Proto-Japonic *e and *o in Eastern Old Japanese

Abstract

In this article I examine the correspondences found between Western Old Japanese high vowels and Eastern Old Japanese midvowels in light of the recent hypotheses concerning the Proto-Japonic vowel system. Correspondences in both the morphology and the lexicon are established and then comparative evidence from several modern Japanese and Ryukyuan dialects is adduced to show that these are instances of retention of Proto-Japonic *e and *o.

1. The Linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands

“…For example, tuki2 'moon' has an alternate stem tuku-(tuku-yo1 'moon night'), while ki2 'tree' has a variant stem ko2-(ko2-no2-pa 'tree leaf') in Old Japanese, and these two ki2 have distinct reflexes in Ryukyuan ( Comparative studies of Japanese and Ryukyuan have shown that Ryukyuan also preserves several other phonological distinctions lost in Old Japanese. Thus, while PJ *i and *e, as well as *o and *u, had already merged in many environments in Old Japanese, they are distinct in Proto-Ryukyuan (Hattori 1978-1979, Thorpe 1983, Serafim 2008, Pellard 2008, 2013; Table 1.9). Several mergers that occurred in Old and Middle Japanese are not found in Ryukyuan, so the only logical conclusion is that Ryukyuan is not a daughter language of Old Japanese but that the two are sister languages that separated before the 7th century.…”

2 Ryukyuan and the reconstruction of proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan

“…These forms do not include the stative auxiliary (Nakasone 1960) and reconstruct with a final *-o in pR (Table 16). Such archaic forms compare well with the eoj and Hachijō adnominal forms in -o, in contrast with the -u found in oj and most Japanese dialects (Pellard 2008;Hirako & Pellard 2013), and suggest the existence of a pJR adnominal marker *-o. 27 Though Karimata (2014) argues for the existence of an adnominal ending -o distinct from a conclusive -u in the os, the evidence adduced is far from being satisfactory both qualitatively and quantitatively.…”

“…The most important contribution of Ryukyuan to the reconstruction of pJR is perhaps the reconstruction of two mid vowels *e and *o and a six-vowel system instead of the previous standard four-vowel system. This hypothesis was first proposed by Hattori (1976;2018[1979) and subsequently further developed by Thorpe (1983), Serafim (2008), and Pellard (2008;2013b).…”

Morpheme-Based Rendaku as a Rhythmic Stabilizer in Eastern Old Japanese Poetry

“…Also notable are the important commentaries by Nakanishi (1981Nakanishi ( , 1983, Omodaka (1984aOmodaka ( , 1984b, Itō (1997Itō ( , 1998, and Aso (2011). Long heralded as a language that contains crucial pieces of information necessary for the reconstruction of Proto-Japonic and Proto-Japanese, much previous linguistic research has focused on its array of retentions, some of which are shared with Ryukyuan languages (Pellard, 2008). However, an equally interesting, yet seldom discussed, characteristic of the language is that it displays some of the earliest attested examples of rendaku, or "sequencial voicing."…”