1995), Kwon(1997ㄴ, 2005, 2009ㄱ, 2009ㄴ), Ito(2007). The historical Japanese systems include archaic kana orthography studies, Old Japanese and Ko-on, Go-on and Kan-on of Sino-Japanese which are mainly based on ōya(1911), Vovin(2009), Miyake(2003a), Frellesvig(2010), Tsukishima(1995), Numoto(1986, 1997).
  At last in Chapter Ⅱ, there are 7 consonants as initials in a syllable that can be deciphered: voiceless bilabial plosive **p-, voiceless alveolar dental **t-,  voiceless velar **k-,  bilabial nasal **m-, alveolar dental nasal **n-,  voiceless alveolar dental fricative **s-, and voiceless alveolar affricate **ts-. The oppositions of voicing and the oppositions of aspiration cannot be attested. The glottal initial /ʔ/ which is reconstructed in Middle Chinese is deciphered as Zero **Ø in the phonographs of Baekje.
  Chapter Ⅲ deciphers the consonant **-r- as a liquid that can be attested between  syllables, instead of an initial consonant or coda in a word. And the elimination of /-r-/ as a special phonological change is well attested in old Korean lexicons including Baekje’s.
  Chapter Ⅳ deciphers the consonants **-l, **-s, **-n, **-ŋ as coda in a syllable in Old Korean in Baekje. Moreover, the lateral **-l is explained as the elimination of vowel V2 and the unrelease of C2 in a C1V1.C2V2 word structure. And unreleased voiceless alveolar dental fricative **-s is explained as the elimination of vowel V2 and the unrelease of C2 in a C1V1.C2V2 type word or as a genitive case between two words. The change of syllabic structural in C1V1.C2V2 type word is explained as a result of language contact with Chinese and Chinese characters whose syllabic structure is (C)(G)VC.
  Chapter Ⅴ concludes with an appeal for the trilateral cooperation from Chinese, Korean and Japanese historical phonology studies which include the sounds of Old, Late Han, Middle Chinese, Sino-Korean studies, and Sino-Japanese studies, as well as the interdisciplinary work on Archaeology, History, Toponymy to decipher the phonological systems of Old Korean. Meanwhile, the limitations of this study which include recriticizing all first-hand materials, reevaluating and developing the methodology in old Korean phonology studies are reflected. Finally the future research outlook on old Korean studies is put forward reasonably.

The first complete English translation of the 62 imperial edicts in Shoku Nihongi.

Available as a paperback at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1983595454

Available as a Kindle ebook at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+imperial+edicts+in&rh=n%3A154606011&ref=nb_sb_noss

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/).

The last Empress of Nara Japan, Kōken/Shōtoku Tennō 孝謙/称徳天皇, was a formidably powerful ruler. Daughter of the great Buddhist Emperor Shōmu 聖武天皇 and his Fujiwara wife Kōmyō 光明皇后, she was an adroit politician who overcame numerous challenges to her rule by male aristocrats. As a devout Buddhist nun, she wrestled with the implications of her faith for the political legitimacy of the imperial house. Her numerous edicts bear witness to the sophistication of the intellectuals at her court who tried to reconcile the Buddhist doctrine of divine protection of the state with the native tradition of godlike sovereignty and with elements of classical Chinese ideas concerning the proper function of the ruler.

Paperback -- https://www.amazon.com/Edicts-Last-Empress-749-770-Translation/dp/1500896020/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+edicts+of+the+last+empress&qid=1560007652&s=books&sr=1-1

Ebook - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDQKZXB

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 paper aims to discuss the linguistic features of Three Han's toponyms (country names Mainly in Mahan 馬韓 and Byeonjin 弁辰) which are based upon the historical records in San Guo zhi 三國志․Wei zhi 魏志·Dong Yi zhuan 東夷傳 by Chen shou 陳壽 in 280. To decipher the morphological and phonological features of toponyms, firstly the textual research of Dong Yi zhuan is thoroughly carried out by comparing the different versions of different periods in China. Secondly, the phonographs of the toponyms which were written in Chinese characters are selected by analyzing the morphological components which can be divided into Hunpyoso(훈표소, 訓表素, semantographic morpheme) and Eumpyoso (음표소, 音表素, phonographic morpheme). Thirdly, the distributions and percentages of consonants(initials) of the selected phonographs are quantitatively analyzed separately, meanwhile, the reconstructions of Old and Later Han Chinese, Middle Chinese are based upon Schuessler(2009). According to the result of quantitative approach, the diachronic development of Korean phonological system and Middle Sino-Korean system, Chinese historical phonological system, Ko-on, Go-on and Kan-on of Sino-Japanese,  the consonant system of Three Han's toponyms which includes ‘**p-, **t-, **k-, **ts-, **-s-, **h-, **m-, **n-, **-ŋ, **-l-’ are deciphered. Alongside the result, the limitation of this study and the future research outlook on vowel and suprasegmental systems are put forward reasonably.

1 -日文研フォーラムは、国際日本文化研究センター創設以来の事業 のひとつです。 海外の日本研究者と市民との交流を促進するために、 原則月一回、年間十回程度、京都市内の公共スペースで、日文研を 訪問中の世界さまざまな国の日本研究者に、自分の研究について自 由に語ってもらい、参加者との知的交流を図ろうとするものです。 このフォーラムの報告書の公刊によって、日文研フォーラムへの 皆様の関心と理解がさらに深まることを願っております。 国際日本文化研究センター 所長 猪木武徳 -2 --3 -• テーマ • 萬葉集と風土記に見られる不思議な言葉 と上代日本列島に於けるアイヌ語の分布 Strange Words in the Man'yoshū and the Fudoki and the Distribution of the Ainu Language in the Japanese Islands in Prehistory ついに日本列島の原住民として認められたアイヌ民族の方々へ tanepo sisam utarpa utar yaykopeker ayne aynu utari anakne yaunmosir untar hoski okay utar ne ruwe eraman siri ne. nean aynu utari nispa utar katkemat utar ku-koonkami na 1 • 発表者 • アレキサンダー・ヴォヴィン Alexander VOVIN ハワイ大学マーノア本校 東洋言語文学部教授 Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa 国際日本文化研究センター外国人研究員 Visiting Research Scholar, International Research Center for Japanese Studies -4 -発表者紹介

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.

A short introduction to my reconstruction system for Proto-Japonic, currently called (to distinguish it from the current, widely accepted scholarly reconstruction) the Kanade Reconstruction of Proto-Japonic (KRPJ), which is incomplete and unpublished.

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.

The following lines are inspired by John Kupchik's seminal article 'Austronesian Lights the Way' that appears in this volume of JEAL. It demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt for the first time that there are reliable Austronesian loanwords in Japonic that reveal quite ancient and profound contacts, because without these profound contacts the borrowing of the names of the most basic celestial bodies, such as the sun and the moon, would not be possible. In my opinion, his article opened a new and an exciting direction in the Japonic historical linguistics. There are, however, two important differences between Kupchik's article and the present one. First, while Kupchik mostly concentrated on the Amis language from Taiwan, and to a less extent on the languages of Philippines and other Western Malayo-Polynesian, my major focus is on the Philippines languages as potential donors, and much less on other Austronesian languages of the region. Second, while Kupchik looked mostly on mysterious words in the Omoro Sōshi, a collection of Old Okinawan and Amami sacred and folk poems (1531-1623 AD), this article focuses more on Old Japanese in particular and Japonic in general.

The goal of this article is to provide further and systematic evidence for an idea suggested only in passing that the Old Japanese vowel i 2 derives diachronically not only from * e y and *uy, as traditionally believed, but also from *oy. This solution proves to be a key to solving some puzzles in the phonological history of a number of common Old Japanese words.

This is a database of basic lexicon of several (proto-)languages from around the world. I built it over several years, as a tool to facilitate long-range comparisons. It is a work in progress, as I’m constantly adding to it.
I decided to make the current version publicly available, in case other historical linguists find it useful for their research. You may freely access, download, copy and/or distribute it.

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.

In linguistic tradition Old Japanese (OJ) refers to the period of 700 – 800 AD, which was preceded by pre-literate Kofun and Asuka historical periods. However, OJ materials suitable for research and linguistic analysis consist of the fragmentary phonetic texts originals which hypothetically refer to the first half of VIII c.
This first draft English-version is aimed for students who is participating in seminars in Old Japanese language

Monograph published under RFBR grant 19-112-00055 D.
In recent decades appear two descriptive grammars of Old Japanese made by A. Vovin in 2005 and 2009, and B. Frellesvig in 2010.
The proposed new translation of the first Japanese songs into Russian is for academic purpose. It represents​ the “Kojiki” and “Nihon Shoki” songs to the reader having preserved to the maximum possible extent the structure and the actual semantics of the poems. Thus, it is necessary to provide original texts, romanization (here it is Yale-Vovin scheme), and glossing with morphemic analysis. Such a presentation will allow the linguists to work with the presented material in the fields of typology, areal linguistics, and diachronic typology.

The aim of this article is to reveal an etymology of Old Chinese *miu 'cat' by meu in Old Japanese and *miu in Old Korean as a loanword, compared to miu 'cats' in Old Egyptian. We know a feminine gender marker-t and a plural marker-u in Old Egyptian, where mi 'a male cat', mit 'a female cat' and miu 'cats' in Old Egyptian are used. By way of silkroads in Asia, miu 'cats' in Old Egyptian might be diffused into neighbor peoples and might become Old Chinese *miu 'cat' by meu 'cat' in Old Japanese and *miu (> myo) 'cat' in Old Korean as a loanword.

In this paper I will be comparing Old Japanese non-back close vowels /i/ (i1 or kō-rui) and /ɨ/ (i2 or otsu-rui) in a post-nasal position with their North and South Ryukyuan cognates in order to propose Proto-Japonic reconstructions of Old Japanese [+ nasal] [+ high,-back] sequences. The paper establishes and analyzes six correspondence sets, each representing a different Proto-Japonic sequence: *mi, *muj, *me, *ni, *noj, *nuj, and briefly discusses a couple of yet different relevant Proto-Japonic reconstructions. The study is concluded with a proposal of relative chronology of the discussed changes from Proto-Japonic to Proto-Ryukyuan. A reconstruction of Proto-Ryukyuan *ɨ, a sixth segment added to Thorpe's 1983 classical five-vowel set, is argued for as a necessary development of post-nasal *oj and *uj. This is interpreted within the context of chain-shifting processes dating to Proto-Japonic as an important catalyst of mid-vowel raising in Proto-Ryukyuan.

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.

It has been repeadetly pointed out in the literature that the Old Japanese suffix -kyer- appears to be used both as a perfect and modal (past) marker in the Man'yōshū (Frellesvig 2010: 75-76; Vovin 2020: 879). Assuming that these usages represent different stages of the same grammaticalization path, I suggest several diagnostic environments which allow to distinguish between the two. Thus, I demonstrate that -kyer- preceded by perfective or stative markers as well as verbs of translocative motion can only be interpreted as a modal (past) marker. I also demonstrate that the less grammaticalized perfect -k-yer- tends to be spelled logographically, whereas for the more grammaticalized modal (past) -kyer- phonographic spelling is dominant.

"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.