Talk:Old Japanese

message: I would like to expand this topic with much more detailed linguistic informtaion. I would appreciate help in merging it with the content already here. I will try to complete it within the next few days, depending on time constraints. Bendono 11:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Am I correct in understanding that "Quadrigade" corresponds to the modern consonant-stem verbs, such as aruku, tatsu, etc., while "Upper Monograde" corresponds to modern vowel-stems?  Do the "k-irregular", etc., mean that they end in ko2, ki1, ku, kuru, kure, ko2?  What is the difference between the two rows on each of the adjective types?  E.g., what's the difference between -ki1 and -karu?  What are the differences between teh various pronouns listed, such as wa, a, ware, and are? Nik42 07:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the review. I added a few notes of clarification to the verbs and adjective sections. I will add more to the pronoun section a little later. The article is rather bare now and I plan on updating it in the near future. Bendono 08:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questions 

message: Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see any explanation of what the distinction is between vowels with subscript 1s and vowels with subscript 2s. Kairos 21:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is discussed in the both the Phonemes and Transcription sections. Also, there is a link to Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai. As stated, it applies to the entire syllable, not necessarily only the vowel. There are various theories, but there is no general academic agreement. In time it would be nice to discuss the theories in more detail. It is one of the most hotly debated topics in Japanese historical linguistics. If the wording is not sufficiently clear, please feel free to improve it or make suggestions as necessary. Bendono 00:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Subscript numbers

message: So in this article we have a small section that talks how /r/ cannot be word initial. Wouldn't it be reasonable to explain why /r/ isn't initial? Something like this http://erssab.u-bordeaux3.fr/IMG/pdf/labrune_article_final_r.pdf could be used as source material. Of course, there are other theories as well that attempt to explain why /r/ isn't initial that can must be explained as well. So? FinalZero 17 03:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Kwamikagami's comment at Talk:Flap consonant#Initial flaps - difficult to pronounce?. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:15, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah those are all theories, but since there is no ironcald proof that Japanese is related to other languages, we can only speculate.  In Taiwan there is a group of languages where it seems that /d/ became /r/ in all positions except the beginning of the word (or perhaps /r/ became /d/ word-initially), so that could be at work here, but again it's only a guess unless a miracle happsn and someone unearths a manuscript from 4600 BC written in proto-Koreo-Japanese. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soap (talk • contribs) 17:32, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explain why /r/ isn't initial? 

message: I did some research on this while studying in Japan, and when we got to verb conjugations we read that there is only one verb that was conjugated in this manner, that being 蹴る.  I've still got photocopies of the stuff somewhere I can dig up if anybody wishes to see them. Kaji01 07:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No need. I have the entire OJ corpus. 蹴る is not attested in OJ. It first appears in LOJ (Heian period). Early examples can be found in 観智院本名義抄, 落窪物語, 栄花物語 etc. The OJ word for "to kick" was kuw- (蹴う) and it is 下二段. There are plenty of resources, several referenced, that clearly state that 下一段 does not exist yet at this stage of the language. Bendono 09:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  下一段 verbs 

message: In the phonological rules section, only six of the eight OJ vowels are mentioned.  <a, u, o1> in one class, <o2> alone in another, and 1</sub>, i2> being neutral.  What of e1 and e2?  If the i-variants hadn't been mentioned, one could assume they were neutral, but right now they're in a kind of limbo.  Anyone care to correct this?  --Wtrmute (talk) 13:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be best to omit that detail. The rules were discovered by Arisaska Hideo in 1934. Regarding e1 and e2, he said that they "should be feminine [second group] or neuter"; however, in his data they are masculine (first group). Various other resources list slightly different groupings. For example, Ōno (2000) gives {a, i1, u, o2} and {e1, e2, i2, o1}. He also goes on to seriously discredit the vowel harmony theory. The section is weak, but the resources are not very consistent on the issue either. Bendono (talk) 14:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whither e<sub>1</sub> and e<sub>2</sub>? 

message: This article is mixing old usage of Japanese with 上代日本語 (Jōdai nihongo). In Jōdai nihongo, much vocabulary of Yamatokotoba is found than Chinese Kango. We shouldn't mix borrowing Chinese characters with pronouncing the vocabulary in Yamatokotoba. Huge number of Japanese pronunciation exsisted in Jōdai nihongo. --210.139.234.58 (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Mixing old Japanese with Jōdai nihongo

message: :Category:Extinct languages of Asia is itself a category within :Category:Extinct languages. — Robert Greer (talk) 09:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Why are Old Japanese and Old Chinese classified as 'extinct'? I don't see people classify Old English as 'extinct'--Tricia Takanawa (talk) 16:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Extinct languages]] ''vs.'' [[:Category:Extinct languages of Asia]]  

message: I'm afraid that, if K means /k/, as was indeed my first reading, that paragraph's argument is incoherent to me.  What does it even mean to distinguish /ko1/ and /ko2/ "except for /wo/"?  By contrast, if K is a cover symbol for consonants, the reasoning is along the believable line that /o/ and /wo/ might only fail to be distinguished after /w/.  And anyway, if K did mean /k/, why didn't the original writer set it in lowercase?  
Do you have a good reason (e.g. a source!) for your interpretation?  4pq1injbok (talk) 05:58, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: My apologies, I did not read your edit very well. Being the original editor, I had written it as /Co1, Co2/. I must have missed when someone later changed it to k. I have previously made this same correction before, so had probably been confused by your edit which I had assumed was still correct. Here is the source of the mistake. I'll restore it. Regards, Bendono (talk) 06:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

text: Good question. If there was distinction between samtōji 三等字 the third grade character and yontōji 四等字 the fourth grade character in 歯音 /ts,tʃ,dz,dʒ,s,ʃ,ʒ,z/ group of Chinese phonetics, there would be /si2/ vs. /si1/ and /zi2/ vs. /zi1/. For example, in Old - Middle Chinese If there was /sɪǝg - sɪei/, /sɪar - sɪě/, /sɪuǝd - sɪuǝi/, /thɪǝg - tʃɪei/, /thɪar - tʃɪě/ or /thɪuǝd - tʃɪuǝi/ development, it should be /si2/. However, that development never have done. More simplly, if there was a pronunciation like /sɪi/, /sɪui/, /tʃɪi/, /tʃɪui/, /tsɪi/ or /tsɪui/, it should be /si2/. The difference between Samtōji and Yontōji was only Kaion 介音 /ɪ/ and /i/. Type 1 was /i/, type 2 was /ɪ/. Thank you. ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 17:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Good news. di2 and ri2 are probably found, said Wikiresearch:Old Japanese. I am also sure that it's positive. ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 05:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  attn Bendono: the meaning of K 

message: In phonology section. There are northern(north-eastern), eastern, western and most-western Japan.
However, I don't know southern Japan, esp. in the Old age.
West-southern Japan is Ryūkyū.
If it means Kyūshū, esp. the Dazaifu, it should be written most-western Japan.
And in the Old age. Japanese is not so different from most-western to eastern.
For example, to separate Pannatu-Pannatsu-Pangatsu are only consonant gradation of -nn- and -ng-. a house •ipë-•ipa are only existance of concrete postfix -i or not. *•ipa-i > •ipë. to where ni-na are conjugation as nna-nni-nnö (and nga-ngi-ngö).
ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 06:13, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the southern Japan ? 

message: I wrote facts, but not elegant nor fluent English. ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 07:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please improve my broken English. 

message: I spent a while time looking for "Jōdai Izen no Wago", but came up with nothing. There wasn't anything by that name in WorldCat. If it is to be included, it needs to be properly cited. 
There were several other issues:
* Is the publisher Shinchō-sha?
* If it's in a journal, which is the template it was using, what's the journal's name?
* What is the ISBN? The one given was not a valid ISBN of any sort.
I have removed it because of these issues and because it was not cited in the body of the article. It would be nice to have more sources, either in Japanese or English, but it should be done right. 
Otherwise, I've cleaned up the references so they are consistent (only romanized Japanese), put Frellesvig's stuff into the proper template, and added Vovin's grammar. --Limetom 06:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: http://books.google.com/books?id=aun8BRHTDEAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Rajmaan (talk) 04:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects  By Bjarke Frellesvig, John Whitman  

message: I can't access all of Miyake.  Can someone add the derivation of e2 and o2 from pOJ? — kwami (talk) 23:19, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  derivation of e2, o2 

message: I find this entire page to be entirely lacking and I wonder why distinct language types - such as Yamato are not actually given a section or overview and instead lumped into "Old Japanese". Is that even correct I wonder? Anyone know for sure? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yamato is "old Japanese" 

message: It appears to be a contradiction throughout the article when using the vowels o1 and o2:
according to Transcription section, o2 is ö and the Vowels one states that o1 was /ə/ (or rather [ə]?) and o2 (ö) was /o/ according to Miyake. Also, *ə was included in the PJ inventory.
However, Proto-Japanese says  'the proto vowel system can be reconstructed as /*a, *i, *u, *o2/' , thus matching o2 with *ə, in contradiction with the sections above. Also, Wiktionary uses o2 for *ə (Wiktionary: 心).
Moreover, Miyaki does not use subscript notation. A possible solution to this problem is to match o with o2 to make clear that it was o2 the primary vowel rather than o1. If we were to retain the matching o = o1, the Proto-Japanese section should be modified. --Farru ES (talk) 18:24, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah the schwa is definitely o1.  I thought I fixed that already but apparently not so thank you for noticing. I will fix it later. Lollipop (talk) 23:39, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Fix,ed although the verb conjugs may still be wreong.—Soap— 17:30, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notation inconsistency 

message: Existing text:
 It distinguished between a few pairs of syllables with identical pronunciations — a phenomenon known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai 
* Firstly a small point: "between a few pairs" of course means between the members of a few pairs; my view is that this point is not too 'picky' for a minor edit, and my intention is to do one soon.
* Secondly a question: doesn't "identical" here mean apparently identical, or some such?
Peter010101 (talk) 05:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai 

message: , your changes erased other people's sourced work, you should at least justify it in the Talk Page. 2A01:E35:8A85:7E40:41FB:7335:1AF2:6FE1 (talk) 13:01, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Your addition cited Frellesvig's draft chapter on the Cornell website; I changed that to the published version (page 32 of his book).  Your text "since Lange, it has been the glide theory which is more generally accepted" has a quite different meaning from the Frellesvig's "since Lange (1973), it is common to interpret the difference in terms of sequential diphthongs".  That is, "common" does not imply "more generally accepted".  Kanguole 13:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Please answer what my comment said. I was not talking about, nor do I care about, my own modifications. The fact you felt the need to justify deleting my edits says a lot about your mindset. 2A01:E35:8A85:7E40:41FB:7335:1AF2:6FE1 (talk) 19:20, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I have edited per WP:BOLD, with edit summaries describing each edit, re-organizing the text to avoid repetition, and basing it on solid secondary sources.  If any specific edits are of concern, let's discuss them.  Kanguole 14:49, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erased 

message: Someone should make a section describing the grammar of nouns in Old Japanese Mizoru (talk) 19:05, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm curious, what would you want to see?  Nouns and other non-inflecting words generally don't have grammar.  Are you asking about how particles are used?  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  No noun grammar information 

message: This is responding to this discussion about what to call the OJ of the Nara area (which reflects the vast bulk of what is attested) in contrast to Eastern Old Japanese.
* Frellesvig speaks of "central OJ", Unger of "(central) OJ", i.e. not a proper noun.
* Several authors (e.g. Miyake, Bentley, de Boer) call it "Central OJ".
* Vovin (who is very prolific) calls it "Western OJ", presumably to give it equal status with the much-less-attested EOJ. (But he says it is part of Central Japonic.) Vovin's student Kupchik uses the same term, and even introduces "Central OJ" for Sinano dialects of OJ, which other authors include in EOJ.
Kanguole 19:13, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Central/Western Old Japanese 

message: In fact, it is recognized here that there is not yet a division between the standalone vowels i1 and i2, however in the Kojiki, this type of division seems apparent, which also already had a division between mo1 and mo2. Because some transliterations put i1ma/i1me (dream) as jima/jime, the same with i1 (sleep) as ji, they all use man'yougana 伊 to represent this supposed ji, which is also used to represent the stem form of the verb oyu (to age) which would be oi1, but in this case it is oji, which makes sense because they are in the same column, could someone clarify if there really is such a difference and if the syllable ji exists in old Japanese.
===Source===
https://oncoj.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/oncoj_tgrep2.sh?search=/L050103/
https://oncoj.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/oncoj.sh?tree=KK.93@78
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AF%9D#Etymology_3
--The Young Prussian (talk) 01:50, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  I<sub>1</sub> 

message: https://oncoj.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/oncoj_tgrep2.sh?search=/L050103/
https://oncoj.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/oncoj.sh?tree=KK.93@78
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AF%9D#Etymology_3
--The Young Prussian (talk) 01:50, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Source

message: we say 
:
Which /e/?  I assume if it is only one, it is the /e/ that comes from earlier /ia/.  Or is it both? —Soap— 21:33, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement (from Miyake) relates to the OJ period, when (according to the script) there was only one /e/ after /s/ and /ⁿz/. That /e/ was probably the result of a merger of two or more vowel sequences from a pre-OJ period, but in OJ they had already merged, and Miyake is talking about allophones of /s/ and /ⁿz/ before that single /e/. Kanguole 22:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

text: This could be taken as asking whether e1 and e2 merged as e1 or e2 after /s/ and /ⁿz/. Miyake (p264) believes it was the former, but others have different views. Kanguole 21:15, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay thanks. I think I understand now. The shifts /s z/ > /š ž/ and the opposite are both about equally likely, so we can't just look at morphology and assume that if we see underlying /sia/ that it must have been /še/.  And the kanji were already merged in even the earliest texts, so we can't look at Chinese either. —Soap— 14:50, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, while quite a bit later, the 1603 Nippo Jisho records that せ (modern se) was pronounced at that time as something more like . ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:34, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  palatalization before /e/