Eastern Old Japanese
| Eastern Old Japanese | |
|---|---|
 Eastern provinces (hatched) in the 8th century | |
| Region | Eastern Japan |
| Era | 4th–9th century |
Japonic
| |
Early form | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Eastern Old Japanese(abbreviated asEOJ.Japanese:Đời trước đông quốc phương ngôn, đời trước đông quốc ngữ) is a group of heterogenousvarietiesofOld Japanese,historically spoken in the east ofJapan,in the area traditionally calledTogokuorAzuma.
Classification
[edit]Eastern Old Japanese constitutes a branch of the Japanese subgroup of theJaponic languages(Insular Japonic), with the other varieties of Old Japanese, which all descend fromproto-Japanese(separate fromProto-Ryukyuan,following the classification used by Kupchik (2011).[1]
Attestations
[edit]Eastern Old Japanese is mainly attested throughpoemscollected in severalanthologieswritten during the 8th century:[2][3]
- Man'yōshū( vạn diệp tập ), in the fourteenth and twentieth volumes, as well as some poems from volume sixteen;
- Kokin wakashū( cổ kim cùng ca tập ), of which a poem is written in this dialect (written during theHeian period);
- Fudoki( phong thổ nhớ );
- Azuma (asobi) uta( đông du び ca );
- Sakimori uta,however, this one is written with the spelling ofWestern Old Japanese.[4][5]
All this would give a total of 242 short poems and one long poem according toAlexander Vovin(2014).[6]
Geographic distribution
[edit]This variety is geographically opposed to Western Old Japanese and Kyūshū Old Japanese.[7][6]It was spoken to the east ofNara,the capital of Japan during theNara Period,approximately in the currentKantō region,Chūbu regionandTōhoku region(then collectively referred to as theAzuma region).[8][9]
Varieties
[edit]Eastern Old Japanese was not a unified variety but a collection of different dialects. Their demarcation differs depending on the author.[10]
For example, Bjarke Frellesvig (2010) distinguishes three dialect areas:[11]
- Northern
- the provinces ofKazusa,MutsuandShimotsuke;
- Central
- the provinces ofHitachi,Kōzuke,Musashi,SagamiandShimōsa;and
- Southern
- the provinces ofShinano,SurugaandTōtōmi.
He states that these dialects form acontinuumwith the varieties of Nara Old Japanese, with North Eastern Old Japanese constituting the most divergent variety. However, the majority of songs and poems do not have information on their provenance.[11]
John Kupchik (2023) calls all of these varieties Azuma Old Japanese, consisting of two dialects: Töpo-Suruga Old Japanese in the three provinces of Frellesvig's southern area and Eastern Old Japanese in the rest.[12]The former dialect lacks attested Ainu loanwords.[13] He remarks on the differences in the spelling of the two varieties.[14]In earlier work, he had separated the dialects of Shinano province as Central Old Japanese due to the absence of innovations shared with his Töpo-Suruga and Eastern Old Japanese groups.[15]
Typology
[edit]Eastern Old Japanese is aSOV language[a]with a structure including a modifier at the start of the sentence, although there are exceptions. There are manysuffixes,but unlike most SOV languages, there are alsoprefixes.
Morphologicallyit is principally anagglutinative language,[a]butblend wordsalso exist.[10]
Phonology
[edit]![[icon]](/translate/en.wikipedia.org?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg&t=vi){kind=small} | This sectionneeds expansion.You can help byadding to it.(February 2024) |
Thephonotacticstructure of Eastern Old Japanese is strictly « (C)V», withoutconsonant geminationnorlong vowels.Typically, vowel sequences contract rather than merge. Theaccent systemis unknown.[10]
There exists a correspondence between the Western Old Japanese \i\ and \u\ and the Eastern Old Japanese \(j)e\ and \o\ respectively, which is confirmed by the comparison of the three Japanese dialects, as well as theRyukyuan languages.Thus, the Eastern Old Japanese vowel system would have been closer to that ofProto-Japonicthan that of Western Old Japanese.[16]
Vocabulary
[edit] | This sectionneeds expansion.You can help byadding to it.(February 2024) |
The Eastern Old Japanese lexicon is mainly inherited from Japonic languages. However, it is also containsKoreanicand Ainu loanwords, and only a few ofSiniticorigin.[17]
| English | Eastern Old Japanese |
|---|---|
| girl | kwo |
| mountain | yama |
| flower | pana |
| word | kötö |
| father | titi |
| mother | papa |
| person | pyitö |
| river | kapa |
| journey | ta[n]pyi |
| deity | kamyi |
| peak | ne |
| rope | pyimo |
Other words are close to Japonic forms that appeared in later periods:
| English | Eastern Old Japanese | Western Old Japanese | Middle Japanese | Modern Japanese |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| rainbow | nwonsi | niji | niji | |
| maple | kapyerute | kaferude | kaede | |
| barley | munkyi | mugi | ||
| rudder | kati | kadi | kaji | |
| willow | yanakyi | yanagi | ||
| horse | muma | uma | muma | uma |
| snow | yökyi | yukyi | yuki | |
| eyebrow | maywo | mayu | mayu |
Extinction and descendants
[edit]The dialects of Eastern Old Japanese were replaced by theKyoto dialect(Middle Japanese), the descendant of Western Old Japanese during theHeian period(between the 8th and the 12th centuries).[18]However, there are still modern traces of this variety:
- The relic languageHachijō,spoken on theIzu Islandsbut on the verge of extinction. Eastern Old Japanese and Hachijō have common characteristics not found in other branches of the Japonic family.[18]
- Modern Eastern Japanese dialects contain traces of asubstrate,such as the verbsugos-'to exceed' (comparable to Western Old Japanesesugus-,of the same meaning), theimperativesuffix-ro,thepredicativesuffix-keonadjective verbsor-oonverbs,among others.[19]
Relation with the Ryukyuan languages
[edit]According to Maner Lawton Thorpe (1983), the phonological correspondences of Eastern Old Japanese shared with theRyukyuan languagescould be explained by the descend from a common language. Thus, he proposes the following phylogenetic tree:
- Japanese-Ryukyuan languages
- [Proto-]Kyūshū
- Ryukyuan languages
- Kyūshū Old Japanese(not attested)
- Eastern Old Japanese
- Western Old Japanese (from theKansai Region)
- [Proto-]Kyūshū
Following his model, Western Old Japanese would have separated first, during the 4th-5th centuries, then theKyūshū-branch would have separated three or four centuries later. Subsequently,Kantōwould have been populated by Japonic speakers directly from Kyūshū, without passing through central Japan.[20][21]
However, Alexander Koji Makiyama (2015) finds the results ofdiachronic changesin Eastern Old Japanese such as indenasalization,fortitionandvowel raisingunconvincing in comparison with the Ryukyuan languages. In fact, he finds:
- 12 attestations in Eastern Old Japanese of denasalization which could be attributed to Proto-Ryukyuan, but 10 of them actually correspond to thepossessivecase marker-ga;
- fortition is only attested in two forms in Eastern Old Japanese, compared to only one in Proto-Ryukyuan,*bakare,in addition to the fact that it may be a loan;[b]
- regarding vowel raising, the change from Proto-Japonic *ə to *o in Proto-Ryukyuan makes certain reconstruction impossible. Only four forms in Eastern Old Japanese could correspond to the Proto-Ryukyuan form.
The hypothesis of a linguistic contact or a resemblance is therefore, in the state of current knowledge, only speculative.[22]Thomas Pellard (2015) also considers that this hypothesis is unproven.[23]
Notes
[edit]- ^abLike the otherJaponic languages.
- ^Following an analysis of modern Ryukyuan dialects.
References
[edit]- ^Kupchik 2011,p. 7.
- ^Pellard 2008,p. 3.
- ^Vovin & Ishisaki-Vovin 2021,p. ix.
- ^Kupchik 2013,p. 4.
- ^Vovin & Ishisaki-Vovin 2021,p. x.
- ^abVovin 2014,p. 8.
- ^Korkmaz & Doğan 2017,p. 277.
- ^Kupchik 2013,p. 2.
- ^Pellard 2008,p. 134.
- ^abcKupchik 2011,p. 3.
- ^abFrellesvig 2010,p. 151.
- ^Kupchik 2023,p. 1.
- ^Kupchik 2011,pp. 852, 854.
- ^Kupchik 2013,p. 16.
- ^Kupchik 2011,p. 852.
- ^Pellard 2008,p. 152.
- ^Kupchik 2011,pp. 20–21.
- ^abJanhunen 2022,p. 684.
- ^Kupchik 2011,p. 9.
- ^Makiyama 2015,p. 3.
- ^Thorpe 1983,pp. 224–258.
- ^Makiyama 2015,p. 80.
- ^Pellard 2015,p. 16.
Bibliography
[edit]- Makiyama, Alexander Koji (2015).Coincidence or Contact: A Study of Sound Changes in Eastern Old Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages(PDF)(MA thesis). Arizona State University.
- Vovin, Alexander (2014).Out of Southern China?.Paris: EHESS/CRLAO.Retrieved26 October2022.
- Vovin, Alexander; Ishisaki-Vovin, Sambi (2021).The Eastern Old Japanese Corpus and Dictionary.Leiden, Pays-Bas: Brill.ISBN978-9-004-47166-5.ISSN0921-5239.
- Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010).A History of the Japanese Language.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-139-48880-8.
- Kupchik, John E. (2011).A grammar of the Eastern Old Japanese dialects(PDF)(PhD thesis). Hawaii: University of Hawaii.
- Kupchik, John E. (2013).On the orthography and phonetics of the Azuma Old Japanese dialects.Auckland: Department of Asian Studies Weekly Seminar Series.Retrieved10 June2023.
- Kupchik, John E. (2023).Azuma Old Japanese: A Comparative Grammar and Reconstruction.Auckland, Nouvelle-Zélande: De Gruyter Mouton.
- Janhunen, Juha (2022)."Old Japanese in a panchronic perspective"(PDF).Linguistic Typology.26(3). Helsinki: 683–691.doi:10.1515/lingty-2022-0017.hdl:10138/358257.S2CID249679997.Retrieved29 June2023.
- Thorpe, Maner Lawton (1983).Ryūkyūan language history(PDF).University of Southern California.Retrieved18 December2022.
- Korkmaz, Ramazan; Doğan, Gürkan (2017).Endangered Languages of the Caucasus and Beyond.Leiden/Boston: Brill.ISBN978-90-04-32564-7.
- Pellard, Thomas (2008)."Proto-Japonic *e and *o in Eastern Old Japanese".Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale.37(2). Paris: CRLAO-EHESS: v-158.doi:10.1163/1960602808X00055.ISSN0153-3320.S2CID15508935.HAL:hal-00373303.Retrieved10 June2023.
- Pellard, Thomas (2015).The linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands.CRLAO.doi:10.1515/9781614511151.13.S2CID54004881.HAL:hal-01289257.Retrieved17 December2022.
Further reading
[edit]- "Recent papers on Eastern Old Japanese".academia.edu.Retrieved7 February2023.
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