| Early Middle Japanese | |
| Nativename: | Japanese: 中古日本語 |
| Region: | Japan |
| Era: | Evolved into Late Middle Japanese at the end of the 12th century |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Japonic |
| Fam2: | Japanese |
| Ancestor: | Old Japanese |
| Script: | Hiragana, Katakana, and Han |
| Iso3: | ojp |
| Iso3comment: | (Old Japanese) |
| Linglist: | ojp |
| Lingname: | Described as "The ancestor of modern Japanese. 7th–10th centuries AD." The more usual date for the change from Old Japanese to Middle Japanese is ca. 800 (end of the Nara era). |
| Glotto: | none |
| Notice: | IPA |
[1] is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian period . The successor to Old Japanese, it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (after 1185) than to Old Japanese (before 794).
Old Japanese had borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese. In Early Middle Japanese, two new scripts emerged: the kana scripts hiragana and katakana. That development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature, with many classics such as The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and The Tales of Ise.
Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana, literally "ten thousand leaves borrowed labels", in reference to the Man'yōshū poetry anthology and the "borrowing" of the kanji characters as "labels" for the sounds of Japanese. Certain Chinese characters were borrowed to phonetically spell out Japanese sounds. Cursive handwriting gradually gave rise to the hiragana ("flat/simple borrowed labels") and Buddhist shorthand practices of using pieces of kanji to denote the sounds then developed into the katakana ("partial/piece borrowed labels").
| Ø | /n/ | /m/ | /j/ | /r/ | /w/ | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /k/ | /g/ | /s/ | /z/ | /t/ | /d/ | /pronounced as /ɸ// | /b/ | |||||||
| /a/ | /a/ | /ka/ | /ga/ | /sa/ | /za/ | /ta/ | /da/ | /na/ | /pronounced as /ɸ/a/ | /ba/ | /ma/ | /ja/ | /ra/ | /wa/ |
| /i/ | /i/ | /ki/ | /gi/ | /si/ | /zi/ | /ti/ | /di/ | /ni/ | /pronounced as /ɸ/i/ | /bi/ | /mi/ | Ø | /ri/ | /wi/ |
| /u/ | /u/ | /ku/ | /gu/ | /su/ | /zu/ | /tu/ | /du/ | /nu/ | /pronounced as /ɸ/u/ | /bu/ | /mu/ | /ju/ | /ru/ | Ø |
| /e/ | /e/ | /ke/ | /ge/ | /se/ | /ze/ | /te/ | /de/ | /ne/ | /pronounced as /ɸ/e/ | /be/ | /me/ | /je/ | /re/ | /we/ |
| /o/ | /o/ | /ko/ | /go/ | /so/ | /zo/ | /to/ | /do/ | /no/ | /pronounced as /ɸ/o/ | /bo/ | /mo/ | /jo/ | /ro/ | /wo/ |
It is worth noting that the man'yōgana in each cell only indicates one possible option for spelling each Japanese mora – in the table above, each chosen character is the direct origin of the corresponding modern hiragana. See also Hentaigana for a fuller description of how multiple hiragana could be used to spell a single sound. Also note that hiragana forms were not standardized at that time.[2]
Although man'yōgana specify different kanji to represent voiced phonemes versus unvoiced phonemes, it is not until the Meiji period that we see standardized usage of the dakuten diacritic ゛ to explicitly mark voicing for hiragana and katakana.
Japan officially adopted simplified shinjitai (Japanese: 新字体, "new character forms") in 1946 as part of a round of orthographic reforms intended to improve literacy rates. The so-called kyūjitai (Japanese: 旧字体, "old character forms") are equivalent to Traditional Chinese characters, and these forms were the ones used in historical man'yōgana. Modern transcriptions of classical texts are predominantly written in shinjitai. To avoid unnecessary ambiguity, quotes from classical texts would be written in kyūjitai.
Additionally, there are many spelling differences between Modern Japanese and Early Middle Japanese even for the same word. For example, Japanese: 万葉集 is spelled in modern Japanese hiragana as Japanese: まんようしゅう (man'yōshū), while in Early Middle Japanese, this would have been Japanese: まんえふしふ (man'yefushifu). Details on these spelling rules are helpful for understanding historical kana usage.
Major phonological changes were characteristic of the period.
The most prominent difference was the loss of certain spelling distinctions found in the Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai ("Ancient Special Kana Usage"), which distinguished two types of pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //e//, and pronounced as //o//. While these distinctions had begun to blur already at the end of the Old Japanese stage, they were completely lost in Early Middle Japanese. The final distinction to be lost was /ko1, go1/ vs. /ko2, go2/.[3] For example, around the year 800 in very early Early Middle Japanese, in the same text /ko1/ was still represented by cursive 「」, while /ko2/ was represented by cursive 「」.[4]
In the 10th century, pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //je// progressively merged into pronounced as //je//, and pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //wo// had merged into /wo/ by the 11th century.[5] [6] [7]
An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological effects:
The development of the uvular nasal and geminated consonants occurred late in the Heian period and brought about the introduction of closed syllables (CVC).[10]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | |||||||
| Stop | pronounced as /(p)/ | pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /d/ | pronounced as /k/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | |||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ɸ/ | pronounced as /s/ | pronounced as /z/ | ||||||
| Liquid | pronounced as /r/< | -- Do not change this, we don't know how exactly the liquid was pronounced. --> | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /j/ | pronounced as /w/ | |||||||
Theories for the realization of pronounced as //s, z// include pronounced as /[s, z]/, pronounced as /[ts, dz]/, and pronounced as /[ɕ, ʑ]/. It may have varied depending on the following vowel, as in Modern Japanese.
By the 11th century, pronounced as //ɸ// had merged with pronounced as //w// between vowels.
Syntactically, Early Middle Japanese was a subject-object-verb language with a topic-comment structure. Morphologically, it was an agglutinative language.
A paragraph of Early Middle Japanese can be divided into the following units from large to small.
(from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)
ima wa mukasi, taketori no okina to ifu mono arikeri.
Modern Japanese translation：Japanese: 今からみるともう昔のことだが、竹取の翁という者がいた。
English translation: Long before the present, it is said that there was someone called Old Man Bamboo Cutter.
It is to be noted that the noun「」("long past") is actually a predicate (means "is long past"). The predicate is not necessarily a verb in Early Middle Japanese.
、。
The function of the auxiliary particle「Japanese: は」is to highlight the noun「Japanese: 今」(now), which cannot be separately explained, so they should be in the same phrase. Similarly, the particle 「Japanese: の 」 represents the relation between the modifier「Japanese: 竹取」("bamboo cutter", a compound noun) and the modified noun 「Japanese: 翁」(old man), like the preposition "of". Additionally, the particle 「Japanese: と」 connects the called name 「Japanese: 翁」(modified by 「Japanese: 竹取」) to the verb「Japanese: いふ」("call"), just like a preposition. As for the auxiliary verb「Japanese: けり」, it further clarifies that what the verb「Japanese: あり」 ("be, exist") describes is a rumor about the past, but not a direct experience (i.e.), so it should be included in the same phrase as 「Japanese: あり」. In contrast, even if the verb 「Japanese: いふ」 does modify the noun「Japanese: 者」 ("someone"), its meaning can still be realized naturally without any help from other words.
、。
Although 「Japanese: 竹取」is a combination of the noun 「Japanese: {{Ruby|竹|たけ」and the verb 「Japanese: {{Ruby|取|と」("get", infinitive), any compound noun, verb, or adjective should be considered as a single grammatical unit.
Words were classified as follows:
(Auxiliary) Particles had various functions, and they can be classified as follows:
| Case particles | indicating the relationship between a phrase and its following phrase.(i.e. not limited to nouns, so slightly differs from "case" in English) | (The Tale of Genji) which direction of escape has gone (the bird)?(The verb 「」 is the polite form, i.e.「」, of the verb 「」"go") | |
| Conjunctive particles | indicating the relationship between clauses. | (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) 「Japanese: 文を書きて'''やれ'''」, 「Japanese: 返り事もせず」. (「」has to be preceded by the realis mood, e.g.,「Japanese: '''やれ'''」is the realis mood of the verb「Japanese: やる」, to express the appropriate meaning.) | |
| Adverbial particles | mainly modifying its following yougen. | (Tosa Nikki) ...can only see (exactly) white wave (actually, 「」 limits the expressive range of 「Japanese: 見ゆる」) (The verb 「Japanese: 見ゆ」is "bound" by the binding particle 「Japanese: '''ぞ'''」, so it occurs in the attributive form「Japanese: 見ゆる」.) | |
| Binding particles | emphasizing its phrase or making it interrogative, and limiting the inflectionform of the ending yougen or auxiliary verb. | In direction of escape has gone (the bird) (The perfect auxiliary verb「」is "bound" by the binding particle 「」, so it occurs in the attributive form 「」.) | |
| Final particles | mainly at the end of sentence, indicating many kinds of moods(e.g. interrogative mood, emotive assertion) | (Sarashina Nikki) At that time I'm definitely not good (Although the binding particle 「Japanese: '''ぞ'''」 is at the end of sentence, it still requires its preceding words to be attributive.) | |
| Interjectory particles | similar to final particle, but occurs more freely, and is oftenused as a short stop between sentences. | (The Tale of Genji) (Yugiri) Ason At least pick these kinds of falling leaves up! |
The nominative function was marked by the absence of a particle in main clauses and by the genitive particles in subordinate clauses. The dative/locative particle -ni was homophonous with the simple infinitive form of the copula -ni, with verbal suffixes supplies more complex case markers -ni-te ('at' a place) and -ni si-te or -ni-te ('by means of'). A number of particle + verb + -te sequences provided other case functions: -ni yori-te 'due to' (from yor- 'depend'), -ni tuki-te 'about, concerning' (from tuk- 'be attached'), and -to si-te 'as' (from se- 'do'). More complex structures were derived from genitive particle + Location Noun + appropriate case particle (typically locative -ni) and were used particularly to express spatial and temporal relations. Major location nouns were mafe 'front' (Noun-no mafe-ni 'in front of Noun'), ufe 'top' (Noun-no ufe-ni 'on top of Noun' ~ 'above Noun'), sita 'under' (Noun-no sita-ni 'under Noun), saki 'ahead' (Noun-no saki-ni 'ahead of Noun)', etc.
There were some special particles that limited the inflectional form of the yougen or auxiliary verb at the end of a sentence. These particles are called binding particles. These limitations are called binding rules.
| ぞ | emphasis on its phrase | ふるさとは花のにひ (Kokin Wakashū, 42th) of「けり」(Auxiliary verb of unwitnessed past or emotive assertion) | ||
| なむ | もと光るあり (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) of「けり」 | |||
| や(やは) | question, or rhetorical question | 花と聞きわかむ (Kokin Wakashū, 10th) of adjectives「し」and「し」 | ||
| か(かは) | 生きとし生けるもの いづれ歌をまざり (Kokin Wakashū, Kana preface) of「けり」 | |||
| こそ | strong emphasis on its phrase | 男はこの女をと思ふ (The Tales of Ise) of modal auxiliary verb「む」 |
Susumu Ōno assumed that these binding particles originally acted as final particles.[12] For example:
Man'yōganaNotice that 「」 is attributive(Due to the modification to the noun 「」). According to Susumu Ōno's assumption, if we want to emphasize the noun in question(i.e.「」), we can invert the whole sentence as the following:Obviously, this gives birth to the binding rule. Since other binding particles can also be considered final particles in Old Japanese, this assumption is reasonable.(from Man'yōshū, 265th)
Modern transliteration:
Early Middle Japanese verb inflection was agglutinative. Most verbs were conjugated in 6 forms and could be combined with auxiliary verbs to express tense, aspect, mood, voice, and polarity. Several of the auxiliary verbs could be combined in a string, and each component determined the choice of form of the preceding component.
In Japanese there are many different yougens with the same pronunciation, or the same yougen has various meanings. To distinguish, modern transliteration uses Kanji to highlight these differences. For example, the Upper bigrade verbs「」means "get used to", but its also means "become familiar" which is represented by「」. Meanwhile, the quadrigrade verb「」has the same pronunciation with 「」but it actually means "become".
Early Middle Japanese inherited all eight verbal conjugations class from Old Japanese and added new one: Lower Monograde, but there's only 「」("kick by foot") classified as Lower Monograde in Early Middle Japanese.
Early Middle Japanese Verbs were divided into 5 class of regular conjugations:
Quadrigrade (, yodan), Upper monograde (, kami ichidan), Lower monograde (, shimo ichidan), Upper bigrade (, kami nidan), Lower bigrade (, shimo nidan).
There were also 4 "irregular" conjugations:
K-irregular (, kahen), S-irregular (, sahen), N-irregular (, nahen), R-irregular (, rahen).
The conjugation of each is divided into 6 Inflectional forms:
The English names for the irrealis and the realis differ from author to author, including negative and evidential, or imperfective and perfective.
In following table, red part means, while blue part means .
| Inflectional class | stem | Inflectional form | Translation | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Irrealis | Infinitive | Conclusive | Attributive | Realis | Imperative | ||||
| Quadrigrade | (-a) | (-i) | (-u) | (-e) | 'hear' | ||||
| Upper Monograde | - | (-i) | (-iru) | (-ire) | (-i[yo]) | 'see' | |||
| 'use' | |||||||||
| Lower Monograde | - | (-e) | (-eru) | (-ere) | (-e[yo]) | 'kick' | |||
| Upper Bigrade | (-i) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-iyo) | 'pass' | |||
| Lower Bigrade | (-e) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-e[yo]) | 'receive' | |||
| K-irregular | - | (-o) | (-i) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-o) | 'come' | |
| S-irregular | - | (-e) | (-i) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-e[yo]) | 'do' | |
| 'set the date' * | |||||||||
| N-irregular | (-a) | (-i) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-e) | 'die' | ||
| R-irregular | (-a) | (-i) | (-u) | (-e) | 'be, exist' | ||||
*Noted that most S-irregular is the combination of a noun and 「」, for example, 「」 is a combination of the noun 「」 ('date') and 「」.
The 「」 at the end of the imperative forms is optional, although exceedingly common.
The system of 9 conjugation classes appears to be complex. However, all nine conjugations can be subsumed into variations of two groups:
The irregularity of N-irregular verbs occurred only in the conclusive and the attributive, and as there are no quadrigrade verbs with n-roots, quadrigrade and N-irregular verb patterns may be treated as being in complementary distribution.[13] Vowel-root verbs consist of bigrade verbs (the majority), a few monograde verbs (especially 'see' and 'sit'), the K-irregular verb 'come', and the S-irregular verb se- 'do' (or -ze- in some compounds).[14] The difference between 'upper' and 'lower' bigrade or monograde verbs is whether the vowel at the end of the root was i or e. The difference between bigrade and monograde was whether in the conclusive, attributive, and realis, the initial u of the ending elided the vowel of the root or the vowel of the roots elides the initial u of the ending.
There are some questions about this arrangement of forms:[15]
That said, there is a limited set of nouns appearing in Old Japanese and ending in -a, that appear to overlap phonetically and semantically with the irrealis form of certain verbs. These could be analyzed as resultative deverbal nouns.
Quadrigrade verb: (The Tale of Genji)
Quadrigrade verb: (Kokin Wakashū, 411th)
Lower Bigrade: (The Pillow Book)
K-irregular: (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)
Note that auxiliary verbs have their own inflections. For example, 「」 is the attributive of passive / spontaneous / potential auxiliary 「」, while「」 is the attributive of synonymous 「」 (the form attaching to bigrade verbs, whose stems end in vowels -e or -i). Additionally, both of these auxiliaries inflect according to the lower bigrade conjugation paradigm.
Man'yōganaIt is possible that the monograde verb infinitive form mi above that was used before 「」 was the earlier true conclusive form. Alternatively, the form above may have been an instance of poetic contraction to limit the number of morae on the line to the expected seven.之婆之婆等母 安加無伎禰加毛 (Man'yōshū, 4503th)
Modern transliteration:
Auxiliary verbs are attached to the various forms of yougen, and a yougen could be followed by several such endings in a string. Auxiliary verbs are classified into many inflectional class like verbs.
Generally, To learn how to use a Auxiliary verb, we need to know (1)its inflection, (2)required forms of its preceding word, and (3) various function. The following is a detail example about 「」and 「」.
| Lower Bigrade | (-e) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-u[yo]) | |
| (-e) | (-u) | (-uru) | (-ure) | (-u[yo]) | ||
They have 4 different functions.
Voice: 'passive' and 'causative':
Mood:[23]
Polarity:[24]
There were two types of adjectives: regular adjectives and adjectival nouns.
The regular adjective was subdivided into two types: those for which the adverbial form ended in 「-」(-ku) and those that ended in 「-」(-siku).
| Class ofinflection | subclass | stem | Irrealis | Adverbial | Conclusive | Attributive | Realis | Imperative | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -ku | (main) | (/) | (-ku) | (-si) | (-ki) | (-kere) | 'be high' | ||
| (-kari) | (-kara) | (-kari) | (-karu) | (-kare) | |||||
| -siku | (main) | (/) | (-siku) | (-si) | (-siki) | (-sikere) | 'be beautiful' | ||
| (-kari) | (-sikara) | (-sikari) | (-sikaru) | (-sikare) |
| Class ofinflection | subclass | stem | Irrealis | Adverbial | Conclusive | Attributive | Realis | Imperative | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -siku | main | (-) | - | - | - | - | 'be the same' | ||
| kari | - | - | - | - |
The -kar- and -sikar- forms were derived from the verb 「」"be, exists.":
Man'yōganaSince the auxiliary verb of pass tentative mood「」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「」is in infinitive form. And then naturally, the adjective 「」links to 「」 by infinitive (). In Man'yōshū there's also example of 「-」.可奈之家牟 (Man'yōshū, 4333th)
Modern transliteration:
Man'yōganaSince the auxiliary verb of unwitnessed past「」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「」is in infinitive form.加奈之家理 (Man'yōshū, 793th)
Modern transliteration:
So it's reasonable to assume that the infinitive suffix「-」is derived from 「-」that had lost its initial u-sound(i.e. sound change of infinitive suffix + 「」). There's also similar example about other forms in Man'yōshū.[25]
From above paragraph, we can realize that kari inflection is generally used to link to a auxiliary verbs(so it's also called 「」, "complement and auxiliary inflection"), but there's an example to show that the imperative form of kari inflection is an exception of this rule:
(Senzai Wakashū, 708th)That is, the imperative form of kari inflection is independently used without linking to any auxiliary verb.(However, it actually expresses a wish but not a order.)
| Class ofinflection | stem | Irrealis | Adverbial | Conclusive | Attributive | Realis | Imperative | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nari | (-nara) | (-nari) | (-nari) | (-naru) | (-nare) | 'be static' | ||
| (-ni) | ||||||||
| Tari | (-tara) | (-tari) | (-tari) | (-taru) | (-tare) | ''be quiet, soft" | ||
| (-to) | ||||||||
The nari and tari inflections shared a similar etymology. The nari form was a contraction of the adverbial particle「」and the -r irregular verb「」"be, exist": + →, while the tari inflection was a contraction of the adverbial particle and : + → .
"Consonantal palatalization is not original in Japanese. It is generally considered to have appeared in the language under the influence of Chinese loans. Indeed, palatalizations are particularly frequent in Sino-Japanese morphemes. They occasionally occur in Yamato words like kyou ‘today’, but this is always the result of a secondary development".
"Moras of the CwV shape (called gôyôon 合拗音 in the traditional terminology) existed up until recently in certain Sino-Japanese words, for example okwashi お菓子 ‘cake’, gwaikoku 外国 ‘foreign country’. They reflect the presence of a labial glide in the Chinese original forms. Old Chinese accepted /w/ after a large variety of consonants, but, apart from a small number of exceptions attested in documents of the Heian period, it is only after the velar consonants /k/ and /g/ that /w/ could be found in Japanese. Although the combinations /kwa/, /gwa/, /kwe/, /gwe/, /kwi/, and /gwi/ all existed, only /kwa/ and /gwa/ have been maintained until the middle or end of the nineteenth century, and still exist nowadays in certain dialects, mainly in the Tôhoku or Kyûshû areas."