上代語連濁データベース
Old Japanese Rendaku Database
Timothy J. VanceNINJALKerri L. Russell
University of Oxford

The Old Japanese Rendaku Database (OJRDB) is the product of a collaboration between
the Rendaku Encyclopedia project carried out at the National Institute for Japanese Language
and Linguistics (NINJAL) and the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese (OCOJ) project carried out
at the University of Oxford. We would like to express our appreciation to both institutions.
We are also grateful to Prof. Mark Irwin of Yamagata University for his help and advice ingetting the OJRDB started.
The OJRDB is an Excel ﬁle. The current version (version 1.0) should be mostly error-free,
but we expect to keep updating it. A detailed description follows.
1. Compound Selection
The OJRDB is based on the standard dictionary of Old Japanese (i.e., 8th-century Japanese):Jōdai-go Jiten Henshū Iin-kai, ed. 1967. Jidai-betsu kokugo dai-jiten: Jōdai-hen. Sanseidō.
上代語辞典編修委員会 編 (1967)『時代別国語大辞典−上代編』三省堂
The ﬁrst step in compiling the OJRDB was to examine the headwords in this dictionary andextract all the compounds with a second element (E2) that begins with a voiceless obstruent
as an independent word.
Then, for every such compound, each attestation in the OCOJ was labeled as either phonographic or logographic. For example, E2 in the compound yama+bito ‘mountain person’
occurs independently as pito ‘person’, and the compound is attested three times, twice logographically and once phonographically:
山人 logographic (MYS.20.4293)
山人 logographic (MYS.20.4294)
夜麻妣等 phonographic (MYS.20.4294)

The abbreviation “MYS” means the Man’yōshū, and “20.4293” means book 20, poem number4293.
The current version of the OJRDB includes only compounds with at least one phonographicattestation in the OCOJ.
2. Entry Structure
As a sample, the picture below shows the entry for one compound: satwo+bito.

For each compound in the OJRDB, the columns provide the following information:

+PH
The number in this column is the number of phonographic attestations in the OCOJ. In thesample entry, the number in this column is 5, so satwo+bito appears phonographically 5
times in the OCOJ.

−PHThe number in this column is the number of logographic attestations in the OCOJ. In thesample entry, the number in this column is 9, so satwo+bito appears logographically 9times in the OCOJ.

E1This column contains ﬁrst element of the compound. The romanization follows the Frellesvig and Whitman system, which is used in the OCOJ. When E1 is itself a compound, ahyphen appears between elements. In the sample entry, E1 is satwo.

K1
This column contains a Japanese orthographic representation of E1. When E1 is simplex,
this representation is typically a single kanji. This representation can be taken as a roughetymological gloss. When the etymology of an element is unknown, it is represented inhiragana. In the sample entry, K1 is 里, which is used to write modern Japanese sato
‘village’, the modern Tokyo cognate of OJ satwo.

E2
This column contains second element of the compound in the form it has as an independent
word (i.e., without rendaku). The romanization follows the Frellesvig and Whitman system,
which is used in the OCOJ. When E2 is itself a compound, a hyphen appears between
elements. In the sample entry, E2 is pito.

K2
This column contains a Japanese orthographic representation of E2. When E2 is simplex,
this representation is typically a single kanji. This representation can be taken as a roughetymological gloss. When the etymology of an element is unknown, it is represented inhiragana. In the sample entry, K2 is 人, which is used to write modern Japanese hito
‘person’, the modern Tokyo cognate of OJ pito.

C(−4)
This column contains the consonant (if there is one) in the penultimate syllable of E1.

V(−3)
This column contains the vowel (if there is one) in the penultimate syllable of E1. Whenthe kō-otsu distinction is relevant to the penultimate syllable, it is marked with a superscript on this vowel: A for kō-rui (type A) and B for otsu-rui (type B). In the Frellesvig andWhitman romanization, these distinctions involve the presence versus absence of a semivowel (iᴬ iᴮ eᴬ eᴮ oᴬ oᴮ = i wi ye e wo o).

C(−2)
This column contains the consonant (if there is one) in the ﬁnal syllable of E1.

V(−1)
This column contains the vowel in the ﬁnal syllable of E1. When the kō-otsu distinction isrelevant to the ﬁnal syllable, it is marked with a superscript on this vowel: A for kō-rui(type A) and B for otsu-rui (type B). In the Frellesvig and Whitman romanization, these
distinctions involve the presence versus absence of a semivowel. In the sample entry, thiscolumn contains oᴬ, which corresponds to Frellesvig-Whitman wo.

C(+1)
This column contains the consonant that appears in the initial syllable of E2 when E2 occurs as an independent word (i.e., without rendaku).

V(+2)
This column contains the vowel in the initial syllable of E2. When the kō-otsu distinction
is relevant to the initial syllable, it is marked with a superscript on this vowel: A for kō-rui(type A) and B for otsu-rui (type B). In the Frellesvig and Whitman romanization, these
distinctions involve the presence versus absence of a semivowel.

C(+3)
This column contains the consonant (if there is one) in the second syllable of E2.

V(+4)
This column contains the vowel (if there is one) in the second syllable of E2. When the kōotsu distinction is relevant to the ﬁnal syllable, it is marked with a superscript on thisvowel: A for kō-rui (type A) and B for otsu-rui (type B). In the Frellesvig and Whitmanromanization, these distinctions involve the presence versus absence of a semivowel.

+R
The number in this column is the number of phonographic attestations in the OCOJ thathave rendaku. In the sample entry, the number in this column is 5, so all 5 of the phonographic attestations of satwo+bito have rendaku.

−R
The number in this column is the number of phonographic attestations in the OCOJ that do
not have rendaku. In the sample entry, the number in this column is 0, so none of thephonographic attestations of this compound is satwo+pito.

GLOSS
The gloss in this column is an English translation of the compound. In many cases, thistranslation is only a crude approximation.

OCOJ LINKThe entry in this column is a romanization of the compound (using the Frellesvig andWhitman system) with a hyperlink to a list of its OCOJ attestations.

In the case of the sample entry, clicking on satwo+bito will cause the following page ofthe OCOJ to open in your web browser.

Clicking on any of the links under “Text” will open the OCOJ page showing that text. For
example, clicking on MYS.13.3302 will bring up the full text (both in kanji and in romanization) of poem number 3302 in book 13 of the Man’yōshū. The kanji representationis 散度人, with satwo written with the two phonograms 散度 (sa-two) and bito written withthe logogram 人. Strictly speaking, of course, one cannot tell for sure whether the writerintended 人 to represent bito, pito, or perhaps even something else. Consequently, all attestations like this one, with E1 represented phonographically but E2 represented logographically, are counted as logographic in the OJRDB.

notes
A note in this column contains information (mostly in very abbreviated form) that may beof interest to researchers. In the sample entry, there is no note.

EOJ(+PH)
The number in this column is the number of phonographic attestations in the OCOJ that arein Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ) poems (see the note on EOJ in §3 below). In the sample
entry, 1 of the 5 phonographic attestations is in an EOJ poem (MYS.14.3559).

3. Other Issues● Cells highlighted in pink contain information that is still under investigation and likely tochange in future versions of the OJRDB.
● In some OCOJ attestations, only E2 is written phonographically, whereas E1 is written
logographically. Such attestations are counted as –PH, as in column B in the entry shown
below. If a compound has attestations of this type (logographic E1, phonographic E2) but
no fully phonographic attestations, the entry for that compound is highlighted with a blue
background, as shown below. These compounds can be used in investigating the behaviorof E2 but should not be used in investigating the inﬂuence of E1. In the entry below,
clicking on the note in column S will reveal the full text:
The 1 logographic example has E2 written phonographically with rendaku (MYS.16.3886:
葦河尓 = asi+gani)● Some Old Japanese compounds are attested with orthographic representations that are
ambiguous, i.e., with a character that could be either a phonogram or a logogram. Suchattestations are counted as logographic (−PH) in the OJRDB. In the entry below, clickingon the note in column S will reveal the full text:
1 logographic example has E2 written with 瀬, which is ambiguous (±PH) (MYS.17.4024:和多理瀬).

The character 瀬 was often used as a phonogram for the syllable se in Old Japanese texts,
but in this example, it corresponds to the morpheme meaning ‘rapids’, and as a logogram
for this morpheme, it could represent either se (without rendaku) or ze (with rendaku).

● Some attestations are written phonographically but with an ambiguous phonogram representing the ﬁrst letter of E2. In such cases, it is not certain how many phonographic
attestations have rendaku and how many do not, and the numbers in columns O and P arehighlighted in red on an orange background. In the entry below, clicking on the note incolumn S will reveal the full text:
The two examples (MYS.5.804a/b: 多都可豆慧) have the ﬁrst syllable of E2 written 豆,
which Jidai-betsu says is ambiguous (tu~du) in the Man’yōshū.

Jidai-betsu is the Old Japanese dictionary cited above in §1. The character 豆 was often
used as a phonogram in Old Japanese texts, but it sometimes represented tu and sometimes
represented du. The OCOJ contains two instances of the compound in this entry and romanizes both as tatuka+duwe (i.e., with rendaku), but there is room for doubt.

● Several entries in the OJRDB have an E1 that is deadjectival (at least arguably). Whensuch an entry lacks rendaku, there is some doubt about whether it is a compound or a syntactic phrase, with a “bare” adjective stem modifying a following noun. These examples
are highlighted with a yellow background in column R, as in the entry below.

● Compounds that are marked as Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ) dialect forms in the Old Japanese dictionary (Jidai-betsu) are excluded from the OJRDB. When a compound is not somarked but is attested in a poem that is known to be from an EOJ region, that attestationmust be treated with caution. If all the phonographic attestations are in EOJ poems, theentry for that compound is highlighted with a purple background. In the entry below,
clicking on the note in column S will reveal the full text:
The only attestation is in an EOJ poem (MYS.20.4351: 多妣己呂母).

Since tabi+goromo is attested phonographically only in an EOJ poem, the entry has apurple background.

● Some of the OCOJ texts are still provided only in romanization, with no accompanying
character text.
4. Error Reporting
The OJRDB is very much a work in progress. We welcome feedback from users, especiallyreports of errors. To report errors or other problems, please send e-mail to the following
address (replacing “AT” with the standard symbol):tjvanceATninjal.ac.jp