Region Japan | ISO 639-3 ojp (Old Japanese) | |
Era Evolved into Late Middle Japanese at the end of the 12th century Language family Japonic
Japanese
Early Middle Japanese Early forms Old Japanese
Early Middle Japanese Writing system Hiragana, Katakana, and Han | ||
Early Middle Japanese (中古日本語, chūko nihongo) is a stage of the Japanese language used between 794 and 1185, a time known as the Heian Period. It is the successor to Old Japanese. It is also known as Late Old Japanese, but the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (after 1185) than to Old Japanese (before 794).
Contents
Background
Whereas Old Japanese borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese, during the Early Middle Japanese period two new scripts emerge: kana scripts hiragana and katakana. This development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature with such classics as Genji Monogatari, Taketori Monogatari, Ise Monogatari and many others.
Phonological developments
Major phonological changes are a characteristic of this period.
The most prominent difference is the loss of Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai, which distinguished between two types of -i, -e, and -o. While the beginnings of this loss can already be seen at the end of Old Japanese, it is completely lost early in Early Middle Japanese. The final phonemes to be lost are /ko1/ and /ko2/.
During the 10th century, /e/ and /je/ merge into /je/ while /o/ and /wo/ merge into /wo/ by the 11th century.
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).
Other changes include:
Vowels
Phonetic Realization
/s, z/
Theories for the realization of /s, z/ include [s, z], [ts, dz], and [ʃ, ʒ]. It may have varied depending on the following vowel, as it does with modern Japanese.
/ɸ/
By the 11th century, intervocalic /ɸ/ had merged with /w/.
/r/
/r/: [r]
Grammar
Syntactically, Early Middle Japanese is an SOV (subject-object-verb) language with topic-comment structure. Morphologically it is agglutinative. Major word classes are nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and various grammatical particles. Nouns may be followed by particles to indicate case, but also occur without a following particle. Verbs are obligatorily marked with affixes, many of which are inflected as verbs in their own right, allowing the build-up of complex strings of suffixes. Adjectives are largely inflected for the same categories as verbs, and so are often referred to as 'stative verbs'.
Nouns and Pronouns
Nouns occur with postpositive case particles. The major case particles are:
The nominative function is marked by the absence of a particle in main clauses, and by the genitive particles in subordinate clauses. The dative/locative particle -ni is homophonous with the simple infinitive form of the copula -ni, which 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 provide other case functions, e.g. -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 are derived from genitive particle + Location Noun + appropriate case particle (typically locative -ni) and are used particularly to express spatial and temporal relations. Major Location Nouns are mafe 'front' (Noun-no mafe-ni 'in front of Noun'), ufe 'top' (Noun-no ufe-ni 'on top of Noun' ~ 'above Noun'), sita 'underneath' (Noun-no sita-ni 'under Noun), saki 'ahead' (Noun-no saki-ni 'ahead of Noun)', etc.
Verbs
Early Middle Japanese inherits all eight verbal conjugations from Old Japanese and adds one new one: Lower Monograde.
Conjugation
Traditionally verbs are divided into five regular conjugations: quadrigrade (yodan 四段), upper monograde (kami ichidan 上一段), lower monograde (shimo ichidan 下一段), upper bigrade (kami nidan 上二段), lower bigrade (shimo nidan 下二段). There are also four 'irregular' conjugations: K-irregular (kahen カ変), S-irregular (sahen サ変), N-irregular (nahen ナ変), R-irregular (rahen ラ変). The conjugation of each is divided into six stems: irrealis (mizenkei 未然形), infinitive (ren'yōkei 連用形), conclusive (shūshikei 終止形), attributive (rentaikei 連体形), realis (izenkei 已然形) and imperative (meireikei 命令形). The English names for the irrealis and the realis differ from author to author, including negative and evidential, or imperfective and perfective, or irrealis and realis.
The system of nine conjugation classes appears complex. However, all nine conjugations can be subsumed into variations of two groups, the consonant-root verbs and the vowel-root verbs. Consonant-root verbs consist of the quadrigrade, N-irregular and R-irregular verbs. The irregularity of N-irregular verbs occurs only in the conclusive and the attributive, and as there are no quadrigrade verbs with an n-root we can treat quadrigrade and N-irregular verb patterns as being in complementary distribution. Vowel-root verbs consist of bigrade verbs (the majority), a few monograde verbs (especially mi- 'see' and wi- 'sit'), the K-irregular verb ko- 'come', and the S-irregular verb se- 'do' (or -ze- in some compounds). The difference between 'upper' and 'lower' bigrade or monograde verbs is whether the vowel at the end of the root is i or e. There is only one 'lower' monograde verb, ke- 'kick', which was a 'lower' bigrade verb kuwe- in Old Japanese, and which changed classes again in later Japanese to become quadrigrade (Modern Japanese ker-). The difference between bigrade and monograde is whether, in the conclusive, attributive and realis, the initial u of the ending elides the vowel of the root or the vowel of the roots elides the initial u of the ending.
There are problems with this arrangement of stems. (1.) The irrealis does not occur by itself, but instead always with another ending. There is good evidence that it actually consists of a fusion of the root of the verb with the a-sound that begins the following ending, e.g. quadrigrade yom- 'recite' + -azu Negative has been interpreted as a stem yoma- + -zu. (2.) The infinitive has two functions, namely a linking function with another verb or with a verb ending and a nominal function as a verb-noun, and these two functions were distinguished in having different pitch patterns. (3.) The conclusive occurs as it is in the above table only at the end of a sentence (including before a quotative particle to), whereas before tomo 'even if' monograde verbs use the infinitive instead (quadrigrade yomu tomo 'even if ... recites', but monograde mi tomo 'even if ... sees'), and before endings such as -besi 'have to' R-irregular verbs use the attributive instead (e.g. ari 'is' at the end of a sentence, but aru-besi 'has to be'). The likelihood is that the monograde verb form used before tomo is the earlier true conclusive form, and in Old Japanese this is the only conclusive form attested (always before tomo); in Early Middle Japanese the attributive form of monograde verbs came to be used also as a conclusive. With endings such as -besi, there is strong evidence that they were originally of the form -ubesi, and that a fusion of the root of the verb with the u-sound of the ending, e.g. quadrigrade yom- 'recite' + -ubesi, has been interpreted as conclusive yomu + -besi. This means that the apparently anomalous u in aru-besi is part of the ending, not of the verb stem. In Old Japanese, the root of the ending -ubesi, ube, is attested as an independent noun. A more accurate representation of stems, therefore, would be:
Adjectives
There were two types of adjectives: regular adjectives and adjectival nouns.
The regular adjective is sub-classified into two types: those where the adverbial form ends in -ku and those that end in -siku. This creates two different types of conjugations:
The -kar- and -sikar- forms are derived from the verb ar- "be, exists". The adverbial conjugation (-ku or -siku) is suffixed with ar-. The conjugation yields to the R-irregular conjugation of ar-. The resulting -ua- elides into -a-.
The adjectival noun retains the original nar- conjugation and adds a new tar-:
The nar- and tar- forms share a common etymology. The nar- form is a contraction of case particle ni and r-irregular verb ar- "is, be": ni + ar- > nar-. The tar- form is a contraction of case particle to and r-irregular verb ar- "is, be": to + ar- > tar-. Both derive their conjugations from the verb ar-.
Writing system
Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana, Chinese characters used as a phonetic transcription as in Early Old Japanese. This usage later produced the hiragana and katakana syllabic scripts which were derived from simplifications of the original Chinese characters.