Old Japanese

Old Japanese
上代日本語
Region	Japan
Era	Evolved into Early Middle Japanese during the Heian period
Language family	Japonic Old Japanese
Writing system	Chinese characters and Man'yōgana
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ojp
Linguist list	ojp [lower-roman 1]
Glottolog	oldj1239[1]

Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. It was spoken by the Japanese ethnic group from an unknown beginning point until it evolved into Early Middle Japanese in the eighth century, during the Heian period, although the precise separation of these two languages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic family; no conclusive links to other language families have been drawn.

Old Japanese was written using Chinese characters, using an increasingly standardized and phonetic form that eventually evolved into man'yōgana. Typically for a Japonic language and for a step in the evolutionary line of modern Japanese, Old Japanese was a primarily agglutinative language with subject–object–verb word ordering. However, the language was marked by a few phonemic differences from later forms of Japanese, such as an eschewing of diphthongs. It distinguished between a few pairs of syllables with identical pronunciations—a phenomenon known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai—but the function of this differentiation is not known.

Dating

Linguistic changes are gradual, and the periodization of Japanese is "both delicate and controversial", with multiple competing methods and criteria for division.^[2] For both practical and conventional reasons, these divisions often correlate to political events.

The lower boundary, i.e. the latest possible date for the end of the Old Japanese period, is AD 794,^[2] when the capital Heijōkyō moved to Heiankyō. However, the upper boundary is more difficult. 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). Wooden tablets and relics with fragments of text written on them have also been excavated. However, the first extant written text of substantial length is the Kojiki of 712. Without necessarily excluding such fragmentary early evidence, the upper boundary is generally discussed as from circa 712 for practical reasons. This coincides well with the Nara period (710-794). A more formal dating would not recognize an upper boundary and merely date it as through 794.

Besides Kojiki, the other oldest literary sources include Fudoki (720), Nihon Shoki (720), and Man'yōshū (c. 759).

Writing system

The earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, although they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, such as the word order (for example, placing the verb after the object). In these "hybrid" texts, Chinese characters are occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. Over time, the phonetic usage of Chinese characters became more and more prevalent, until Man'yōgana, a system of using the Chinese characters phonetically to record Japanese, was born. This system was already in use in the non-prose part of Kojiki, and was used in a highly sophisticated manner in Man'yōshū.

Phonology

The study of Old Japanese phonology is based on the comparative study of synchronous pronunciation of Chinese, reverse analysis of diachronic change in Japanese pronunciation, and comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages. Although the majority of Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Nara court in central Japan, some poems in the Man'yōshū are from southern and eastern Japan, and represent different dialects of Old Japanese. Some of these dialectal differences are still found today.

Old Japanese differed phonetically from later periods of the language. An analysis of Man'yōgana reveals a peculiar system known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai. See the Syllables section for details.

The transcriptions of Old Japanese words given in Kojiki (712) differ from those found in Nihon Shoki (720) and Man'yōshū (c. 759) in that it distinguishes the syllables /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ whereas the latter two do not. This has been correlated with the historical record of Kojiki being compiled earlier than Nihon Shoki, and thus preserved an older distinction that soon vanished.

Other characteristic differences of Old Japanese as compared with its modern counterpart include:

• words do not begin with voiced plosives or /r/
• open syllables: no syllable-final consonants of any kind.

Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Gaya language, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryūkyūan remains undemonstrated. See Classification of Japanese for details.

Syllables

Old Japanese distinguished 88 syllables, assuming OJ has the same gaps of *yi and *wu that later stages of the language had:

a	i		u	e		o
ka	ki1	ki2	ku	ke1	ke2	ko1	ko2
ga	gi1	gi2	gu	ge1	ge2	go1	go2
sa	si		su	se		so1	so2
za	zi		zu	ze		zo1	zo2
ta	ti		tu	te		to1	to2
da	di		du	de		do1	do2
na	ni		nu	ne		no1	no2
pa	pi1	pi2	pu	pe1	pe2	po
ba	bi1	bi2	bu	be1	be2	bo
ma	mi1	mi2	mu	me1	me2	mo1	mo2
ya			yu	ye		yo1	yo2
ra	ri		ru	re		ro1	ro2
wa	wi			we		wo

Shortly after the Kojiki, the distinction between mo₁ and mo₂ was lost, reducing the syllable count to 87.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the syllable doublets, involving:

• an eight-vowel system
• diphthongs
• palatalization of the initial consonant

This issue is hotly debated, and there is no consensus.

Transcription

The transcription does not imply a particular theory, and the subscript 1 or 2 could apply to either the consonant or the vowel.

There are several competing transcription systems. One popular system places a dieresis above the vowel: ï, ë, ö. These represent i₂, e₂, and o₂, and assume that unmarked i, e, and o are i₁, e₁, and o₁. This is problematic in that it neglects to distinguish words where the 1 / 2 distinction is not clear, such as the o in /toru/. To address this, ǐ, ě, ǒ may be used for i₁, e₁, o₁. Another common transcription is yi, ye, o̠ for i₁, e₁, o₁, and iy, ey, wo for i₂, e₂, o₂. This reflects their suspected derivation in proto-Japanese.

Vowels

The number of vowel distinctions may have been anywhere from five to eight, depending on the hypothesis. These are the four principal (more common) vowels a, u, i₁ (yi), o₂ (ə), and the four secondary (less common) vowels i₂ (ï/iy), e₁ (e/ye), e₂ (ë/ey), o₁ (o/wo). Miyake reconstructs the four principal vowels as /a, u, i, ə/ and the four secondary vowels as /ɨj, ʲe, əj, o/. The four principal vowels descend from pre–Old Japanese/proto-Japanese *a, *u, *i, *ə. /u/ was prototypically rounded, unlike in Modern Japanese. /ʲe/ descends from pOJ *ia and *iə, and may have been either [je] or [e] preceded by a palatalized consonant: /pje/, etc. /ɨ/ descends from pOJ *ui and *əi.^[3]

Consonants

The number of consonants likewise depends on the hypothesis. Miyake reconstructs the following inventory, in addition to a zero (vowel-initial) onset /∅/:^[4]

	Labial	Coronal		Palatal	Velar
Voiceless obstruent	*p	*t	*s		*k
Prenasalized voiced obstruent	*ᵐb	*ⁿd	*ⁿz		*ᵑɡ
Nasal	*m	*n
Approximant/Flap	*w	*r		*j

Obstruents

The voiceless obstruents /p, t, s, k/ had corresponding voiced consonants which were prenasalized. This prenasalization is seen through Late Middle Japanese, and in the case of /ɡ/, as an intervocalic allophone [ŋ] to the present day. /t, d/ were not, and /s, z/ may not have been, palatalized before /i/, as they would be later.

Voiceless labial obstruent

Modern Japanese /ɨ/ was phonetically realized as [p] in Old Japanese. This assumption is predicated upon the following textual and phonological analyses:

• The modern /ɨ/ causes a discrepancy in the pairing of voiceless vs. voiced consonants. Thus, /k, ɡ/, /s, z/, /t, d/, and finally /h, b/. The pair /h, b/ does not fit. The voiceless version of /b/ is /p/.
• Comparison with Ryukyuan language shows [p] where mainland Japanese has [h]. As these two languages split at some point in history, this can be taken as evidence that the Japanese [h] was once pronounced identically to the Ryukyuan [p] (although the comparison alone does not directly address the issue of what its pronunciation was in Old Japanese).
• A look at /ɨ/ in modern Japanese shows that it becomes [ɸ] when followed by /u/. Looking further back, Portuguese missionaries visiting Japan in the early 17th century wrote the entire /ɨ/-row of kana as "fa, fi, fu, fe, fo". Korean visitors in the same century suggested a voiceless bilabial fricative sound, i.e. [ɸ].
• In 842, the monk Ennin writes in Zaitōki a description in which he states that Sanskrit "p" is more labial than Japanese. This is taken as evidence that Japanese /ɨ/ was pronounced [ɸ] rather than [p] by that time. This was after the Old Japanese period, however.

There is general agreement that between the 9th and 17th century /h/ was [ɸ]. The dialectal and distributional evidence suggest that at some point it must have been [p]. Recent scholarship reconstructs this as *[p] for Old Japanese.^[5]

Phonological rules

In 1934, Arisaka Hideyo proposed a set of phonological restrictions permitted in a single morpheme. These are known as the "Arisaka Laws".

• -o₁ and -o₂ do not co-exist
• -u and -o₂ generally do not co-exist
• -a and -o₂ generally do not co-exist

These rules suggest two groups of vowels: /-a, -u, -o₁/ and /o₂/. Vowels from either group do not mix with each other; -i₁ and -i₂ can co-exist with either group. Some take this phenomenon as evidence that Old Japanese had vowel harmony.

Syllable structure

The Old Japanese syllable was CV (consonant-vowel).

• A bare vowel does not occur except for word-initially.
• /r/ is not found word-initially (with the exception of two foreign loans: /rikizimahi₁/ and /rokuro/).
• Voiced plosives do not occur word-initially.

Vowel elision occurred to prevent vowel clusters:

• Second vowel is dropped: /hanare/ + /iso₁/ → /hanareso₁/
• First vowel is dropped: /ara/ + /umi₁/ → /arumi₁/
• Two continuous vowels merge into a separate vowel: i₁ + a → e₁, a + i₁→e₂, o₂ + i₁→i₂
• /s/ is inserted between the two vowels: /haru/ + /ame₂/→/harusame₂/ (It is possible that /ame₂/ was once */same₂/)

Grammar

Pronouns

• First person: wa, a, ware, are
• Second person: na, nare, masi, mimasi, imasi, ore
• Third person:
  • Proximal: ko₂, ko₂re, ko₂ko₂, ko₂ti
  • Mesial: so₂, si, so₂ko₂
  • Distal: ka, kare
• Interrogative: ta, tare, idu, idure, iduti, iduku, idura

Verbs

Old Japanese distinguished between eight verbal conjugations: quadrigrade, upper monograde, upper bigrade, lower bigrade, k-irregular, s-irregular, n-irregular, and r-irregular. Lower monograde does not exist yet.^[6][7][8]

Conjugation

Verb Class	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
Quadrigrade	-a	-i1[1]	-u	-u	-e2[1]	-e1[1]
Upper monograde	-	-	-ru	-ru	-re	-(yo2)
Upper bigrade	-i2[1]	-i2[1]	-u	-uru	-ure	-i2[1](yo2)
Lower bigrade	-e2[1]	-e2[1]	-u	-uru	-ure	-e2[1](yo2)
K-irregular	-o2	-i1	-u	-uru	-ure	-o2
S-irregular	-e	-i	-u	-uru	-ure	-e(yo2)
N-irregular	-a	-i	-u	-uru	-ure	-e
R-irregular	-a	-i	-i	-u	-e	-e

1. ^↑The distinctions between i₁ and i₂ and e₁ and e₂ are lost after s, z, t, d, n, y, r, and w.

Consonant / vowel stem

Verbs having a base that ends in a consonant are known as consonant-stem. These are exhibited by the Quadrigrade, the R-irregular and N-irregular verb classes.

There are only three N-irregular verbs, which were originally verbs in the Adverbial conjugation combined with the negative auxiliary -nu, but which were later reinterpreted as verbs in their own right.

Verbs having a base that ends in a vowel are known as vowel-stem. Upper Monograde represents monosyllabic vowel stems ending in -i.

Upper Bigrade is made up of polysyllabic roots ending in the vowel -i, while Lower Bigrade represents polysyllabic roots ending in -e. This ending vowel was elided in the conclusive, attributive, and realis conjugations.

K-irregular and S-irregular represent verbs whose stems appear to be composed of only one consonant each. These verbs behave as verbs with consonant stems, but they are originally vowel stems whose irregular conjugations are the result of vowel mutation and elision.

Irregular verbs

There are seven verbs with irregular conjugations.

• K-irregular: k- "come"
• S-irregular: s- "do"
• N-irregular: sin- "die," in- "go, die," n- (auxiliary verb indicating completion of action)
• R-irregular: ar- "be, exist," wor- "be, exist"

The conjugation class for each is named after the final stem consonant.

Adjectives

There were two types of adjectives: regular adjectives and adjectival nouns.

The regular adjective is sub-classified into two types: those where the adverbial form (連用形) ends in -ku and those that end in -siku. This creates two different types of conjugations:

Adjective Class	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
-ku	-ke1	-ku	-si	-ki1	-ke1 -ke1re
	-kara	-kari	-si	-karu	-kare	-kare
-siku	-sike1	-siku	-si	-siki1	-sike1 -sike1re
	-sikara	-sikari	-si	-sikaru	-sikare	-sikare

The -kar- and -sikar- forms are derived from the verb ar- "be, exists". The adverbial conjugation (-ku or -siku) is suffixed with ar-. The conjugation yields to the R-irregular conjugation of ar-. As Old Japanese avoids vowel clusters, the resulting -ua- elides into -a-.

The adjectival noun has a single conjugation:

	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
Adjectival noun	-nara	-nari	-nari	-naru	-nare	-nare

Dialects

Most works written in Old Japanese are in Western Old Japanese, the language of the capital. The Man'yōshū includes poems written in an eastern dialect.^[9]

Proto-Japanese

Four-vowel system

The following fusional reductions (in most instances these are monophthongizations) took place:

• *i₁a > /e₁/
• *ai₁ > /e₂/
• *ui₁ > /i₂/
• *o₁i₁ > /i₂/
• *au > /o₂/
• *ua > /o₂/

Thus, the proto vowel system can be reconstructed as /*a, *i, *u, *o₁/, where o₁ represents schwa..

Co₂ as Cwo

Distributionally, there may have once been *po₁, *po₂ and *bo₁, bo₂. Note that the distinction between /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ is only seen in Kojiki and vanished afterwards. If this is true, then a distinction was made between Co₁ and Co₂ for all consonants C except for /w/. Some take this as support that Co₂ may have represented /Cwo/.

See also

• Classical Japanese language
• List of extinct languages of Asia

Footnotes

Notes

References

• Kondō, Yasuhiro; Masayuki Tsukimoto; Katsumi Sugiura (2005). Nihongo no Rekishi (in Japanese). Tōkyō: Hōsō Daigaku Kyōiku Shinkōkai. ISBN 4-595-30547-8. 
• Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-30575-6. 
• Omodaka, Hisataka, ed. (1967). Jidaibetsu Kokugo Daijiten: Jōdaihen (in Japanese). Tōkyō: Sanseidō. ISBN 4-385-13237-2. 
• Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36918-5. 
• Yamaguchi, Akiho; Hideo Suzuki; Ryūzō Sakanashi; Masayuki Tsukimoto (1997). Nihongo no Rekishi (in Japanese). Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. ISBN 4-13-082004-4. 

Further reading

• Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6. 
• Martin, Samuel E. (1987). The Japanese Language Through Time. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03729-5. 
• Ōno, Susumu (2000). Nihongo no Keisei (in Japanese). Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 4-00-001758-6. 
• Tōdō, Akiyasu; Yoshimitsu Kanō (2005). Gakken Shin Kan-Wa Daijiten (in Japanese). Tōkyō: Gakushū Kenkyūsha. ISBN 4-05-300082-3. 
• Vovin, Alexander (2005). A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part One: Sources, Script and Phonology, Lexicon, Nominals. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-901903-14-0. 
• Vovin, Alexander (2009). A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part Two: Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles, Postpositions. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-905246-82-3.