Old Japanese: a phonetic reconstruction

t d n r

Palatal

s z

Velar

Glottal

k g

($ )

y

(2) -y- after any consonant except y or w and before non-palatal vowels (a, u, o):
Go-on syau ‘sound,’
Go-on syu ‘hand,’
Go-on syo ‘book.’ The pre-1945 SJ orthography has only one true ‘final’ consonant, the mora nasal -n, which corresponds to both m and n in SX and other Chinese languages. Note that non-SJ palatal and velar nasals ( ã, Y) do not correspond to SJ -n. The early OJ equivalents of MC *-m and *-n merged into the mora nasal -n /N/ by the late Heian Period (Martin 1987: 75). Prior to this merger, MC *-m was written with kana for mu. Although both MC *-m and MC *-n words are written with -n in the standardized pre-1945 SJ orthography, Tôdô’s (1978) SJ dictionary, the source of most of the SJ readings in this book, distinguishes them by using SJ -mu for MC *-m words and SJ -n for MC *-n words. The vowel inventory of SJ (Table 5.2) is as minimal as the consonant inventory. The pre-1945 kana orthography for SJ readings reflects the fivevowel system of EMJ and subsequent stages of Japanese, not the earlier ‘eight-vowel’ system of OJ. These five vowels combine to form a few orthographic diphthongs. Most of these diphthongs are pronounced as long vowels or glide-long vowel combinations in MSJ (Table 5.3). Notice that I have placed the diphthong oi in parentheses. When checking through the reading indexes of three large SJ dictionaries (Tôdô 1978, Morohashi et al. 1981–82, Morohashi et al. 1992), I found only one SJ reading with -oi, Tô-Sô-on (p. 107) boi for
Go-on bai < EMC *bRyh / Kan-on hai < *p®ayh ‘dry over heat’ in Morohashi et al. (1981–82). Apparently there are no Go-on or Kan-on readings with -oi. This gap in the Go-on and Kan-on inventory of finals will turn out to be helpful later on when I reconstruct the phonetic value of OJ ey on p. 227. Table 5.2 The vowels of pre-1945 SJ orthography Front High Mid Low

Central

i e

Back u o

a

102

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Table 5.3 The diphthongs of pre-1945 SJ orthography i a i u e o

ai

u MSJ [ai]

ui MSJ [ui] ei MSJ [ee]~[ei] (oi) MSJ [oi]

au iu uu eu ou

MSJ MSJ MSJ MSJ MSJ

[oo] [yuu] [uu] [yoo] [oo]

None of the diphthongs in Table 5.3 can appear before SJ renderings of MC final consonants (-hu, -ti/tu, -n, -ki/ku, -i/u). SJ readings have the following structure: (5.3) C1(G)V(C 2) C1 = initials G = glides V = vowels C 2 = the various SJ counterparts of MC final consonants: (a) the mora nasal n (b) the vowels {i, u} (forming the diphthongs in Table 5.3) (c) the CV sequences {hu, (mu), ti/tu, ki/ku} Although the above discussion may imply that SJ is but a pale reflection of Chinese, one must realize that the SJ of pre-1945 orthography is not the same as the SJ of the OJ period. Go-on and Kan-on did not always render multiple Chinese finals with a single Japanese final. The pre-1945 kana orthography I use for SJ reflects the five-vowel system of post-OJ, not the vowel systems of the Japanese who borrowed Go-on and Kan-on. We do not know for certain when the pre-OJ six-vowel system became the OJ ‘eight-vowel’ system, but it is possible that Go-on was borrowed by fifthand sixth-century Japanese who distinguished between eight ‘vowels.’ We do know that the OJ of the seventh and eighth century had an ‘eight-vowel’ system, so the Japanese of that period must have used some or all of their eight ‘vowels’ to imitate the vowels of Chang’an LMC. Unfortunately, we have no dictionaries of SJ compiled during the OJ period. We cannot assume that OJ phonogram readings and OJ Go-on or OJ Kan-on readings were the same. OJ phonogram writing was an attempt to write the syllables of one language (OJ) with symbols originally meant to represent the syllables of another language (Chinese). There is no guarantee that each OJ syllable had an approximate equivalent in the syllabic inventory of OJ period SJ, System D (Sino-Paekche), or System E (Chang’an LMC). Even if we did know OJ period SJ readings, we could not solve the problem of the reconstruction of OJ by reading phonograms in OJ period SJ. There 103

OLD JAPANESE

is no guarantee that all native OJ syllables occurred in OJ period SJ. Furthermore, to read phonograms in OJ period SJ, we would have to know the phonetic values of OJ consonants and ‘vowels.’ It would be circular to use ‘OJ period SJ readings’ based on our assumptions about OJ phonetics to reconstruct OJ phonetics. We must reconstruct OJ before we can reconstruct OJ period SJ. We have to know what sounds the ancient Japanese had at their disposal in order to figure out how they pronounced SJ. To avoid circularity, we can use only Go-on and Kan-on readings which have been attested in kana after the OJ period to aid us in the reconstruction of OJ. SJ will not play a major role in my reconstruction because SV and SK preserved more MC phonological distinctions than either Go-on or Kan-on. Hence SV and SK are better approximations of MC than SJ. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate in the following sections, SJ, SK, and SV share many features but also have several differences which are not the result of Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese-internal sound changes. They reflect similar but not identical dialects of Chinese from various regions and periods. Among the branches of SX, only SJ ‘descends’ from Systems D and E, the foundations of OJ orthography. Thus we cannot ignore SJ if we are to understand the orthography of Kojiki and Shoki poetry. Go-on ‘Go-on’ literally means ‘sounds of Wu.’ ‘Wu’ refers to Jiankang (modern Nanjing), the capital of several states during the Six Dynasties period (Pulleyblank 1991a: 3). The term may imply that Go-on – and Systems B through D – derive from southern LOC and EMC. Although Go-on consists of the earliest surviving strata of SJ, it probably does not constitute the earliest layer of loans in Japanese. I have already dealt with the phonology of these ‘pre-Sino-Japanese’ (PSJ) loans in pre-OJ in depth in Miyake (1997), so I will not say anything more about them here. The earliest layer of true SJ loans according to the definition in Section 5.3 may date from the fifth century, when Paekche scholars such as ‘Achiki’ and ‘Wani’ taught System B to the early Japanese (p. 9). I suspect that System B was actually early Sino-Paekche based on Middle Late Old Chinese (MLOC) rather than MLOC itself (pp. 9 and 11). Thus this first layer may have been a Japanese attempt to imitate Paekche imitations of Chinese. Later layers of Go-on may have been imitations of newer versions of SinoPaekche and/or EMC (i.e., Systems C and D). Many Go-on readings were lost after the importation of Kan-on (p. 105). Yet we find Go-on readings for every single character in SJ dictionaries (kanwa jiten). Lexicographers have invented what I call ‘pseudo-Go-on’ on the basis of fanqie (Miller 1967: 106, Tôdô 1980: 168). Go-on readings in today’s SJ dictionaries are a mix of genuine borrowings from Systems B through D and what Miller (1967: 106) calls “linguistic ghosts.” It is often 104

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

difficult if not impossible to sort out which readings are real and which readings are imaginary. I have yet to see two SJ dictionaries whose Go-on readings match completely. I have relied mostly upon Tôdô (1978) for the SJ readings of the Kojiki and Shoki phonograms in Appendices C and D. The great Japanese Sinologist Tôdô (1978: 1) openly admits in his introduction that some of his SJ readings are artificial: “Even in cases whenever readings are not found in Japanese language data, I have indicated them, inferring the Go-on and Kan-on readings from homophonous characters in Guangyun and Yunjing.” Unfortunately, he does not indicate which readings in the body of his dictionary were inferred from homophones in Guangyun or Yunjing. If I could not find Go-on readings in Tôdô (1978), I obtained them from Morohashi (1955– 60), Morohashi et al. (1981–82), or Morohashi et al. (1992), knowing that all of these dictionaries contained pseudo-Go-on readings. A truly honest SJ dictionary would have many sinographs listed without Go-on and/or Kan-on readings. Tôdô (1980: 168) himself gives some good advice about how to avoid pseudo-Go-on and pseudo-Kan-on: “To use Kan-on and Go-on as data for the history of Chinese phonology, it is best for us to limit ourselves to old materials with glosses for character readings or specific vocabulary items which have been transmitted such as
 tousai ‘east and west,’
 kyaudai ‘brothers,’ and
 rokusyau ‘green rust on copper.’ ” I agree with Tôdô. I believe that a comprehensive study of the Japanese lexicon through time as well as the study of old SJ glosses would be necessary to determine the true SJ readings of characters. But since SJ plays a limited role in my reconstruction, for the time being I will use the SJ readings of Tôdô (1978), Morohashi (1955–60), Morohashi et al. (1981–82), and Morohashi et al. (1992). Kan-on ‘Kan-on’ literally means ‘sounds of Han’ or ‘Chinese sounds.’ After the Sui unified China in 581, they and their Tang successors ruled the country from Chang’an. The once marginal dialect of Chang’an in the northwest rose to prominence while the once prestigious dialect of Jiankang (modern Nanjing) in the east declined. This shift of status was not immediate. Intellectuals from the east and south came to the new capital during the Sui Dynasty, bringing their dialects with them (Pulleyblank 1984: 61; Coblin 1994: 9–10). Although Lu Fayan compiled Qieyun (p. 93) in Chang’an, neither he nor the scholars who discussed rhyming with him were natives of the northwest (Pulleyblank 1962: 64, Malmqvist 1973: 14, Coblin 1994: 9–10). Thus the Japanese missions who began to arrive in Chang’an in the early seventh century encountered not only the local dialect but also transplanted 105

OLD JAPANESE

dialects from other regions. The Japanese initially had no motivation to adopt the local dialect as a new basis for their sinograph pronunciations. They could still hear the ‘sounds of Wu’ in the speech of upper-class immigrants. Perhaps the Japanese learned the last stratum of Go-on in Chang’an. But eventually the ‘sounds of Wu’ lost their former lustre. As previously mentioned, Yan Shigu made a distinction between ‘light lip sounds’ and ‘heavy lip sounds’ in the fanqie glosses of his commentary to the Han shu (History of the Han), completed in 641 CE (Coblin 1994: 34–35). The ‘sounds of Wu’ brought to Chang’an by the first generation of eastern and southern scholars were being rejected or even forgotten by later generations who regarded them as “provincial and substandard” (Pulleyblank 1991a: 3). The term ‘sounds of Wu’ was “somewhat pejorative” (Pulleyblank 1984: 154). Tôdô (1980: 166) notes that even Qieyun was “slandered” because it represented the old-fashioned ‘sounds of Wu.’ Oddly, the Japanese did not use the term current in China itself for the speech of Chang’an, ‘sounds of Qin,’ which would have been Sin-in in Kan-on. ‘Qin’ referred to the extremely short-lived but also extremely infamous Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE) that had unified the ‘warring states’ of China. The Qin capital was in Xianyang, only ten kilometers away from Chang’an (Tôdô 1978: 1663). I suspect that ‘Kan-on’ (‘sounds of Han’) may have been a reference to the Western Han Dynasty (202 BCE– 8 CE), whose capital had been in Chang’an itself. ‘Han’ could also refer to China as a whole, so the term ‘Kan-on’ could have emphasized the direct Chinese origins of the latest sinograph pronunciation. Go-on were just imitations of Korean imitations, but Kan-on were imitations of the real thing. When Nihon shoki was being compiled in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, scribes used the ‘real thing’ – System E, the Chang’an dialect of LMC (CLMC) – as the basis of their transcriptions of Japanese poetry. Some scribes were more familiar with CLMC than others. Hence we see different degrees of retentions from SDBT in different volumes of Shoki (p. 57). Mori (1991) has divided Shoki into two strata, ‘alpha’ and ‘beta.’ The ‘alpha section’ poetry has fewer SDBT retentions than the ‘beta section’ poetry. Mori (1991) believes that the division between the two strata are clear-cut, but I see the key characteristics of Kan-on and System-E-based transcription (SEBT) in both strata of Shoki: (1) The use of CLMC prenasalized obstruents to represent OJ voiced obstruents: CLMC *mb for OJ b, CLMC *nd for OJ d, etc. Cf. the sound correspondences between CLMC prenasalized obstruents and OJ voiced obstruents: CLMC *mb : Kan-on b, CLMC *nd : Kan-on d, etc. (2) The use of CLMC ‘muddy’ obstruents (reconstructed with *® by Pulleyblank 1984: 68) to represent OJ voiceless as well as voiced obstruents: CLMC *p® for OJ p, CLMC *t® for OJ t, etc. Cf. the sound correspondences 106

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

between CLMC ‘muddy’ initials and Kan-on voiceless obstruents: CLMC *p® : Kan-on h, CLMC *t® : Kan-on t, etc. (3) The absence of phonograms used for their OC sound values. Although SDBT and the majority of Go-on were more or less contemporary, phonograms such as
EH *kye / EMC *ciR > Go-on si ‘branch’ for OJ kyi and
EH *tyRq / EMC *ctq > Go-on si ‘stop’ for OJ to were still in use as late as the eighth century (Ôno Tôru 1962: 141). Such archaic phonograms are completely absent from Shoki. (4) The use of phonograms of the
‘genitive’ rhyme solely for OJ syllables ending either in -i or -iy. Go-on and SDBT readings for
‘genitive’ rhyme characters end either in i-like vowels or in o-like vowels, whereas Kan-on and SEBT readings of
‘genitive’ rhyme characters end only in i-like vowels. I will conclude this section with a note on ‘pseudo-Kan-on.’ Although Kan-on is the dominant variety of SJ today, there are some sinographs whose Kan-on readings (a) were forgotten or (b) were never transmitted to Japan. Thus lexicographers have supplied these sinographs with Kan-on ‘readings’ generated on the basis of fanqie (cf. the pseudo-Go-on on p. 104). Some lexicographers even altered attested Kan-on readings to fit preconceived notions about Kan-on: e.g., changing
Kan-on mei ‘bright’ to pseudo-Kan-on bei so that there are no Kan-on readings with nasal initials (Miller 1967: 106). Fortunately, my sources for SJ (Tôdô 1978, Morohashi 1955–60, Morohashi et al. 1981–82, and Morohashi et al. 1992) do not alter attested readings. Nevertheless, SJ data from dictionaries can be used only with great caution. Other strata The importation of Chinese readings into Japan did not stop with the Kan-on of the late seventh and early eighth centuries. The Japanese court continued to send missions to Tang China until 838. Even after the court severed its official relations with the deteriorating Tang in the late ninth century (Varley 1984: 54, 75), Japanese continued to go to China. They learned late Tang and Northern Song (960–1127 CE) readings which Tôdô (1980: 172) calls “New Kan-on” (Shin Kan-on). But this New Kan-on never caught on in Japan. For example, New Kan-on
 hosa < Northern Song *pho saq ‘bodhisattva’ did not replace the established Go-on word bosatsu. Practically no New Kan-on pronunciations survive in MSJ. One cannot even find genuine or fake New Kan-on pronunciations in dictionaries. After New Kan-on came various strata collectively known as ‘Tô-Sô-on’ (lit. ‘sounds of Tang and Song’). The term ‘Tô-Sô-on’ is somewhat misleading since the Tang Dynasty had long since fallen by the time Sôtô and Rinzai Zen monks brought back the readings that they had learned in the Southern Song (1127–1279) capital of Hangzhou (Tôdô 1978: 1587). ‘Tô-Sô-on’ can refer to any SJ readings later than Go-on and Kan-on, though in the strictest 107

OLD JAPANESE

sense it refers to borrowings from late Northern Song and early Yuan (Tôdô 1980: 174). Even though Tô-Sô-on never seriously threatened Kan-on or Go-on, a number of Tô-Sô-on words such as
 isu (cf. Go-on and Kan-on *isi) are still common in MSJ. Note that Tô-Sô-on -u in words such as
su ‘child; nominal suffix’ corresponds to -i in Kan-on and Go-on. This word belonged to the EMC
*-t ‘genitive’ rhyme. Late EMC had merged the EMC
*-iR ‘branch,’
*-i ‘fat,’ and
*-t ‘genitive’ rhymes into a single rhyme *-i which persisted into early LMC. Hence the later stratum of Go-on and Kan-on as a whole render these rhymes with -i. Early LMC *-i then became some sort of non-palatal vowel after sibilants (*s, *s®, *ts, *tsh, *ts®, *Z, *Z®) in late LMC. Pulleyblank reconstructs this vowel as *rC before retroflex sibilants (*Z, *Z®) and as *zC before dental sibilants (*s, *s®, *ts, *tsh, *ts®). (5.4) *i > *i >

*rC / *zC /

C_# C_#

C = {*Z, *Z®} C = {*s, *s®, *ts, *tsh, *ts®}

I prefer to reconstruct this vowel as *t in both environments: (5.5) *i >

*t

/

C_#

C = {*s, *s®, *ts, *tsh, *ts®, *Z, *Z®}

Regardless of which reconstruction is correct, all evidence points toward a non-palatal vowel for prestige dialects of late LMC. SK, SV, and the literary layers of nearly all modern Chinese languages have non-palatal vowels for words of the early LMC *-i rhyme with retroflex and dental sibilants: (5.6)
‘child’

Early Late SK LMC LMC *tsi *tst co [ts£]

SV

Md

Literary Taiwanese tO [ttt] zh [ts)] chu3 [tsu]

Colloquial readings of characters in southern Chinese languages still preserve the earlier *-i:
Literary Taiwanese su 5 < LMC *st ‘four’ corresponds to Colloquial Taiwanese si 5 < pre-LMC *si. OSV also preserves pre-LMC *i:
SV tO [ttt] < LMC *tst ‘child’ corresponds to OSV tí [tii] (Wang 1958: 380). Although this discussion may seem completely irrelevant, I must point out this phenomenon for two reasons: (1) Non-palatal vowels for words of the early LMC *-i rhyme with retroflex and dental sibilants are late Tang innovations. Knowing this will help us to date SK and SV in the next two sections (pp. 109 and 117). (2) In Chapter 8, we will see many cases of SK -o [£] and SV -e [tt] corresponding to OJ -i. Knowing that the rhymes SK -o [£] and SV -e [tt] reflect an innovation (*i > *t) which occurred after the borrowing of Go-on 108

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

and Kan-on will help us to avoid misinterpreting them as evidence for nonpalatal pronunciations of OJ i (e.g., *[£] or *[t] ). Sino-Korean (SK) Unlike Japan, the Korean peninsula is directly adjacent to China. Contact between the non-Chinese tribes of the peninsula and the Chinese of the mainland was inevitable. Weiman (Korean Wiman) of the northeastern Chinese state of Yan took over the northern part of the peninsula circa the third century CE. The Western Han invaded this territory and founded four colonies in 108 BCE. The natives of the north may have been exposed to Western and Eastern Han Dynasty Chinese for several centuries. The Chinese never did dominate the entire peninsula. The king of the tribal state of Koguryo (Jpn Kôkuri) was crowned by the Chinese in the first century CE. Koguryo destroyed the last of the Chinese colonies in 313 CE. To the southwest and southeast of Koguryo, Paekche (Jpn Kudara) and Silla (Jpn Shiragi) emerged as states in the third and fourth centuries CE. The enigmatic tribal confederation of Kaya (Jpn Mimana) was formed on the southern coast between these two states. The peninsula was entirely under native rule by the fourth century CE (Lewin 1973: 22, Ki-baik Lee 1980: 507, Haewoo Lee 1994: 208–209). Each of these states probably had its own language. Although independent from China, the ‘Three Kingdoms’ of the peninsula – Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla – imported Chinese culture and sent missions to the various Chinese states during the Six Dynasties Period (Yu 1991). I believe that LOC and EMC dialects of this period formed the basis of ‘Old Sino-Korean’ (OSK): Sino-Koguryo, Sino-Paekche, and Sino-Silla. (If Sino-Kaya existed, it too would have been based on LOC and EMC.) Best (1983: 146) claims that Paekche was recognized as “the most culturally sophisticated of the Three Kingdoms.” Even the Chinese “were speaking respectfully of the accomplishments of Paekche’s [Confucian] scholars.” Paekche men of learning such as ‘Wani’ and ‘Achiki’ spread their knowledge of Chinese language and culture and Buddhism to their Japanese allies in the southeast. Perhaps the early Systems underlying Go-on and the bulk of Japanese transcriptions apart from Shoki were based on various strata of their Sino-Paekche pronunciations rather than on LOC and EMC dialects. Paekche was ultimately doomed. Its ally Japan was no match for the new Tang Dynasty. Intent on expanding into the peninsula, the Tang forged an alliance with Silla, which had already conquered Kaya in the sixth century. With the help of the Tang, Silla defeated Paekche in 663 CE and Koguryo in 668 CE, thereby unifying the peninsula for the first time. Paekche and Koguryo refugees “played a vital role as scribes, craftsmen, and artists in the advancement of culture and civilization in Japan” (Varley 1984: 22). Their languages died out, but the final stages of their branches of SX may live on in the form of Go-on. Since students from all of the Three 109

OLD JAPANESE

Kingdoms had gone to the Tang capital of Chang’an in the seventh century (Haewoo Lee 1994: 220), it is also possible that these Paekche and Koguryo refugees taught CLMC (System E) to the Japanese. Unified Silla (668–935) borrowed a new system of character readings from northern LMC which formed the core of Sino-Korean proper. Old Korean, the Silla language, was related to the ancestor of the Early Middle Korean (EMK) of Koryo (935–1392), the Late Middle Korean (LMK) of the fifteenth century, and modern Korean (Vovin 1996b). This section will briefly outline what little is known about the varieties of OSK, sketch the phonology of SK, and attempt to determine the origins of SK. Since I am only using SK evidence for this book, I will not discuss aspects of Korean historical phonology which are not relevant to SK. Old Sino-Korean (OSK) ‘Old Sino-Korean’ refers to all of the branches of SX of the Korean peninsula prior to its unification in 668 CE: Sino-Koguryo, Sino-Paekche, Sino-Silla, and possibly Sino-Kaya. Practically nothing is known about Sino-Kaya at this point, so I will not mention it again. Our knowledge of the other three varieties of OSK is not much better. Like the Japanese prior to the eighth century, the peoples of the Three Kingdoms used phonograms to record proper nouns. The degree of overlap between Paekche and Japanese phonograms is striking and confirms the Paekche origins of Japanese writing (Bentley 2001). Toh (1977, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987), Lyu (1983), Yu (1991), Eom (1991, 1994), Ryu (1994), Bentley (1998b, 2001) are some of the many studies on Three Kingdoms phonograms and OSK. Unfortunately, most of these studies with the exception of Bentley (1998b, 2001) suffer from four problems. (1) Most scholars seem to assume that OSK readings and the readings of phonograms in transcriptions were identical. But this was not the case in Japan, and it may not have been the case in Korea. The aims of SX and sinographic transcription necessitate different readings. SX is meant to mimic Chinese, whereas sinographic transcription is meant to record non-Chinese sounds with phonograms representing the nearest Chinese equivalents. Unless the syllabic inventories of a variety of Chinese (or its SX incarnation) and a non-Chinese language perfectly match, compromise is inevitable in transcription. (2) To know how much compromise is involved, we must know something about the phonotactics of Chinese and the languages of the Three Kingdoms. Unfortunately, Koguryo and Paekche are extinct, so we cannot draw upon any modern data from them. Silla is the ancestor of Old Korean (OK; see below), but our knowledge of OK phonology is shaky. Thus we must look at LOC and EMC phonotactics to understand what choices were available for the scribes of the Three Kingdoms. 110

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Yet no one has ever analyzed the transcriptions of the Three Kingdoms with an understanding of the phonotactics of earlier Chinese. It seems that scholars assume that OC and MC had more than enough syllables to render nonChinese languages, even though there are gaps in the syllabic inventory of Chinese that prevent exact matches between Chinese and non-Chinese syllables. (3) If we want to understand the phonotactics of earlier Chinese, we need to work with the best available Chinese reconstructions. But apart from Bentley (1998b, 2001), all scholars in this field use outdated Karlgrenian reconstructions. (4) Some scholars superimpose assumptions upon the actual evidence. Believing that all Altaic languages have vowel harmony,3 Kiyose (1991) reconstructs vowel harmony for the languages of the Three Kingdoms, even though the phonograms’ Chinese readings do not support his reconstructions. For example, he reconstructs Koguryo
 LOC *koq sye ‘gem’ as *kösi with a front rounded vowel *ö absent in the LOC reading of the phonogram
LOC *koq ‘old’ (1991: 262). One must value evidence over one’s own assumptions. Even if one did avoid all four of the problems listed above, one still would be far from reconstructing all but the vaguest picture of the various branches of OSK. Since not all initial and final classes are represented in the transcriptions, we would have no idea how the branches of OSK rendered certain LOC and EMC initials and finals. Furthermore, we do not know enough about phonological differences between LOC dialects to determine the Chinese dialectal origins of the peninsular branches of SX. Yu (1991: 66) theorizes that Sino-Koguryo is based on the Chinese of the northern kingdom of Wei while Eom (1991: 11) theorizes that Sino-Paekche is based on southern Chinese, but these theories cannot be verified at the present time. Since so little is known about OSK, I will not use OSK evidence when I reconstruct OJ in Chapters 7 and 8. Sino-Korean proper (SK) After Silla unified the Korean peninsula in 668 CE, Sino-Silla became the dominant and eventually the only variety of SX in the region. Late SinoKoguryo and late Sino-Paekche withered away along with the Koguryo and Paekche languages. The descendants of their speakers adopted the Silla language. Yi Kimun (1961: 22) refers to the language of Unified Silla as ‘Old Korean’ (OK). The Sino-Silla of OK was probably a multistratal mix of readings derived from LOC, EMC, and LMC. Traces of the earlier strata may be found in three early types of Korean orthography: hyangchal (‘local letters’) itwu (‘clerk readings’), and kwukyel (‘oral formulae’).4 These extinct writing systems are beyond the scope of this book. 111

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The newest stratum of Sino-Silla has survived up to the present day. Haewoo Lee (1994: 210) calls this stratum ‘Late Sino-Silla.’ I will call it ‘SK proper’ or simply ‘SK.’ Its dating is somewhat controversial. Haewoo Lee (1994: 207) has summarized six proposals for the origins of SK (Maspero 1920, Karlgren 1926, Arisaka 1936,5 Kôno 1964–67, Pak 1971, and Sin 1982). I will add two more views to Lee’s list, including Lee’s own view. (7) SK derives “from the northern Late Middle Chinese in about 7–8 centuries [sic], particularly from the new standard language of Changan [sic] in the period of Late Middle Chinese” (Haewoo Lee 1994: 207). (8) SK derives from four stages of Chinese: OC (before the second century CE), MC (circa the seventh century), Old Mandarin (circa the fourteenth century), and modern Mandarin (Eom 1998: 326). I will summarize my own view below. Modern SK is multistratal. A few readings are OC-based relics:
SK kay ‘general object classifier’ < Western Han *kaayh (cf. OSV cái [kaay] ‘id.’). Still others are from Old Mandarin (OM):
‘defeat’ has two SK readings, (1) pwuk < LMC *puRk and (2) pay < OM *pjy (Eom 1998: 332). There are a handful of readings of sinographs based on modern Mandarin (Eom 1998: 333) which I regard as ordinary borrowings rather than SK since they are extremely rare and unsystematic. Nonetheless the majority of SK readings – perhaps up to 95 per cent – are from LMC as claimed by Haewoo Lee and not from the EMC ‘language’ of Qieyun as claimed by Karlgren (1926), Pak (1971), or Sin (1982). I believe that SK represents a variety of northern Chinese somewhat newer than the variety reflected by Kan-on (p. 105). If Kan-on dates from the seventh century, then perhaps SK dates from the eighth century. Thus I am largely in agreement with Haewoo Lee (1994). Haewoo Lee (1994) gives four arguments for the Chang’an LMC origin of SK: (1) The z of fifteenth-century SK corresponds to Chang’an LMC *r which appears in Tibetan transcriptions as zh [9] (Luo 1933a). Lee assumes that the LMK letter ‘triangle’ transcribed as z in Yale romanization was actually a voiced fricative *z. However, this view has been challenged by Vovin (1993), who reconstructs z as a palatal nasal *ã mostly on the basis of Korean-internal evidence. Moreover, SK has nasals corresponding to Chang’an LMC prenasalized stops: SK m and n correspond to CLMC *mb and *nd. In this respect, SK resembles non-northwestern Chinese dialects which never developed Chang’an-style prenasalized stops. (2) SK has a medial glide -y- in Grade II words corresponding to Pulleyblank’s reconstruction of a medial glide *-y- in LMC Grade II words. However, a medial -y- is not found in CLMC-based Kan-on or in the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern LMC. This implies that SK cannot derive from CLMC. (3) SK does not distinguish finals which were distinct in EMC. For example, SK, like Kan-on, generally has one equivalent (SK i) of the EMC 112

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC


*-iR ‘branch,’
*-i ‘fat,’ and
*-t ‘genitive’ rhymes. (SK -o [£] for these three rhymes corresponds to LMC *t. See (5.6).) Thus SK must be based on an LMC dialect which had merged these rhymes. For other examples of mergers reflected in SK, see Haewoo Lee (1994: 216–217). (4) The SK coda -l corresponds to the *-r of northwestern LMC rather than to the *-t of EMC and of southern LMC. The origin of SK -l is rather controversial. For a summary of various views, see Haewoo Lee (1994: 217– 220). Like Haewoo Lee (1994), Arisaka Hideyo (1957: 305), and Yi Kimun (1961: 56), I believe that SK -l reflects northern LMC *-r < EMC *-t rather than a lenition of southern LMC *-t. SK -l corresponds to -r in the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern LMC and to -t(V) in Kan-on, SV, and southern Chinese languages: (5.7) SK -l

Tib. tr. of Kan-on S. LMC SV, Hakka, NW LMC Cnt, Taiwan -r -ti/-tu *-t -t

Note that Kan-on has -ti/-tu with -t- rather than -r-. Assuming that Kan-on -t- was *t in the seventh century, I believe that this -t- reflects early CLMC *-t which later became the later CLMC *-r attested in the Tibetan transcriptions. I have already eliminated a northwestern LMC origin for SK on the basis of the different treatments of nasals and Grade II in CLMC and SK. Moreover, I can eliminate a southern LMC origin for SK on the basis of the different treatments of *-t in the south and SK. Only northeastern LMC remains as a possible source for SK. However, Alexander Vovin (p.c.) has pointed out that it would make no sense for SK to be borrowed from the northeast, which was less culturally prestigious than the Tang capital of Chang’an in the northwest. At present I cannot reconcile this sociolinguistic observation with the isogloss evidence. Even if Haewoo Lee (1994: 210–211) is correct in assuming that the name reforms of King Kyengtek were based on SK proper, we have very little evidence for SK readings from the Unified Silla period up to the early Yi Dynasty in the fifteenth century. The situation improves immeasurably after the promulgation of the Korean hankul alphabet in 1446. We are blessed not only with the first alphabetic transcriptions of SK readings but also the first SK dictionary, the Tongkwuk cengwun (Correct Rhymes of the Eastern Nation, hereafter TKCW; 1447) which lists readings in hankul for thousands of characters arranged by their rhymes. But as its title implies, TKCW was intended to codify the ‘right’ readings for characters. When writing sinograph readings in hankul, one was supposed to use the readings in TKCW, not the actual readings that had been imported from China centuries ago during the Unified Silla period. The TKCW readings are an interesting blend of elements from the Chinese rhyme dictionaries and tables (pp. 93 and 96) on the one hand and actual SK 113

OLD JAPANESE

readings on the other. Samuel E. Martin (1997: 264) views the TKCW system of readings as “a reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology in terms of the Korean sound system as represented by the hankul symbols.” Until recently, there has been a tendency to “dismiss the readings given in that dictionary as wholly artificial and prescriptive” but Kang (1997: 124– 125) sees TKCW as “an extremely valuable work not only for interpreting the Korean readings of Chinese characters, but also for understanding Middle Korean and the Korean alphabet in a much broader sense.” Kang (1997: 125–128) proves his point by demonstrating the close correlations between TKCW finals and the finals of the authentic SK preserved in fifteenthcentury spelling ‘mistakes’ and in the non-TKCW-based SK orthography of later centuries. But although I also think the true worth of TKCW has been grossly underestimated, no one can claim that the TKCW readings are genuine SK readings. Thus I will generally avoid citing TKCW readings in this book. Instead, I will use the SK readings taken from the Cenwun okphyen (Jewel Book of All Rhymes, hereafter CWOP) dictionary of c. 1796 which was modeled after the Chinese Kangxi zidian dictionary of 1716 CE (John Bentley, p.c.). Although CWOP was published over three hundred years after the first attested real SK readings in hankul, its orthography is extremely faithful to the post-TKCW SK orthography of the sixteenth century. I call this orthography the ‘premodern SK orthography’ as opposed to the prescriptive fifteenth-century TKCW SK orthography or the modern postwar SK orthography. All ‘SK’ forms in this book are cited in Yale romanizations of premodern SK spellings with premodern pronunciations. The premodern SK orthography originated as a phonetic transcription of actual SK pronunciations in the late fifteenth century without the artificial distinctions of TKCW or the pitch marks that were a feature of all early hankul writing. Despite changes in SK pronunciation, this orthography remained fairly stable during the Yi Dynasty and persisted into the Japanese colonial period. Many of the spellings in Choy Namsen’s Sin cacen (New Sinographic Dictionary) of 1915 are identical to those of earlier centuries, though Sin cacen also lists alternative spellings reflecting twentieth-century pronunciations. One can see numerous examples of the conservatism of early twentieth-century SK orthography by comparing the Sin cacen readings with those of CWOP and earlier works in Nam (1973). There is only one major difference between early and late premodern SK orthography. According to Nam (1973: 8, 183), the hankul letter z (LMK *[ ã] or *[z] ) used in the fifteenth-century TKCW orthography continued to be used in non-prescriptive SK orthography to the sixteenth century. Thereafter it was replaced by the hankul letter for a zero initial. Since CWOP was compiled in the eighteenth century, it does not distinguish between zero-initial and z-initial readings. Hence I will use TKCW and the pre-seventeenth-century SK readings collected by Nam (1973) in order to 114

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Table 5.4 SK consonants (after Kang Sinhang 1997: 119) Labial

Dental and palatal

Velar

Glottal

Unaspirated

p

t

c [ts]

k

(q) [}]

Aspirated

ph [ph]

th [th]

ch [tsh]

kh

h [kh]

‘Muddy’

( pp)

(tt)

(ss)

(cc)

(kk)

(hh)

Nasal

m

n

{z} {[z] or [ ã] }

Liquid or glide

w

l [r]/[l]

s

y

ng [Y] (zero)

(-lq)

determine whether characters listed in CWOP with zero initials were once read with initial z. I will now sketch the phonology of the SK recorded in premodern orthography with reference to the phonology of the SK of TKCW. Table 5.4 lists all of the consonants in TKCW and premodern SK orthography in Martin’s (1992) Yale romanization for LMK. Consonants found only in TKCW are given in parentheses. The z found in early premodern SK orthography is given in curly brackets ({}) to distinguish it from the prescriptive letters unique to TKCW. Since premodern SK orthography was based on the actual pronunciation of fifteenth-century SK, the SK sound values given here and elsewhere are those of the fifteenth century. All of the consonants in Table 5.4 are potential SK initials with the exception of -lq which occurs only as a coda (see below). The following peculiarities of the TKCW initials require explanation. (1) TKCW had a series of ‘muddy’ obstruents ( pp, tt, ss, cc, kk, hh) which corresponded to the ‘muddy’ obstruents listed in Yunjing and distinguished in fanqie from ‘clear’ and ‘second clear’ obstruents. The ‘muddy’ stops and affricates ( pp, tt, cc, kk) of TKCW corresponded to non-aspirates ( p, t, c, s, k) and aspirates ( ph, th, ch) in SK. The ‘muddy’ fricatives of TKCW (ss, hh) corresponded to the ordinary SK fricatives s and h. I will not speculate about how LMK speakers pronounced the TKCW ‘muddy’ initials here, though Kang (1997: 119) assumes that they were like the tense unaspirated obstruents of modern Korean ( pp, tt, ss, cc, kk). There are two modern SK readings with ss- and one with kk-, but these rare initials have nothing to do with TKCW or Chinese (Martin 1992: 112). (2) TKCW aspirates regularly correspond to Chinese aspirates. However, aspiration in authentic SK is unpredictable. (3) I have already noted that z ( [z] or [ ã] ) was not an artificial initial, since it could be found in real SK readings up to the sixteenth century. 115

OLD JAPANESE

Although it is absent from the orthography of CWOP, it can be restored on the basis of pre-seventeenth-century readings. (4) TKCW allowed ng in initial position. This ng- was meant to correspond to the Chinese initial
*Y ‘doubt,’ but TKCW often confuses ng- (GD ) with the zero initial (G) that is obligatory before vowels and glides without preceding consonants. Many cases of ng- in TKCW are unetymological. I suspect that the graphic similarity between the ng- and zero initial letters may have caused this confusion. I also doubt that many actually tried to pronounce the prescriptive initial ng- of TKCW. In premodern SK orthography, the letters for the TKCW initial ng and the zero initial became interchangeable symbols for phonetic zero in initial position. Thus the partly etymological ng-zero initial distinction of TKCW is completely absent from SK. (5) TKCW distinguishes between a glottal stop initial q- and the zero initial. Premodern SK orthography dispenses with this distinction entirely and replaces q- with the zero initial. TKCW and SK allow the following codas: (5.8) TKCW: -p SK: -p

-m -w -lq -n -m -$ -l -n

-y -k -y -k

-ng -ng

Both the SK of TKCW and the SK of the premodern orthography have a total of seven vowels whose phonetic interpretation has been extremely controversial (Table 5.5). The phonetic values given in Table 5.5 are identical to those of modern Korean, with the exception of o [£], which no longer exists; it has merged with a in SK readings. Note however that premodern diphthongs have been monophthongized in modern Korean: e.g., ay [ay] is now pronounced [ε]. Kim Wancin (1963) has proposed that the fifteenth-century LMK vowels were phonetically quite different from the modern Korean vowels. This view is quite popular among Korean linguists, though some prefer to date the shift before LMK. However, I do not believe any such shift existed. Various types of evidence have been cited against the shift: internal (Martin 1998), comparative (Martin 1998), transcriptional (Vovin 1998), Sinoxenic (Miyake 1998), and theoretical (Oh 1998). I will not repeat the arguments made in the aforementioned works here. I will simply assume that Korean vowels Table 5.5 SK vowels

High Mid Low

Front

Central

Back

i [i]

u [t] e [R] a [a]

wu [u] wo [o] o [£]

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OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

have remained stable at least since the time of the borrowing of SK proper in Unified Silla. Many earlier SK glide –vowel and vowel–glide combinations have monophthongized into single vowels in modern SK pronunciation (e.g., ay [ay] > [ε] ), but I will ignore these monophthongizations and cite the earlier pronunciations. The TKCW orthography even marked LMK pitch equivalents of MC tones with dots. However, the premodern SK orthography ignores pitch entirely. This will not be a problem for me, since I will not be reconstructing OJ pitch accent. In the modern standard pronunciation of SK, there is a correlation between the MC Rising and Departing tones and vowel length. However, Martin (1992: 112) notes that this correlation has many exceptions. The segments described above combine to form SK readings with the structure: (5.9) C(G)V(G)(C) C = {all consonants including zero and excluding ng} G = {w, y} V = {all vowels} G = {y} C = { p, m, l, n, k, ng, y) I have excluded pitch and vowel length from the above formulation. Sino-Vietnamese (SV) Contrary to popular belief, the Vietnamese language, like Japanese and Korean, is completely unrelated to Chinese. Vietnamese belongs to the Vietic branch of the Mon-Khmer language family of Southeast Asia. It is Sinoxenic that makes the Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages look ‘Chinese.’ But unlike the Koreans and the Japanese, the Vietnamese were ruled directly by the Chinese for over a millennium. What we know today as northern Vietnam was the Chinese province of Jiaozhi which passed through a number of dynastic hands from 111 BCE to 939 CE. Thus the Vietnamese were exposed to multiple stages of Chinese ranging from the Western Han stage of OC to the final stage of LMC during the Five Dynasties period (907–960 CE). They did not have to rely on a few immigrants and returnees from missions to distant Chinese capitals for their knowledge of Chinese, since they could hear the language firsthand from native speakers. Even the illiterate majority were profoundly affected by the tongue of their foreign rulers. The Sinitic influence went far beyond the adoption of many everyday words such as the generic classifier OSV cái <
Western Han *kaayh ‘id.’ or the development of multiple strata of Sino-Vietnamese 117

OLD JAPANESE

(pp. 124 and 126). Long exposure to Chinese had Sinified the language not only lexically but also phonologically. Once Vietnam broke free from the Chinese in the tenth century, the language was altered almost unrecognizably by the changes that had occurred over the last millennium. Although the syntactic and lexical core of Vietnamese remained very un-Chinese – neither its modified–modifier pattern nor its basic vocabulary was lost – the language looked superficially like Chinese. The newly independent country itself was modeled after its former oppressor. The Chinese rulers were gone, but Chinese culture and language remained. The Vietnamese established a Chinese-style system of civil service examinations that lasted until the beginning of the twentieth century. Scholars learned the Confucian classics in the original Chinese in hopes of passing the exams. In Vietnam, Classical Chinese was “the medium of written communication among the educated people (like Latin in medieval Europe) and the vehicle of literary creations either in verse or in prose” (NguyWn 1997: 2). But like the peoples of the Korean peninsula and Japan before them, the Vietnamese devised ways to write their own language with sinographs. However, the chw nôm [ctt nom] (possibly from
 LOC *dzRq nRRm ‘characters southern’) script (p. 129) would turn out to be far more complex than any of its northern counterparts. Despite its difficulty, the script would continue to be used as late as the early twentieth century. In the seventeenth century, European missionaries developed systems of romanization to spread their Catholic faith among the Vietnamese. One such French missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes, came to Vietnam in 1624, mastered the language, and codified a synthesis of earlier romanizations in his Dictionarium annamiticum, lusitanum et latinum (Annamite–Portuguese– Latin Dictionary; 1651). His dictionary’s romanization, which later came to be called qu3c ngw [kwok Yt] ‘national language’ <
 LMC *kuRk YüR ‘id.’ under uncertain circumstances (DeFrancis 1978, Thompson 1987: 55), initially did not spread beyond the missionaries and their converts. However, the French later promoted the script and today it is the only medium in which Vietnamese is written. Although sinographs and chw nôm have never been entirely forgotten in Vietnam, their status is akin to man’yôgana in Japan. They are now only the objects of scholarly study, not scripts for everyday use. This radical change in writing systems has not diminished the roles of Sino-Vietnamese proper (SV) and Old Sino-Vietnamese (OSV) in the language. The old sinographic and chw nôm spellings for SV and OSV may be gone – but SV and OSV persist not only in old words but also in the neologisms necessitated by csng-skn [kRw§ saan] (<
 LMC *k®üwYh Zaanh) ‘Communism.’ Like SJ and SK, SV is indispensable for sophisticated discourse. SV and especially OSV have penetrated the core lexicon to an extent unparalleled by SJ or SK: e.g., the ordinary Vietnamese word for ‘cat’ is OSV mèo [mεw] <
EMC *mεrw ‘id.’ 118

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Table 5.6 Written Vietnamese consonants (after Thompson 1987: 58) Labial

Dental

Retroflex

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Unaspirated 17th-c. Hanoi

p

t

tr *[â] [c]

ch *[c] [c]

c/k/qu

( [}] )

Aspirated 17th-c. Hanoi

ph *[ph] [f ]

th *[th]

s *[Z] [s]

x *[\] [s]

kh *[kh] [x]

h

Implosive

b [(]

$ [ß ]

‘Softened’ 17th-c. Hanoi

(%) *[β] [v]

d *[dy ] [z]

gi *[©9] [z]

g/gh *[g] [γ]

Liquids/glides North

v/o/u [v]/[w]

l [l]

Nasals

m

n

nh [ ã]

ng/ngh [Y]

r [z]

Since at least the nineteenth century, dictionaries listing sinographs and chw nôm characters with their readings in qu3c ngw have been compiled. For a survey of dictionaries and other sources of Vietnamese character readings, see Mineya (1972: 21–33). NguyWn (1992: 410–411) surveys more recent nôm dictionaries. I have taken the SV forms in my book from Mineya’s (1972) appendix. I use a 1997 reprint of NgZ thiên t@ (earliest known edition from 1909), as my source of chw nôm readings. Before discussing SV proper, OSV, and nôm in the following three sections, I would like to describe the qu3c ngw orthography and outline aspects of Vietnamese diachronic and synchronic phonology which are relevant to SV as a whole. Written Vietnamese has the consonants in Table 5.6. The letter % is no longer used in modern qu3c ngw. Although all of the letters in Table 5.6 represented distinct consonants in seventeenth-century Vietnamese, no modern Vietnamese dialect makes all the distinctions indicated in spelling. I have cited reconstructed seventeenth-century phonetic values from Thompson (1976: 1120) whenever they differ from phonetic values in modern dialects with two exceptions. First, I follow Gage (1985) and reconstruct the seventeenth-century value of s as a retroflex fricative *Z because (1) Gage (1985: 506) has shown that s < *Cr-, (2) s is still a retroflex [Z] in central and southern dialects, and (3) s corresponds to OC *r-clusters and MC retroflex initials. Second, I reconstruct g as *g since de Rhodes described g as being similar to a European g (Gregerson 1969: 165, 182).6 Phonetic values for 119

OLD JAPANESE

modern Hanoi are taken from Thompson (1987: 98) except when they can be inferred from qu3c ngw: e.g., p is [p], etc. I cite modern Hanoi phonetic values of qu3c ngw forms unless stated otherwise. Qu3c ngw consonants correspond to Vietnamese consonantal phonemes with exceptions explained in Thompson (1987: 62–64). Some of the phonetic values for consonants are quite unexpected. Orthographic d is a voiced fricative [z] in the north and a palatal glide [y] elsewhere but never [d], though in the seventeenth century it was presumably a palatalized dental stop [dy ]. These mismatches resulted from massive phonological changes that can be confirmed by comparative and philological evidence. I will list the most relevant changes for our purposes below. (1) The original Vietnamese voiced obstruents were devoiced: (5.10) *b, *d, *j, *g, etc. > *p, *t, *c, *k, etc. One can determine the presence or absence of earlier voicing by looking at the tones. Syllables with proto-voiceless initials have ngang, s8c, or hni tones while syllables with proto-voiced initials have huyVn, n'ng, or ngk tones. I will discuss tones further on pp. 126 and 128. (2) Vietnamese initial unaspirated labial and dental stops became voiced implosives: (5.11) *p > (

*t > ß

Thus Vietnamese b [(] and d [ß ] come from both voiceless and voiced sources (Thompson 1976: 1128, Gage 1985: 503):7 (5.12) *p, *b > *p > *(

*t, *d > *t > *ß

(3) Earlier Vietnamese voiced implosives (*(, *ß ) became nasals (Thompson 1976: 1,134–1,135, Gage 1985: 505, 506). (5.13) *( > m

*ß > n

I suspect the following ‘drag chain’ shifts took place: (5.14) p > ( > m

t>ß>n

(4) The shift in (5.14) may have been even more complex than this. Earlier Vietnamese *s became t (Gage 1985: 303). This shift can be integrated into my earlier chain of changes as (5.15): (5.15) s > t > ß > n

120

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Sino-Vietnamese t has several non-*s sources. One is Chinese *ts. The Vietnamese may have borrowed *ts as *s (cf. English pronunciations of tsunami as [sunami] ). Others are LMC *py and *p®y which appear in Grade IV SV readings (p. 97): (5.16) *py, *p®y > *p\i > *psi > *ts > *s > t (cf. 5.22). These changes left Vietnamese without any [s]. Notice that the seventeenthcentury consonant system in Table 5.6 has no [s]. In all modern dialects of Vietnamese, the palatal fricative x *[\] has become [s] (Thompson 1987: 98). Thus x has filled the hole left behind by the *s which had become t: (5.17) \ > s > t > ß > n (5) The aspirates ( ph, th, kh) generally correspond to OC and MC aspirates (*ph, *th, *kh). kh always corresponds to Chinese *kh. ph has two sources, OC and EMC *ph and two of the LMC ‘light lip sounds’ (LMC *f, *f®; p. 96). th has several sources besides OC and MC *th: (a) OC and MC *tsh (Mineya 1972: 84): (5.18) *tsh > (*sh = aspirated s?) > th (b) OC and MC palatal fricatives and affricates (*\, *\®, *9, *j) (Mineya 1972: 91): (5.19) *\, *\®, *9, *j > (*sh = aspirated s?) > th I would rather not posit an exotic aspirated s in (5.18) and (5.19), though such a sound does exist in Burmese. Mineya (1972: 113) does not posit any such intermediate stage. Note that Chinese palatal fricatives are also occasionally borrowed as x (Mineya 1972: 91). (c) LMC *phy in Grade IV words (p. 97): (5.20) *phy > *ph\i > *phsi > *tsh > *sh > th (cf. 5.16) (6) So far, I have explained that Vietnamese lost its original voiced obstruents (*b, *d, *j, *g, etc.) (5.10). But where did the so-called ‘softened’ voiced obstruents % *[β], d *[dy ], gi *[ j], and g *[g] of seventeenth-century Vietnamese in Table 5.6 come from? (6a) Seventeenth-century % *[β] derives from prefixed labials (*C-p, *C-b) (Haudricourt 1965, Pulleyblank 1981, Gage 1985: 504). This % *[β] later merged with v *[v].

121

OLD JAPANESE

(5.21) *C-p, *C-b > % *[β] > v [v] (6b) d *[dy ] corresponds to OC and MC *y and LMC *my. It also derives from prefixed dentals (*C-t, *C-d) (Gage 1985: 504). (5.22) *y, *my, *C-t, *C-d > d *[dy ] > d (northern [z], southern [y] ) (6c) gi *[ _j9] corresponds to LMC *ky. It also derives from prefixed palatals (*C-c, *C-j) (Pulleyblank 1981: 279, Gage 1985: 504). (5.23) *ky, *C-c, *C-j > gi *[ j_9] > gi (northern [z], southern [y] ) (6d) g corresponds to prefixed velars (*C-k, *C-g) (Haudricourt 1965, Pulleyblank 1981, Gage 1985: 504): (5.24) *C-k, *C-g > g *[g] > g [γ] The vowels of Vietnamese have apparently undergone far fewer changes than the consonants. Downer (1987: 141) points out that Barker and Barker (1970) and Thompson (1976) both reconstructed the fourteen vowel nuclei (eleven vowels and three diphthongs) found in seventeenth-century and modern Vietnamese for Proto-Viet-Muong (PVM). I list these fourteen nuclei in Table 5.7. According to Thompson (1976: 1149), As might be expected, (Viet-Muong) vowels present a number of problems that are difficult to deal with. However, these problems are of relatively small importance – to a great extent the system of PVM seems to be very similar to that of the modern languages [i.e., Vietnamese and Muong; italics mine].

Table 5.7 Written Vietnamese and PVM vowels Front Higha High + Midb Mid Low

i, y ia, iê ê e

Central [i] [iR] [e] [ε]

â #

e ea, [R] [a]

[t] ed [tR] d [RR] a [aa]; [a] / _c, nh

Back u [u] ua, uô [uR] ô [o] o [Q]

Notes a The vowel [i] is sometimes written as y at the end of a syllable. See Thompson (1987: 64) for more details on when [i] is spelled as i or y. b The diphthongs [iR tR uR] are written as ia, ea, ua at the end of a syllable and as iê, ed, uô before a coda.

122

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

I will list the most relevant vowel changes between PVM and Vietnamese for our purposes below. (1) PVM *R, *RR raised to *t before velars (*k, *Y) (Barker and Barker 1970). (5.25) *R(R) >

/ _k, Y

e [t]

(2) PVM *ε dissimilated to a [a] before palatals (*c, *ã) (Barker and Barker 1970). (5.26) *ε

>

a [a] / _c, ã

(3) PVM *o, *Q respectively ‘broke’ to [Rw] and [aw] before velars (*k, *Y) (Thompson 1976: 1151–1152). Some of the labiality of the vowels ‘moved’ to the final velars which gained labial co-articulation: (5.27) *ok > ôc [Rw¶] *oY > ông [Rw§] *Qk > oc [aw¶] *QY > ong [aw§] Henderson (1985: 21) considers this an example of ‘feature shuffling.’ Note that *u did not break to the expected [tw] before velars, though velars after *u did gain labial co-articulation: (5.28) *uk > uc [uw¶]

*uY > ung [uw§]

Gage (1985: 514–516) has found that Vietnamese vowels correspond very closely to written Khmer vowels. Since (1) Khmer and Vietnamese are very distantly related within Mon-Khmer and (2) Khmer and Vietnamese relations have been negative for centuries, such correspondences are probably the result of independent retentions rather than shared innovations or the result of language contact. We cannot say that Vietnamese vowels are identical to PVM vowels. Nor can we say that PVM vowels are identical to Proto-Mon-Khmer vowels. Nevertheless, when Gage (1985: 514–516) worked out the correspondences between Vietnamese vowels and Shorto’s (1976) Proto-Mon-Khmer vowels, he found many near-identities. There is no evidence for a Vietnamese ‘Great Vowel Shift.’ Thus I will take SV and OSV vowels at face value, with exceptions due to rules (5.25–28). The above vowels can be followed by any of ten codas: (5.29) -p -m -o/-u [w]

-t -n

-ch -nh [c] [ ã]

123

-i/-y -c [y] [k]/[¶]

-ng [Y]/[§]

OLD JAPANESE

SV and OSV syllables have the following structure: (5.30) C(G)V(C) + Tone C = {all consonants except p} G = {w} V = {all vowels; however, #, â ≠ V/ _#} C = {p, m, w, t, n, c, ã, y, k, Y} All vowels are phonetically long in syllable-final position owing to a bimoraic syllable structure constraint. Since the vowels # [a] and â [R] are inherently short, they cannot stand at the end of a syllable: syllables such as c# [ka] or câ [kR] are impossible. I will discuss tones in the next two sections. Old Sino-Vietnamese (OSV) Old Sino-Vietnamese (OSV) refers to all the strata of Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese predating Sino-Vietnamese proper, which I will demonstrate to be of late Tang origin in the next section. Thus OSV words can be borrowed from any variety of Chinese ranging from Western Han OC of the second century BCE to early Tang EMC of the seventh century. Our knowledge of premodern Chinese dialects is too minimal to pinpoint the exact geographic origin of the source dialect(s) of OSV. Presumably OSV is based on southeastern Chinese rather than on the distant dialects of the Western Han capital of Chang’an or the Wu, Eastern Jin, and Six Dynasties Song capital of Jiankang,8 though perhaps those dialects exerted some influence over the speech of the ‘extreme south.’ So far, we only know a few hundred OSV words. Most of them are not associated with sinographs except by scholars who know their etymologies. In traditional Vietnam, OSV words were often written with nôm characters rather than with the sinographs for their source etyma. OSV words have certain phonological characteristics that distinguish them from LMC-based SV proper. Wang Li (1958) and Pulleyblank (1981, 1984) give extensive lists of sound correspondences between OSV and EMC with copious examples. I do not intend to repeat their work here, but I must acknowledge my debt to them because they have established the OSV equivalents of EMC initials, rhymes, and tones. Since only a few hundred OSV words survive, we have no idea what the OSV readings of thousands of sinographs were. But Wang’s and Pulleyblank’s work allows us to make reasonable guesses about those lost readings. I will cite the correspondences established by Wang (1958) and Pulleyblank (1981, 1984) whenever necessary in Chapters 7 and 8. The only two types of correspondences that I will mention here are initial and tonal.

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OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

(1) OSV often has ‘softened’ initials (v < %, d, gi, g) corresponding to OC and EMC stops and affricates (Pulleyblank 1981): (5.31) OC, EMC 17th c. OSV OSV

*p, *b *t *ts, *dz, *c, *j *k, *g, *® % *[β] d [dy ] gi [ _j9] g [g] v [v] d [z] gi [z] g [γ]

The above pattern is extremely common; see Wang (1958), Ray (1979), and Pulleyblank (1981) for dozens of examples. These ‘softened’ initials originated from earlier clusters (5.21–24). Yet we have no evidence from the Qieyun tradition nor any other evidence to suggest that LOC or EMC still had the initial consonant clusters that characterized stages of Chinese prior to LOC. I have wondered whether colloquial Chinese of the Six Dynasties still preserved some clusters absent in the refined pronunciation reflected in the fanqie of Qieyun. Norman (1973, 1974) has theorized that Proto-Min had a series of ‘softened’ initials which were somehow distinguished from ordinary stops and affricates. Norman (1973: 237) suspects that these ‘softened’ initials “originated from the reduction of clusters of some type.” However, Cheng and Miyake (1995) found only one correlation between Norman’s ProtoMin ‘softened’ initials and the ‘softened’ initials of OSV. I doubt that there is any relationship between the ‘softened’ initials in the two languages. Starostin (1989: 52–57) goes even further and denies the very existence of ‘softened’ initials in Min. I will not argue for or against him here. I suspect that the ‘softened’ initials in Vietnamese may be remnants of native (i.e., non-Chinese) affixes. Mon-Khmer languages in general are rich in prefixes and infixes. Ruc, a Vietic language, still has affixes such as pa-/-a‘causative,’ -n-/-r- ‘nominalizer,’ mu- ‘quantifier,’ kV- ‘animal,’ k- ‘natural phenomena,’ and tR- ‘stative verb’ (Alves 1998: 14). These affixes have either been lost in Vietnamese or have resulted in ‘softened’ initials: (5.32) Ruc words with k- ‘natural phenomena’ Viet ku-mRa 2 ‘rain’ : *k-m- >mea [mtR] ‘id.’ ka-yQ 3 ‘wind’ : *k-y- > gió [zQQ] ‘id.’ Perhaps the early Vietnamese who still had such morphology applied it to OSV words in the spoken language. Unfortunately, this hypothesis cannot be tested at present, because we do not know much about early Vietnamese morphology. We cannot predict what prefixes would have been attached to which OSV loans. In any case, it appears that OSV ‘softened’ initials are Vietnamese innovations. Therefore we cannot use ‘softened’ initials as evidence for similar initials in OJ. It is unlikely that EMC-based System D (Sino-Paekche?) readings and Chang’an LMC – the foundations for the transcription systems

125

OLD JAPANESE

Table 5.8 Written OSV tones OC/EMC

Level (*-$)

Rising (*-q) and Entering (*-C)

Departing (*-h)

Clear Muddy

ngang huyVn

s8c n'ng

hni (rarely ngang) ngã (rarely huyVn)

of Kojiki and Shoki – had such initials. Neither the fanqie of the EMC ‘language’ of Qieyun nor the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern LMC suggest the existence of ‘softened’ initials. Although I will not be using Chinese tones or their SX counterparts to reconstruct OJ pitch accent, I will note that OSV–Chinese tonal correspondences are different from SV–Chinese tonal correspondences. When OSV and SV words are segmentally identical, the suprasegmentals (tones) give away their ages: the Chinese Rising Tone (marked with the tonal letter *-q) of
EMC *tQq / LMC *tuRq ‘gamble’ appears as the s8c tone in OSV $3 ‘challenge’ but appears as the hni tone in SV $7 ‘gamble’ (Wang 1958: 380). One can see the Rising Tone: s8c tone and other OC/EMC: OSV tonal correspondences in Table 5.8. Each of the Vietnamese tone names contains and describes the tone it represents: 1 2 3 4 5 6

ngang ‘level’ has the unmarked mid level ngang tone. huyVn ‘dark’ has the low falling breathy huyVn tone, marked by (`). s8c ‘sharp’ has the high rising s8c tone marked by (´). n'ng ‘heavy’ has the low creaky n'ng tone marked by a subscript dot. hni ‘question’ has the low rising hni tone marked by a superscript question mark. ngã ‘fall’ has the high creaky ngã tone marked by a tilde.

I am mentioning OSV tone correspondences here only because I use them as well as the segmental correspondences listed in Wang (1958) and Pulleyblank (1981, 1984) to identify OSV words. Sino-Vietnamese proper (SV) I have already discussed Vietnamese historical phonology as a whole, so I will focus here only on arguments for the approximate date and location of the Chinese source of SV proper. There is a general consensus that SV readings are quite late relative to other branches of SX. Maspero (1912: 14) thought that SV was based on ninth- and tenth-century Chinese. Mineya (1972: 164) more or less agrees with Maspero’s view, though he does not accept all of the details. Wang (1958: 300) attributes the origin of SV to 126

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Tang Dynasty Chang’an Chinese. Hashimoto thinks SV originated from a southeastern Chinese koine. Although I have rejected the details of Hashimoto’s theory (Miyake 1999: 317–320), I suspect that SV did originate from the south. SV and many Yue dialects share an unusual innovation: *i in all closed syllables has centralized and lowered to a. As far as I know, this development of *-i- is unique to Yue. SV â [R] seems to reflect a Yue dialect with *-a- or *-R- corresponding to *-i- elsewhere: (5.33)

LMC
=‘heart’ *sim

Cnt sàm [sam]

SV tâm [tRm]

Md xcn [\in]

SK Kan-on sim simu

Northwestern LMC did not shift earlier *-i- to *-a-:
‘heart’ was spelled in Tibetan script as sim, with -i-, not *sam with *-a- (Luo 1933a: 210). There is no evidence for a Vietnamese-internal shift (*-i- > -R-) that took place after SV was borrowed. Furthermore, Vietnamese does have OSV forms with i corresponding to â [R] in SV and to i elsewhere: OSV tim <
EMC *sim ‘heart.’ Like Pulleyblank (1984: 205), I suspect that the change -i- > *-R- took place in the “Cantonese-like” Chinese dialect that was the source of SV. OSV tim ‘heart’ with -i- was borrowed before the change and SV tâm ‘heart’ with -â- was borrowed after the change. Canton was the capital of the Tang Dynasty’s Lingnan Province, which encompassed Jiaozhou (northern Vietnam). Although it is shaky to rely purely on one piece of evidence, I wonder whether SV originated as late Tang Dynasty Cantonese with a Vietnamese accent. SV cannot be based on a northwestern dialect such as Chang’an LMC for three reasons: (1) SV nasals correspond to Chang’an LMC prenasalized stops. This is the weakest of the three anti-Chang’an arguments because earlier prenasalized stops in Vietnamese merged with nasals (Gage 1985: 505–506): (5.34) *mp > m

*nt > n

*ãj > nh [ ã]

*Yg > ng [Y]

So in theory the Vietnamese who went to Chang’an could have brought back CLMC *mb, *nd, etc. and these prenasalized stops later became *m, *n, etc. (2) SV is anomalous in that it reflects a *-y- in Grade II absent in modern southern dialects and in the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern LMC: e.g., the Grade II word
‘associate’ is SV giao [zaaw] < *kyaaw but is transcribed in Tibetan as ka’u or ke’u, not *kya’u or *kye’u (Luo 1933a: 210, 218). (3) Unlike SK, SV has the southern coda t instead of the northern LMC coda *r recorded in Tibetan transcriptions. According to Gage (1985: 510– 511), earlier *r generally became [y] after non-front vowels and zero after front vowels in Vietnamese: 127

OLD JAPANESE

(5.35) *-r > -y /V [-pal]_

*-r > -$ /V [+pal]

If SV were borrowed from late Chang’an before this change, then we would expect the following correspondence: (5.36) SV *-r > -y/-$

S. Chinese -t

:

SK -l

:

If SV were borrowed after the change *-r > -y/-$, the Vietnamese would have to render Chang’an *-r with some other consonant. Since Siamese, a language whose phonology is typologically similar to Vietnamese, renders foreign -r as -n, perhaps the Vietnamese would have done the same, resulting in these correspondences: (5.37) SV -n

:

S. Chinese -t

:

SK -l

But neither (5.36) nor (5.37) matches the actual correspondences: (5.38) SV -t

:

S. Chinese -t

:

SK -l

SV conforms to the southern rather than the northern pattern in this respect but not others (such as *-y- in Grade II). SV has one feature that is neither northern nor southern. The SV ngang tone corresponds to the MC Level Tone after second muddy as well as clear initials (Table 5.9). According to Hashimoto (1978: 16), this is “a characteristic found in no known dialect of modern Chinese.” It is also not found in the OSV equivalents of the Level Tone (Table 5.8). Furthermore, if one compares Table 5.9 with Table 5.8, one finds that the Vietnamese counterparts of the Rising and Departing Tones have ‘flip-flopped.’ I will not present my speculations about the reasons for these oddities here. I will simply note once more that one can determine whether a ‘Sinoid’ word in Vietnamese is OSV or SV by checking the tonal correspondences. So far, I have accumulated conflicting evidence about the areal origins of SV. What about SV’s temporal origins? I have three major reasons to assume that SV is LMC-based:

Table 5.9 Written SV tones LMC

Level (*-$)

Rising (*-q)

Departing (*-h) and Entering (*-C)

(2nd) Clear 2nd Muddy Muddy

ngang ngang huyVn

hni ngã ngã/n'ng

s8c n'ng n'ng

128

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Table 5.10 The ‘branch/fat/genitive/small’ rhymes in MC, SV, and SJ Rhyme


‘branch’


‘fat’


=‘genitive’


‘small’

EMC OSV Go-on LMC Kan-on SV

*-iR -ia [iR] -e, -i

*-i -i [ii] -i

*-t -d [RR] -o, -i

*-ty -di [RRy] -e, -i

*-i -i -e [tt] (after certain LMC sibilants; see p. 108), -i [ii] (elsewhere)

(1) Merged finals: EMC finals have one-to-one correspondences with OSV, whereas multiple EMC finals correspond to a single SV final. In Table 5.10, EMC and OSV make a four-way distinction, modern Go-on makes a partial three-way distinction, and LMC, Kan-on, and SV have merged all four finals into a single final class. (2) Labiodentals: EMC bilabials became labiodentals in certain LMC Grade III rhymes. SV reflects these LMC labiodentals: (5.39) LMC *f *f® SV ph [f ] ph [f ]

*v v [v]

Note that SV ph was probably [ph] in the seventeenth century (Table 5.6). If SV ph were a fricative in de Rhodes’s time, he or the missionaries before him would have spelled Viet [f ] as f. *ph was the closest native Vietnamese equivalent to LMC *f(®) at the time of borrowing. (3) SV reflects the LMC depalatalization of *i after dental and retroflex sibilants (5.4 or 5.5). See (5.6) for an example. Summing up the above discussion, SV appears to be an LMC-based amalgam of northern and southern features. In terms of the traits in Table 5.11, SV is closest to Mandarin and Cantonese, less similar to CLMC, SK, and Kan-on, and very different not only from Go-on and EMC but also from OSV. I have yet to find a Chinese language which has the same combination of features as SV. Geography would seem to dictate a southern origin for SV, but I cannot speculate much further. In any case, it is clear that SV, like SK, is not based on the Chang’an dialect of LMC. Chw Nôm Chw nôm [ctt nom] (possibly from
 LOC *dzRq nRRm ‘characters southern’) is the Vietnamese counterpart to Japanese man’yôgana and Korean hyangchal. Although it too has fallen out of use, it was perhaps more successful than either of its northern cousins. Nôm was still in use in the early twentieth century, long after man’yôgana and hyangchal had passed 129

OLD JAPANESE

Table 5.11 Phonological traits across Chinese and SX Trait

CLMC

Kan

Md

SK

SV

Cnt

OSV

Go

EMC

a b c d e f g h i j

+ – – – –?/+ + + + + 3~4

+ – – – – + ? – – 5~6

– + + – ? + + + + 2~3

– ? + – + + – – + 4~5

– – + + – + + + + 0

– – – + – + + – +/– 2~3

– – – – – – – – – 6

– – – – – – – – – 6

– – – – – – – – – 6

Key to traits a Partial denasalization of nasals b Partial denasalization of *ã only c *-y- in Grade II d Shift of *i to R or a e *-t > -r. Note that early CLMC probably had *-t f Merger of EMC finals g LMC labiodentals h *m > *v (> Md w) i Depalatalization of *i after sibilants (pp. 108–9). Cantonese once had this trait, but lost it (Ramsey 1987: 101) j Number of differences from SV.

into obsolescence. Modern scholars still know how to read its thousands of characters, albeit in modernized pronunciation. The original pronunciations of nôm characters – like the original pronunciations of man’yôgana phonograms – were very different from those used today. Although Vietnamese vowels have apparently been quite stable over the time, we have seen that the Vietnamese consonant system has changed considerably in the last four hundred years. The finals of nôm character readings today are probably not much different from the finals of the characters in centuries past, but many of the initials must have been altered almost unrecognizably since the time of the script’s creation. All agree that nôm reflects pre-de-Rhodes Vietnamese phonology, but the age and origins of the script are obscure. NguyWn (1992: 384–397) summarizes the competing claims of various scholars concerning the invention of nôm, ranging from the nationalistic and mythological to the more reasonable and scholarly. Most of those claims are highly speculative and not worthy of mention here. I will briefly state my own views below. The Chinese rulers of Jiaozhi (later Jiaozhou) may have been the first to attempt to transcribe Vietnamese. Although I doubt that the Chinese had any great motivation to learn the language of their subjects, surely there were local names and words that were written with characters. See NguyWn 130

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

(1992: 387–388, 392–393) for two early attempts at Vietnamese transcription. These sporadic attempts did not yet constitute a system. After ten centuries of ‘northern rule,’ Vietnamese had been remolded into a language well suited for quasisinography. Formerly disyllabic and sesquisyllabic morphemes had been reduced to monosyllables which could each be rendered with one character. However, Vietnamese had more syllables than Chinese had. This made a man’yôgana-style Chinese-based syllabary impossible. Modern Vietnamese, which no longer has any of the initial consonant clusters that had characterized its ancestor, has 3,525 syllables, whereas its SV component has only 1,310 syllables (NguyWn Ngic San 1987, quoted in NguyWn 1992: 406). Vietnamese must have had more than 3,525 syllables before the loss of all consonant clusters. Downer (1987: 142–143) points out that modern Vietnamese has 71 rhymes but its SV component has only 33 or 34. Presumably earlier Vietnamese might have had a few more native rhymes. If the Vietnamese of today used only preexisting sinographs as phonograms with their official SV readings, they could not write two-thirds of the syllables in their language. This figure of two-thirds was probably more like three-quarters a thousand years ago. Sinography had to be drastically modified and expanded if it was to be a viable writing system for Vietnamese as a whole rather than just a means to record a word here or a name there. The Vietnamese were well acquainted with the workings of sinography and found many of the solutions to their problem within the preexisting Chinese tradition of writing. Following the Chinese model, the Vietnamese gradually decided to use sinographs for their approximate phonetic values either as loan characters or as building blocks for new phonetic compounds. These two types of characters formed the core of what would become the nôm script. An example of a nôm loan character is the aforementioned
SV hu [hii] ‘sorrow’/ SV hí [hii] ‘cry,’ a phonogram for an unrelated word which also happened to be of Chinese origin, OSV hdi [hRRy] ‘breath’ <
Western or Eastern Han *khRyh ‘id.’
‘sorrow/cry’ did not have an SV reading homophonous with hdi ‘breath’ but its sound was close enough. (Or was it? Although hdi was not in the SV syllabic inventory, why didn’t the Vietnamese choose a phonetic element such as
SV hki [haay] with an di [RRy]-like final instead? I will soon deal with this issue.) Some nôm ‘loan’ characters were simply the original characters for OSV words. OSV gan [gaan] <
EMC *C-kan ‘liver’ was written with
SV can [kaan] ‘id.’ (Gan was not in the SV syllabic inventory.) However, this principle was not used consistently. One did not write OSV hdi [hRRy] ‘breath’ with
SV khí [xii] ‘id.,’ even though OSV hdi was borrowed from the Western or Eastern Han word *khRyh ‘breath’ represented by
. One simply had to know which OSV words were written etymologically (e.g., gan ‘liver’) and which ones were not (e.g., hdi ‘breath’). 131

OLD JAPANESE

Both types of nôm loan characters were identical in appearance to ordinary sinographs. No one literate in sinography but ignorant of nôm would ever guess that
‘sorrow/cry’ stood for an indigenous Vietnamese word meaning
‘breath.’ An example of a nôm phonetic compound is c for n#m [nam] ‘five.’ This character did not exist in Chinese at all and would be utterly unintelligible to anyone without a knowledge of both sinography and Vietnamese. The left side of character is the phonetic indicator
SV nam [naam] ‘south.’ (N#m was not in the SV syllabic inventory.) The right side of the character is the semantic indicator
SV ngZ [Yuu] ‘five.’ The structure of the character c tells the reader that it stands for a word that sounds like
SV nam but means
‘five.’ Phonetic compounds are but one type of ‘vietographs’: graphs unique to nôm. Vietnamese also used a number of non-Chinese methods to create further types of nôm characters. I will mention only some of them below. Diacritics were added to phonetic elements: (<) was added to the right side of the phonetic
SV mãi [maay] ‘buy’ to create the new character
< for the native word mDi [mRRy] ‘new.’ (mDi is not in the SV syllabic inventory.) Consonant clusters absent in SV readings but plentiful in native words were rendered via certain sinographs serving as initial ‘letters’:
SV ba [(aa] ‘snake’ represented earlier Vietnamese *(- in ‘biphonetic compounds’ such as d *bláay ‘fruit’ (<
*(- +
SV lfi ‘rely on’; attested in de Rhodes’s 1651 dictionary with bl- as blái). Some nôm characters were semantograms such as
SV dhch [zic] ‘armpit,’ which was used to write the unrelated native word nfch [nac] ‘armpit,’ or novel ‘semantic compounds’ such as e *bl3Ry ‘sky,’ which combined
SV thiên [thiRn] ‘heaven’ with
SV the%ng [t htRY] ‘above.’ (This word is spelled with bl- as blIi in de Rhodes 1651; in modern Vietnamese it is trIi [cRRy].) Like all semantographs, these characters contain no phonetic information and therefore are of no use to us. The majority of nôm characters used the phonetic principle, and it is those characters that concern us most. How similar did two syllables have to be in order to be written with the same phonetic? Downer (1987) theorized that Vietnamese rhyming conventions constrained the use of phonetics in nôm. Unlike traditional Chinese rhyming, Vietnamese rhyming is quite loose. Rhyming syllables must have identical codas (/Ø y w p m t n c ã k Y/ ) but need not have identical vowels. However, vowels of rhyming syllables must belong to the same vowel class. Downer (1987: 140) proposed five vowel classes for Vietnamese rhyming (Table 5.12). I have added the labels ‘palatal,’ ‘neutral,’ and ‘labial’ to Downer’s scheme for reasons to be explained shortly. If Downer is correct, phonetic elements should generally be used only for syllables of one rhyme category (i.e., the same vowel class and coda). I have tested Downer’s theory by analyzing the usage of phonetic elements in several hundred nôm characters from Ngw thiên t@ (Five Thousand Characters). These 132

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Table 5.12 Vowel classes in Vietnamese rhyming (after Downer 1987: 140) ‘Palatal’ Front

‘Neutral’ High central

‘Labial’ Back

i [i], ia/iê [iR]

e [t], ea/ed [tR] d [RR] Low central â [R], # [a] Low a [aa]

u [u], ua/uô [uR]

ê [e] e [ε]

ô [o] o [Q]

Note I have replaced Downer’s term ‘mid’ with ‘central,’ since not all of his ‘mid’ vowels were mid (sans quotes) vowels: e [t] is high, ea/ed [tR] is high plus mid, and # [a] is low. Hereafter I will treat the high vowel plus schwa diphthongs as single vowels.

characters either (a) themselves appear as phonograms in Kojiki and Shoki poetry or (b) have phonetic elements which appear in phonograms in Kojiki and Shoki poetry. One such character is
=c7 [koo], a nôm loan character for ‘neck.’ (
SV c7 [koo] means ‘old.’) Following Downer’s reasoning, since
c7 has a back vowel ô and a zero coda, it should appear only as a phonetic element in vietographs for syllables with back vowels and a zero coda. The following vietographs confirm this prediction:9 (5.40) -ô -u -ua -ô -o (-ua


c7 ‘neck’ (SV c7 ‘old’) f gù ‘hunchback’ g coa ‘property’
c7 ‘throat’ h cn ‘grass’ and -o are not in the SV rhyme inventory.)

But Downer’s theory cannot account for the range of many phonetic elements. Exceptions are inevitable, but there are patterns of recurring violations of his predictions. Most notably, ‘low’ a [aa] rhymes with both ‘high central’ (e, ed [t tR] ) and ‘low central’ (â, # [R a] ) vowels. Thus I suspect that, for the purposes of nôm analysis, we can combine the ‘high central,’ ‘low central,’ and ‘low’ classes into a single ‘neutral’ class which contrasts with Downer’s ‘front’ and ‘back’ classes. I will rename his ‘front’ and ‘back’ classes as ‘palatal’ and ‘labial.’10 The reader can compare my three-way division between palatal, neutral, and labial vowels with Downer’s original five-way division by consulting Table 5.12. However, my three-way division still cannot explain many uses of phonetic elements. As Downer (1987: 144) points out, some problematic cases such as the vietograph for the name of the script,
nôm, can be explained by differences between Vietnamese and LMC phonotactics. LMC – and 133

OLD JAPANESE

therefore SV – does not allow labial vowels to be followed by labial codas, whereas Vietnamese does allow such combinations: nom [nQm] ‘look,’ OSV nôm [nom] ‘southern,’ núm [num] ‘knob.’ Thus scribes were forced to use
SV nam [naam] ‘south’ despite its non-labial vowel as the phonetic element (or ‘base’ in Downer’s terminology) for the vietograph
nôm [nom]. But earlier I brought up the example of
SV hu [hii] ‘sorrow’/ SV hí [hii] ‘cry’ as a loan character for OSV hdi [hRRy] ‘breath.’ Why write OSV hdi, which has a neutral vowel d, with
‘sorrow/cry,’ which has a palatal vowel i? This is not an isolated case. Many other characters with SV readings in -i are used as phonograms or as bases of vietographs for native words with neutral vowel rhymes. These characters often belong to OSV, EMC, and OC non-palatal rhymes that became palatal rhymes in LMC: (5.41)

SV
hi/hy

LMC EMC LOC *xi *hty *hty

EH and WH Chinese Gloss *hRy ‘cry’

If nôm were based purely on SV readings alone, there would be no way for the Vietnamese to know that graphs such as
once had neutral vowels. I propose that, in the early centuries of the millennium, there were more OSV readings (sans quotes) of characters in use than there are today. Currently, there are only a few sinographs whose SV readings may be carryovers from OSV, such as
SV/OSV cd ‘machine’ < EMC/LOC *kty or EH/WH *kRy. (Its expected SV reading would be *ki.) Perhaps about 95 per cent of SV readings known today are LMC-based; only 5 per cent or so are OC or EMC-based. There is no reason to suppose that this 95 to 5 ratio was current in the twelfth century when nôm characters were being created. Some OSV readings (sans quotes) forgotten and unrecorded in modern dictionaries may have still been in use or at least dimly remembered. From the OSV words that survive today, we know that OSV has many rhymes completely absent from the SV rhyme inventory, and early writers would surely have taken advantage of this fact. Using both OSV and SV readings of characters gave them more options for writing the thousands of syllables of their language. If this is correct, then
was chosen for OSV hdi [hRRy] ‘breath’ on the basis of a now extinct OSV reading resembling EMC/LOC *hty or EH/WH *hRy. This hypothesized practice of using outdated sinograph readings as the basis of an orthography has parallels in the north. The Japanese used LOC and EMC-based System-D-based orthography throughout the Nara Period and the Koreans used LOC and EMC-based hyangchal up to the Koryo Dynasty, even though LMC-based Kan-on and Sino-Korean proper had rendered Go-on and OSK obsolete. As we shall see in Chapter 8, the archaic elements in nôm can shed light on the ‘eight vowel’ problem of OJ. Many OJ phonograms occur either as nôm loan characters or as bases of nôm phonetic compounds. We will find 134

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

that there are correlations between the OJ ‘vowels’ and the three vocalic classes of nôm.

Other external sources for earlier Chinese Since the Chinese were the dominant culture in East Asia, their language influenced many other languages besides Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Chinese loanwords ranging from prehistoric cultural words to the latest PRC Communist jargon can be found everywhere in the region. Although these borrowings may lack the scale and regularity of Sinoxenic, their premodern strata are nevertheless evidence for OC and MC. The final class of external evidence consists of transcriptions in nonsinographic writing systems. Not all Asians were blessed (or cursed) by sinography. We do have alphabetic evidence for MC. As Barat (n.d.: 1) says of this evidence, “It is needless to emphasize that these vocabularies are hard evidence of the historical Chinese language. They are not reconstruction [sic] and not hypotheses.” Unfortunately, we shall see that these transcriptions cannot help us very much in the quest for OJ sound values. Sino-Tibetan sources Other Sino-Tibetan languages – particularly the classic literary languages (Tibetan, Burmese, and Tangut) – can aid and abet the reconstruction of OC. On the one hand, knowledge of other ST languages can give us typological ideas about what OC may have been like. Recent reconstructions of OC (Starostin 1989 and Baxter 1992) have come to look rather like Tibetan, with simple six-vowel systems and initial and final consonant clusters all reconstructed on the basis of Chinese-internal evidence. On the other hand, knowledge of ST can result in circularity and a mixing of levels if one consciously or unconsciously projects Tibeto-Burman features for which there is no Chinese-internal evidence upon OC. The reconstructions of ProtoSino-Tibetan and OC are two different matters and must be kept separate. Since PST and OC in the general sense are of course far beyond the time depth of the material in this study, I shall say no more about them here. The ST evidence that is relevant for our purposes consists of the Tibetan alphabetic transcriptions of northwestern LMC during the late Tang Dynasty and the following Five Dynasties period. These transcriptions have been extensively studied by Luo (1933a) and form part of the basis for Coblin’s (1994) reconstructions of northwestern LMC. I have already referred to these transcriptions a number of times and I will continue to refer to them in later chapters. Since this material dates from the ninth century onward, it reflects a stage of northwestern LMC over a century after the importation of Kan-on into Japan circa the mid to late seventh century. Nonetheless, we can still see the 135

OLD JAPANESE

denasalization that characterizes Kan-on in these transcriptions: Kan-on b, d, z, g correspond to the Tibetan letter sequences ’b, ’d, zh, ’g (5.42). The apostrophe in the Wylie romanization of Tibetan probably represented a homorganic nasal before stops. (5.42)
‘horse’
‘mud’
‘like’
‘I’

Kan-on ba dei zyo ga

Tibetan LMC transcription (Luo 1933a) ’ba *[mba] ’de *[nde] zhu *[9u] ’ga *[Yga]

Since the orthography of Shoki is based on Chang’an LMC ( p. 32), one might think that it would be possible to reconstruct the pronunciation of Shoki poetry by reading phonograms according to their Tibetan transcriptions. That is not possible because the corpus of characters with Tibetan transcriptions includes only a few hundred characters and excludes many of the more obscure characters used as phonograms in Shoki. We could infer the readings of most if not all of the excluded characters because theTibetan materials contain transcriptions of the reflexes of all EMC initials and all but ten EMC rhymes (Luo 1933a: viii). However, I would rather not emulate the Japanese lexicographers by manufacturing pseudo-readings out of initials and finals. Furthermore, there is no way to get around the fact that the Tibetan transcriptions use only six vowel letters (a i t u e o) in an unsystematic manner.11 We cannot determine much about the OJ ‘vowels’ by looking only at these transcriptions. The lack of correspondences between OJ and the Tibetan transcriptions may be due to at least three factors. First, the transcriptions are approximately one hundred to two hundred years newer than Shoki. The earliest transcriptions are from the Sino-Tibetan Treaty Inscription of 821–822. Most of the others are undated but believed to be from late Tang and/or the Five Dynasties period. The transcriptions may reflect innovations absent in the CLMC learned by the Japanese a century or more earlier. Second, we cannot assume that the transcriptions represent the Chang’an dialect. The transcriptions may represent a variety of northwestern dialects. Third, individual writers may have had their own idiosyncratic methods of transcription. Thus the transcriptions may embody diversity among personal orthographies across both space and time. The Tibetan transcriptions are valuable, but they must be treated with caution. Non-Sino-Tibetan sources These sources are of two types. The first consists of Uighur transcriptions of northwestern Chinese. These have been studied by a number of scholars 136

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including Sinor (1939), Csongor (1952, 1954, 1962), and most recently Barat (1993, 1995, n.d.) and Shôgaito (1995, 1997). Most of the transcriptions are in Uighur script, but a few are in the Brahmi or Arabic scripts. I will confine my remarks here to those in the Uighur script. Like the Tibetan transcriptions, this material originated over a century after the borrowing of Kan-on and is sporadic. There are only a few hundred glosses spanning from the ninth to the twelfth century, and they do not encompass the vast majority of OJ phonograms. The nature of the Uighur script posed an even greater problem than the late date and the lack of scale. It could not accurately record the vowels of Chinese. All vowels were represented by the letters aleph (’), waw (w), and yod (y) alone or in combination. For example, w could represent Uighur u or o, y could represent Uighur y, i, ï, or e, and the combination wy could represent Uighur ü or ö. Thus if we find that
‘diagram,’ a Shoki phonogram for OJ two (96.10.5) and OJ dwo (96.13.3, 96.15.4) was transcribed in Uighur as tw (cf. Kan-on to) (Barat n.d.: 32) we cannot know for sure whether tw represents LMC *tu or *to. tw tells us only that
‘diagram’ had some sort of rounded vowel in medieval northwestern Chinese. And what are we to do with the Uighur transcription kwy (cf. Kan-on kwei) for
‘intelligent’ (Barat n.d.: 55), a Shoki phonogram for OJ we (43.12.2)? kwy could represent LMC *kü, *kö, *kuy, *koy, etc. Clearly, the Uighur data is not sufficient for our needs. Fortunately, the second type of non-Sino-Tibetan material is far greater in terms of both quantity and quality. Sinographic transcriptions of names and words from Indic languages (primarily Sanskrit but also including various Prakrits) comprise the largest body of non-Sinoxenic data on LOC and MC. This data has been extensively studied by many scholars, including Maspero (1920), Mizutani (1960), Pulleyblank (1965, 1983, 1984), Yuchi (1982, 1985), Liu (1984), and Coblin (1991, 1994). In Chapter 8, I will draw upon data from two large bodies of ‘Sino-Indic’ transcriptions cited in Coblin’s (1994) compendium. The first of these is the corpus of Jñanagupta, an Indian monk who lived in China (primarily in Chang’an but also briefly in Chengdu) from 560 to 604 CE (Coblin 1991: 5). He was a contemporary of Lu Fayan, the compiler of Qieyun. His transcriptions reflect northwestern EMC as opposed to the presumably eastern variety of EMC that was the source of Go-on and System D, the basis of the Kojiki phonogram orthography. Nevertheless, his Chang’an EMC (CEMC) preserved some of the finer rhyme distinctions in Qieyun lost in LMC (Pulleyblank 1984: 148) and its nasal initials had not yet become prenasalized stops. CEMC is closer to the southern EMC underlying OSV than to CLMC. The second is the corpus of Amoghavajra (705–774 CE), another Indian monk who lived in the Chang’an area (Coblin 1994: 21). His transcriptions are based on a mid-eighth-century variety of CLMC which is somewhat newer than the variety underlying Kan-on and the Shoki phonogram orthography. 137

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Both sources of transcriptions have severe limitations. They contain only sinographs which approximate the pronunciations of Indic syllables. Hence they are valuable as secondary supporting data but insufficient for the reconstruction of the entire phonological system of Chinese. I will discuss these transcriptions further on p. 151.

The reconstruction of Old Chinese Karlgren (1940, 1957) was the first to attempt to reconstruct OC (his ‘Archaic Chinese’) but his reconstruction of OC was never as widely accepted as his reconstruction of MC (his ‘Ancient Chinese’). Nevertheless his methodology for OC reconstruction set a precedent for all others. He worked backwards from his MC reconstruction, trying to create an earlier state of the language that could account for evidence from phonetic compounds and Shijing rhyming ( p. 92). Norman (1988: 45) calls Karlgren’s OC “a reconstruction based on another reconstruction, a kind of second-degree abstraction.” As Pulleyblank (1993: 338) points out, one must “get one’s reconstruction of Middle Chinese right as the essential foundation for reconstructing Old Chinese.” A “seconddegree abstraction” based on an already flawed first abstraction is doomed. We have already seen that Karlgren’s MC had weaknesses such as an overly large system of 15 vowels (Figure 3.3) combining to form many diphthongs and triphthongs in restricted distribution. Karlgren’s OC not only carried over these weaknesses – it had a system of 14 vowels that also occurred in complex combinations – but also had weaknesses of its own, such as final voiced stops which corresponded to zero in MC and conflicted with both Chinese-internal and Chinese-external (i.e., Sino-Tibetan evidence) (Baxter 1992: 325–339). Later reconstructions of OC carried over many of his reconstruction’s weaknesses and in some cases even exacerbated them. Pulleyblank (1962) set a new course in OC reconstruction, beginning with a revision of Karlgren’s MC reconstruction, proposing a simple five-vowel system (*a, *i, *u, *e, *o) for OC, using Han and LOC transcriptions as additional evidence for OC, and incorporating Haudricourt’s (1954a, 1954b) revolutionary hypothesis of tonogenesis. His suggestions have been widely adopted by the post-Karlgrenian school, represented by Schuessler (1987), Starostin (1989), and Baxter (1992). All of the ‘post-Karlgrenian’ reconstructions proposed by these three scholars have many virtues, but Starostin’s is the most suitable for our purposes. I will explain why below. Post-Karlgrenian OC reconstructions Schuessler (1987), Starostin (1989), and Baxter (1992) share many views about the nature of OC phonology. For example, they agree that OC had only a few vowels (four for Schuessler and six for Starostin and Baxter) and 138

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

no tones. In some cases their reconstructions of individual OC words are extremely similar if not identical. Yet there are three major differences between Starostin’s reconstruction and the others. (1) OC had two types of syllables which Pulleyblank (1994) has called “Type A” and “Type B.” (These terms have nothing to do with the ‘types’ of OJ ‘vowels.’) A Type A syllable was apparently very similar to its Type B counterpart except for some distinguishing feature: it was this feature that caused Type A and Type B syllables to develop very differently in MC. Karlgren believed that OC Type B syllables were distinguished by a medial yod (*-ü- = *-y-) which was absent in OC Type A syllables. He also believed that the zero-yod Type A/B distinction existed also in MC: (5.43)

OC (Karlgren 1957) Type A
‘father’s sister’ *ko Type B
‘dwell’ *küo

MC (Karlgren 1957) *kuo *küwo

Others have adhered to Karlgren’s interpretation of the OC Type A/ B distinction, long after it was questioned by Pulleyblank (1962). Schuessler (1987) and Baxter (1992) retain Karlgren’s Type B medial yod in their OC reconstructions, in spite of the paucity of evidence from Tibeto-Burman, transcriptions, and Sinoxenic. Pulleyblank (1962) accounted for the OC Type A/B distinction with vowel length instead of medial yod: OC Type A syllables had short vowels and OC Type B syllables had long vowels. Starostin (1989) has reversed this hypothesis: OC Type A syllables had long vowels and OC Type B syllables had short vowels (5.44). (5.44) Type A
‘father’s sister’ Type B
‘dwell’

OC OC (Karlgren 1957) (Starostin 1989) *ko *kaa *küo *ka

Although I have reservations about Starostin’s interpretation of the distinction ( p. 142), it is clear that medial yod can no longer be reconstructed as the key characteristic of Type B syllables. (2) Starostin (1989) draws upon a broader spectrum of evidence than Schuessler (1987) or Baxter (1992). Schuessler (1987) does not explicitly state the types of evidence that he has used in his reconstruction. His OC, a revision of Li’s (1971) reconstruction, is apparently based mostly or wholly on Chinese-internal evidence. He does not mention transcriptions, Sinoxenic, or old loans in neighboring languages. Baxter draws primarily upon Chineseinternal evidence, though he does occasionally appeal to external evidence. Starostin makes fuller use of both internal and external evidence than Baxter. 139

OLD JAPANESE

Unlike Baxter, he utilizes Proto-Min, Chinese transcriptions of foreign words, all three branches of Sinoxenic (SJ, SK, and SV), and Chinese loans in Tai. No full-scale reconstruction of OC known to me has yet taken advantage of all of the extant evidence – OSV, nôm, and Hmong-Mien remain mostly ignored – but Starostin’s comes closest to the ideal so far. (3) Schuessler (1987) reconstructs only “Early Zhou” Chinese circa 1050– 770 BCE, well over a thousand years before the period we are concerned with, and Baxter’s efforts are focused on the reconstruction of the OC of Shijing (p. 92). Only Starostin (1989) reconstructs nine stages of OC, ranging from Proto-Chinese all the way to Late LOC of the fifth century CE in addition to EMC of the sixth century and the Qieyun ‘language’ of 601. Of course, among these nine stages, his LOC stages are the most important for the reconstruction of the readings of the more archaic OJ phonograms. Although he provides reconstructed forms only for five of the nine stages of OC and the Qieyun ‘language,’ he does meticulously list sound changes between all of the stages. One could reconstruct unlisted forms for intermediate stages such as ‘Middle LOC’ on the basis of his lists of reconstructions for major stages and sound changes, but I have tried to avoid doing that as much as possible. Thus I generally rely upon the reconstructed forms labeled as ‘LOC’ in his appendix instead of attempting to reconstruct Early, Middle, and Late LOC forms on my own. Forms labeled simply as ‘OC’ are Starostin’s reconstructions of ‘Preclassical Chinese’ (c. tenth century to sixth century BCE). For the above three reasons, I have selected Starostin (1989) rather than Schuessler (1987) or Baxter (1992) as my source of OC reconstructions. Proposed revisions to Starostin (1989) Starostin’s (1989) reconstruction is not perfect, but no reconstruction is. Quite a bit of the evidence that he did not investigate, including OSV and nôm, contradicts some aspects of his reconstruction. His OC may need substantial revision, but this is not the place to propose such revisions. In any cases, I still believe that his reconstruction is the best available in published form. My OJ reconstruction does not principally rely upon his reconstruction, and those aspects of his reconstruction which I do refer to are mostly corroborated by other sources such as Ting (1972), Schuessler (1987), Baxter (1992), and Pulleyblank (1977–78, 1991b). Below I will present four revisions to Starostin’s reconstruction. (1) I accept Ting’s (1972) proposal of a velar glide coda *-ò for the OC
‘fish’ and
‘genitive’ rhyme categories which Starostin reconstructs without *-ò. There are at least three types of evidence that point toward *-ò.

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First, one can find OC words of the
‘fish’ and
‘genitive’ rhyme categories which had a final *-t in Proto-Tai (Pulleyblank 1993: 364–365, Miyake 1999: 36–37). Second, all agree that Type A syllables of the OC
‘genitive’ rhyme (Starostin 1989’s *-RR and Baxter 1992’s *-t) developed a final palatal glide *-y in MC. (5.45) MLOC *-RR > LLOC *-RRy (Starostin 1989: 497) (5.46) OC *-t > MC -oy (Baxter 1992: 578–579). I agree with Pulleyblank’s (1993: 364) observation: “spontaneous generation of a palatal glide by a central or back vowel, [R] or [£], seems completely unmotivated.” Pulleyblank (1993: 365) proposes that the MC palatal glide originated from an earlier OC velar glide: (5.47) LOC *-Rò A > EMC *-Ry (Baxter’s -oy) He does not specify what happened to the final *-ò in Type B syllables of the OC
‘genitive’ rhyme, but I think it simply monophthongized with the preceding vowel: (5.48) LOC *-Rò B > *-R > EMC *-t Third, OSV and nôm evidence seem to indicate a final *-ò in Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme. The Vietnamese seem to have borrowed this *-ò as native *-y. OSV sometimes renders the Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme as -di [RRy]: e.g.,
OSV khNi [xRRy] ‘arise.’ Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme graphs such as
SV kì/kz ‘his/her/its’ are bases for vietographs with a final [y] such as
cày [kay] ‘kind of insect.’ (2) Although Starostin (1989: 485) reconstructed the LOC Type B
‘fish’ rhyme as *-o (< Eastern Han *-a), this rhyme regularly corresponds to OSV ea [tR] (Wang 1958: 367–368, Pulleyblank 1984: 209), not to OSV ô [o] or o [Q]. Nôm bases of the LOC Type B
‘fish’ rhyme are not used in vietographs for words with labial vowels (u, ua, ô, o). Hence I will reconstruct the vowel of the LOC Type B
‘fish’ rhyme as nonlabial *a instead of labial *o. I do agree with Starostin’s reconstruction of the LOC Type A
‘fish’ rhyme as *-oo (< Eastern Han *-aa), though I do not think the vowel length needs to be specified (see below). This rhyme regularly corresponds to a [aa] in the older layer of OSV and to o [QQ] in the newer layer. Nôm bases of this rhyme consistently appear in vietographs for words with labial vowels (u, ua, ô, o). Apparently the earlier OC velar glide coda *-ò was lost in this rhyme by the LOC period.

141

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Thus I revise Starostin’s reconstructions of the LOC Type A and B
‘fish’ and
‘genitive’ rhymes as follows: (5.49) Rhyme
‘fish’
‘fish’
‘genitive’
‘genitive’

Type A B A B

Starostin’s LOC Miyake’s LOC *-oo *-oA *-o *-aò B *-tt *-Rò A *-t *-Rò B

I will explain other differences between my reconstruction and his shortly. (3) In (5.49) I have emended Starostin’s LOC *t(t) to *Rò. OSV shows that OC *R in the Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme may have persisted into LOC and perhaps even into EMC. According to Starostin’s system of reconstruction, the Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme word
‘time’ should appear in various stages of OC and EMC as: (5.50)
‘time’

Classical OC Western Han *d(h)R *d(h)R ELOC EMC *j(h)t *j(h)t

Eastern Han *d(h)yR > *j(h)R

Starostin (1989: 485) believes that *R raised to *t between Eastern Han OC and Early LOC of the third century. Therefore OSV words of the Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme from Eastern Han should have the final -d [RR] (the short vowel -â [R] is not permitted as a Vietnamese final) and newer OSV words should have the final -e [tt]. But we rarely find -e [tt] as an OSV counterpart of the OC Type B ‘genitive’ rhyme. We find -di [RRy] or -d [RR]: e.g.,
OSV thIi [t h RRy] ‘time’ and
OSV cI [kRR] ‘flag’ (Pulleyblank 1984: 212). Notice the [y] in OSV thIi ‘time’ which looks like a trace of the LOC final velar glide *-ò. Pulleyblank 1984 and Starostin 1989 agree that EMC did not have any *-ò in the Type B
‘genitive’ rhyme, so the absence of a trace of LOC *-ò would be a sign of late origin. Hence I believe that OSV -di [RRy] words such as
thIi ‘time’ reflect LOC *-Rò B (5.48) and that OSV -d words such as
cI ‘flag’ reflect late LOC *-R. Therefore I would revise (5.50) as in (5.51). (5.51)

Classical OC
‘time’ *d(h)Rò B ELOC *j(h)Rò B

Western Han *d(h)Rò B EMC *j(h)t

Eastern Han *d(h)yRò B > *j(h)Rò B

(4) As mentioned earlier, Starostin (1989) believes that the OC Type A/B distinction involved vowel length. He came to this conclusion largely on the basis of correlations between Types A and B in OC and vowel length in the 142

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

Tibeto-Burman Lushei language. OC Type A corresponded to Lushei long vowels and OC Type B corresponded to Lushei short vowels. But Starostin (1989: 328) himself admits that out of the OC–Lushei cognates presented in chapter 3 of his book, OC Type A corresponded to Lushei short vowels in 42 cases and to Lushei long vowels in only 32 cases. As Pulleyblank (1994: 91) writes, “even if one accepts all Starostin’s [sic] cognate word pairs (and many of them seem to me to be doubtful) the statistical correlation he claims to find between Lushei long vowels and Type A is hardly impressive.” Starostin found 72 cases of OC Type B corresponding to Lushei short vowels. He does not give the exact number of exceptions, but notes only that there are not more than ten of them. There very well may be a correlation between the OC Types and Lushei vowel length partly obscured by secondary lengthening in Lushei and/or shifts within Chinese. Nevertheless I remain agnostic and unwilling to commit to Starostin’s interpretation of the OC Type A/B distinction. Pulleyblank once advocated a similar hypothesis (1962) but now views the OC Type A/B distinction as a “prosodic opposition between prominence on the first and prominence on the second mora of the syllable” (1994: 94). He has found such an opposition in Sizang Chin and cites four Sizang Chin numerals “whose relation to Chinese is uncontroversial” to show that the position of the ‘syllabic peak’ in Sizang Chin corresponds with the OC Types (1994: 92). However, he admits that the syllabic peaks of two Sizang Chin numerals do not match the types of their OC cognates. Pulleyblank’s hypothesis requires much more testing. I currently think that Norman’s (1994) hypothesis of a pharyngeal origin for the OC Type A /B distinction may be the most likely, but I am hesitant to commit to it in its present form. For now, I will ignore Starostin’s OC vowel length and indicate the type of an OC syllable with a superscript ‘A’ or ‘B’ at the end of a rhyme. (5.52)

OC (Starostin 1989) OC (Miyake) Type A *VV *V A Type B *V *V B

Apart from the revisions explained above and a number of typographical modifications listed in my initial list of abbreviations, symbols, and conventions, I will quote all OC forms according to Starostin (1989).

The reconstruction of Early Middle Chinese Karlgren’s ‘Ancient Chinese’ (my EMC) reconstruction, first presented in (1915–26) and published in final form in (1957), though extremely outdated, remains influential today. Karlgren was a pioneer in drawing data not only from dialects throughout China but also from all three branches of Sinoxenic. 143

OLD JAPANESE

Many other reconstructions came after his, but most of them did not represent significant advances. Too many Karlgrenoid reconstructions imitated his complex fifteen-vowel system and, worse yet, added further quirks to it. Many EMC reconstructions bear little resemblance to any variety of Chinese or Sinoxenic in terms of phonological typology. However, the realism of the consonant systems of Karlgrenoid reconstructions has rarely been seriously questioned. One can easily and independently verify much of Karlgren’s original EMC consonants through the comparative method without any knowledge of the ‘36 initials’ listed in Yunjing. Even post-Karlgrenian reconstructions such as Pulleyblank (1984), Starostin (1989), Baxter (1992), and Coblin (1994) preserve most of Karlgren’s original sound values for EMC consonants. Since there is so much consensus on the initials, I decided to choose Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) EMC reconstruction mainly because I believe that his reconstruction of the finals is the best available. I will enumerate my reasons for this belief in the next section. Post-Karlgrenian EMC reconstructions There are at least four published post-Karlgrenian reconstructions of EMC which lack the convoluted vowel systems of earlier efforts: Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a), Starostin (1989), Baxter (1992), and Coblin (1994). Coblin (1994) is the least useful for us because it is a reconstruction of ‘Old Northwestern Chinese.’ I doubt that the EMC basis of the orthography of Kojiki poetry originated from the northwest. The Three Kingdoms of the Korean peninsula probably got their sinographic readings from the east and south of China rather than the distant, backward northwest. Prior to the unification of China by the Sui, peninsular peoples would have little motivation to journey to the former Han capital of Chang’an and bring back its rustic pronunciations. If the term Go-on (‘sounds of Wu’; i.e., sounds of the south) is truly meaningful, then it is further counterevidence against a northwestern EMC origin for System D, the basis of Go-on and the phonogram orthography of the poetry of Kojiki. I will not use Coblin’s Old Northwestern Chinese, but I will review and reject his northwestern LMC reconstruction in the following section. The remaining three EMC reconstructions attempt to express the abstract phonological distinctions of the ‘language’ of the Qieyun dictionary of 601 CE (p. 93). Pulleyblank, Starostin, and Baxter all agree that the distinctions of Qieyun were real, but their interpretations of those distinctions differ considerably. Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) interpretation stands out among the three because it is the only one which uses abundant and appropriate evidence. Besides philological sources such as Qieyun, he uses three types of modern sources: (1) the colloquial strata of Min dialects, (2) Go-on and man’yôgana (which potentially entails circularity; see Chapters 3 and 6), and (3) OSV. 144

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

No other reconstruction of OC or MC has ever tapped the rich mines of OSV. Furthermore, his reconstruction has a largely typologically plausible vowel system not unlike that of Vietnamese and can neatly account for Go-on, OSV, and many of the Min forms. Starostin (1989) tried to reconstruct ‘Middle Chinese’ (EMC)12 by combining the initials already reconstructed by other scholars (primarily Karlgren 1915–26 and Li Rong 1952) with finals derived via the comparative method. His choice of sources for comparison was extremely unfortunate. He restricted himself only to Sinoxenic, selecting EMC-based Go-on and LMCbased Sino-Vietnamese and Sino-Korean. Since the latter two are much newer than Go-on, they lack many of the distinctions of Qieyun. When one looks at Starostin’s (1989: 23–27) table of correspondences between SV, SK, and Go-on, one is struck by the number of Qieyun finals which are not distinguished in all three. Forty-six sets of SV, SK, and Go-on finals corresponded to fifty-eight Qieyun finals. A strict application of the comparative method would require Starostin to reconstruct only forty-six ‘Middle Chinese’ finals. Yet he manages to fill in the holes by plucking pieces of others’ reconstructions and picking fragments from modern Chinese dialects. The end result is not as bad as one might expect – in fact, it is not too different from Pulleyblank’s solution – but it does have some major flaws. Starostin reconstructs a lax–tense distinction for EMC vowels (underlining signifies tenseness): (5.53) lax *a, *ä, *u, *e, *o

vs.

tense *a, *ä, *u, *e, *o

and assigns the tense vowels to Grade III syllables without any explanation. I do not know how he came up with this unusual interpretation of Grade III, since the SX branches he worked with do not have a lax–tense distinction. He also takes advantage of his knowledge of previous OC reconstructions to posit retroflex vowels which correspond to OC r-vowel clusters but are completely absent in modern languages. Like Karlgren, Starostin reconstructs *-ie- in Grade IV, even though such an EMC diphthong was long ago discredited by Maspero (1920) and is absent in many Karlgrenian as well as post-Karlgrenian reconstructions which reconstruct a simple *-e- or *-ε-. Although Starostin’s OC is based on his EMC reconstruction, the above problems and others do not greatly mar his OC. Since his OC reconstructions can be verified by looking at pre-MC archaisms in the colloquial strata of Chinese and pre-MC loans in Vietnamese and Tai, it seems that he came to the right conclusions about OC in spite of the errors in his EMC reconstruction. Thus I have chosen to use his version of OC but not his version of EMC. As for Baxter’s (1992: 27) version of EMC, Baxter himself denies that it is a reconstruction: “The notation I introduce here is not intended as a reconstruction; rather it is a convenient transcription which adequately represents 145

OLD JAPANESE

all the phonological distinctions of Middle Chinese while leaving controversial questions open.” In spite of this declaration, Baxter does use his ‘transcription’ as a de facto reconstruction upon which he builds his OC reconstruction. If I were also to use his ‘transcription’ as a de facto reconstruction, I would have to make a number of typographical changes, since his transcription is inconsistent and confusing (e.g., *[y] is represented by both *y and *j, and the latter can also represent [ò] before a back vowel; Baxter 1992: 55, 579–580). But such changes would not alter the fact that his EMC cannot always account for Go-on or OSV: (5.54) Rhyme
‘genitive’
‘anxious’

Pulleyblank Baxter Go-on OSV *-t *-i o, i d(i) [RR(y) ] *-uR *-ju [òu] u ua [uR]

Older Go-on -o and d(i) [RR(y) ] make no sense if the
‘genitive’ rhyme were Baxter’s high front i. Pulleyblank’s *t is not a perfect match, but at least it is a non-front vowel. And where would the schwa in OSV ua [uR] come from if the
‘anxious’ rhyme were Baxter’s *-ju [òu]? I do not wish to give the impression that Pulleyblank’s reconstruction is the last word on the subject. There are a number of aspects of his EMC reconstruction which I find questionable. In some cases I favor Starostin’s or Baxter’s solutions and in others I favor my own. But since (1) these questionable aspects are almost entirely in the finals and (2) I will use Pulleyblank’s finals as convenient labels for EMC rhymes rather than as primary evidence for OJ vocalism, I will list only a few emendations below. Proposed revisions to Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) Pulleyblank has published two slightly different reconstructions of EMC (1984, 1991a). The reconstruction used in this book is based on his (1991a) reconstruction with the following alterations: (1) Pulleyblank (1991a: 12) has changed his (1984) reconstructions of the EMC Grade II vowels *ar and *er to *at and *Rt. I find these new diphthongs to be dubious. Pulleyblank is correct in noting that Tai does have diphthongs ending in *-t. However, I know of no Tai language that allows such a diphthong in medial position: i.e., syllables such as *CatC are probably impossible in Tai languages. Yet Pulleyblank’s (1991a) EMC is full of syllables such as
EMC *kRtp ‘first Heavenly Stem.’ Moreover, I have never seen any forms in Chinese or in other languages which suggest *Vt diphthongs in Grade II. Colloquial Taiwanese e and OSV e [ε] regularly correspond to Pulleyblank’s EMC *at: compare
EMC *γ atq ‘summer’ with Colloquial Taiwanese he6 and OSV hè [hεε] ‘id.’ If Pulleyblank were correct, we might expect forms such as Colloquial Taiwanese *hai 6 and OSV *hày [hay]. I will abandon Pulleyblank’s (1984) and (1991a) Grade II vowels 146

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

in favor of Baxter’s (1992: 61) *æ and *ε, which account for the data without resorting to marked retroflex vowels or exotic diphthongs (1992: 61). (2) If I follow Baxter in reconstructing *ε in Grade II, this would conflict with Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) reconstruction of the EMC Grade IV vowel *ε. Pulleyblank (1984: 198–199) himself gives the solution when he points out that the usual OSV rendition of this vowel is ê [e]. OSV e [ε] is a rarer rendition and is otherwise associated with Grade II (see above), not Grade IV. Since Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) EMC has no *e whatsoever, I will substitute EMC *e for his EMC *ε. EMC *e would account for the OSV data better. (3) Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) reconstructs the vowel *Q for the Grade I
‘model’ rhyme on the basis of its OSV counterpart o [Q]. This vowel does not contrast with an upper-mid vowel *o. Pulleyblank (1991a: 7) suggests that “one could substitute o for Q without ambiguity for practical purposes.” I will adopt his suggestion. (4) Other than the diphthongs (*at, *Rt) discussed in (1) above, Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) reconstructs three diphthongs (*iR, *tR, *uR) in syllable-final position which are in near-complementary distribution with three diphthongs (*ia, *ta, *ua) in syllable-medial position: i.e., CVR and CVaC but not *CVa or *CVRC. There are only two exceptions to the above generalization: the common rhyme *-ia and the very rare rhyme *-ta. I believe that these diphthongs are in need of reinterpretation. Let us ignore the rhymes *-ia and *-ta for the moment and look at the Go-on and OSV renderings of (*iR, *tR, *uR) and (*ia, *ta, *ua): (5.55) Final Medial Final Medial Final Medial

EMC *-iR *-ia*-tR *-ta*-uR *-ua-

Go-on -e -e-o -o-u-u-

OSV -ia -iê-ea -ed-ua -uô-

[iR] -[iR][tR] -[tR][uR] -[uR]-

Pulleyblank’s differentiation between three *-VR and three *-Va- diphthongs is unnecessary, since it appears that the Japanese and the Vietnamese perceived medial *-Va- and *-VR similarly. I will simplify (5.55) by positing only three *VR diphthongs: (5.56) Final Medial Final Medial Final Medial

EMC *-iR *-iR*-tR *-tR*-uR *-uR-

Go-on -e -e-o -o-u-u-

OSV -ia -iê-ea -ed-ua -uô147

[iR] -[iR][tR] -[tR][uR] -[uR]-

OLD JAPANESE

This would eliminate the need for a diphthong *ua. But how can I eliminate the two remaining diphthongs ending in *-a (*-ia and *-ta)? Go-on and OSV render EMC *-ia with (y)a, not -e or -ia. If Pulleyblank’s identification of medial *-ia- (our *-iR-) with final *-ia were correct, then why was *ia not rendered the same way in both medial and final position (5.57)? (5.57)

EMC Go-on OSV Final *-ia -ya -a [aa] Medial *-ia- (my *-iR-) -e-iê- [iR]

I could eliminate *-ia by rewriting it as *-ya, which does not otherwise occur in Pulleyblank’s reconstruction. (Pulleyblank reconstructs medial *-yonly before *i.) Compare the Go-on and OSV renditions of EMC *-ya (Pulleyblank’s *-ia) and EMC *-a (5.58). (5.58)

EMC Go-on OSV Final *-ya (Pulleyblank’s *-ia) -ya -a [aa] Medial *-a -a -a [aa]

Now we only have four EMC diphthongs left (*iR, *tR, *uR, *ta). *-ta is of such low textual frequency that one is tempted to overlook it, but it does appear among the OJ phonograms, so we cannot ignore it. *-ta appears only after velars and is restricted almost entirely to phonograms for Indic velar-initial syllables. According to Pulleyblank (1965, 1984: 167–168), EMC velars had back allophones before back vowels. EMC */ka/ may have been *[qa]. Therefore EMC had no native *[ka]. When EMC speakers had to transcribe Indic syllables such as *[ka], they created special phonograms such as
EMC *kta ‘transcriptional character for Indic ka and ka’. I would like to reconstruct the rhyme *-ta with a velar glide *-ò- as *-òa, which would be parallel to my revision of *-ia with a palatal glide *-y- as *-ya. (5) Pulleyblank (1991a) reconstructed the voiceless and voiced ‘throat sounds’ of EMC as velars (*x and *γ). Norman (1988: 31) argued that perhaps we should take the term ‘throat’ literally and reconstruct these sounds as glottals (*h and *®). I will do precisely that, though they may have been velars. The evidence is ambiguous. Pulleyblank (1962) himself once reconstructed them as glottals and as late as 1984 (163–164) believed that they were glottals in southern EMC. (6) See my initial list of abbreviations, symbols, and conventions for minor typographical substitutions such as *y for *j. I list the consonants and vowels of our modified version of Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) reconstruction in Table 5.13. *h and *® may have been *[x γ ], so I have added these possibilities in parentheses. 148

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Table 5.13 The consonants of EMC

Voiceless stops/affr. Voiceless fricatives Aspirated stops/affr. Voiced stops/affr. Voiced fricatives Nasals Glides

Labial

Dental

Retroflex

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

*p

*t

*tr

*th *d

*m *w

*n *l

*k (*x) *kh *g (*γ) *Y *ò

*q *h

*ph *b

*c *\ *ch *j *9 *ã *y

*ts *s *tsh *dz *z

*thr *dr

*cr *Z *chr *jr *|

*nr

*®

Table 5.14 The vowels of EMC

High High + Central Upper mid Lower mid Low

Front

Central

Back

*i *iR *e *ε *æ

*t *tR *R

*u *uR *o *a

The distinction between *ε and *æ may have been an archaism in Qieyun. Rhyme classes with those vowels are poorly distinguished in OSV and Go-on and have merged in modern Chinese languages and the rest of SX. The syllable structure of my modified EMC is: (5.59) C(G1)V(C) + Tone C = {all consonants in Table 5.13 except *ò} (G) = {*w, *y, *ò} V = {all vowels in Table 5.14} (C) = {*p, *m, *w, *t, *n, *y, *yk, *yY, *k, *Y, *wk, *wY} Tone = {zero = Level, *-q = Rising, *-h = Departing, *-stop = Entering} *yk and *yY are palatalized velars and *wk and *wY are labialized velars. Starostin (1989) also reconstructs these codas for EMC. I use Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) unusual notation for these four sounds. They could otherwise be written as *ky, *Yy, *kw, *Yw.

The reconstruction of Late Middle Chinese (LMC) LMC has not received the attention that has been showered upon EMC, largely because of the paucity of materials. There is no LMC equivalent to Qieyun. We do have the list of 36 initials in Yunjing and other rhyme tables, but the rhymes in those tables are taken from Qieyun and do not represent 149

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the rhymes of LMC. I know of only two post-Karlgrenian reconstructions of LMC and will briefly review them below. Post-Karlgrenian LMC reconstructions After revolutionizing the OC field in (1962), Edwin Pulleyblank published the first draft of his Late Middle Chinese reconstruction in (1970–71). Pulleyblank’s premises were radically different from those of his predecessors. He viewed rhyme tables as evidence for northwestern Chang’an LMC rather than for southern EMC. He also viewed the Four Grades of the tables in a new way. Previous scholars had tried to make sense of the Four Grades via EMC with little success. But having freed himself from the need to shove EMC into the supposedly LMC framework of Yunjing, Pulleyblank declared that the Grades of LMC were grades of palatalization, ranging from zero to maximal. Nearly fifteen years later, Pulleyblank presented a revised reconstruction of LMC in his (1984) monograph. This reconstruction reappeared with slight modifications in his (1991a) Lexicon. Meanwhile, W. South Coblin had been pursuing the problem of LMC (and of northwestern MC in general) from a completely different perspective. Instead of relying upon rhyme tables which he rejected as artificial, he sought to reconstruct ancient northwestern speech on the basis of Chinese transcriptions of foreign languages and foreign transcriptions of Chinese. Luo (1933a) had barely dared to venture beyond Karlgren’s EMC reconstruction, but Coblin (1994) devised reconstructions of northwestern LOC, EMC, and LMC that were intended to be a radical departure from those of his predecessors. Both of these takes on Chang’an LMC would seem to be indispensable for the interpretation of the CLMC-based Shoki orthography. If two researchers could arrive at the same results independently using different methodologies, we could safely assume that they had approximated the truth. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. Pulleyblank’s LMC reconstruction is an example of theory overriding data. Although Pulleyblank is always to be commended for collecting data neglected by his peers – particularly Sinoxenic data – his ultimate (1984, 1991a) version of LMC relies heavily on his assumptions. For example, he reconstructed a medial *-y- in Grade II for Chang’an LMC, even though such a yod is exceedingly rare in the extensive transcriptive materials available for northwestern Chinese, infrequent in SK (which may not even be based on CLMC; see p. 112), and absent from Kan-on. He believed that CLMC was the standard language of Tang and spread to the south, yet southern Chinese has no trace of this yod. This is all very ironic since Pulleyblank has protested (rightfully, I believe) against the Karlgrenian reconstruction of yod for Grade III in EMC and Type B syllables of OC. 150

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The problems with Pulleyblank’s reconstruction are not restricted to Grade II. Unlike his EMC reconstruction which accounts nicely for Go-on and OSV, his LMC reconstruction cannot account for any of the later strata of SX. Why do Vietnamese long vowels (SV cao [kaaw] ) correspond to LMC short vowels (
LMC *kaw ‘high’)? Why would the Vietnamese, who had a perfectly good final -ua [uR], borrow
LMC *muR ‘model’ as mô [moo] and
LMC *YüR ‘anxious’ as ngu [Yuu]? Why not simply reconstruct LMC *mo and LMC *Yu? There are many other cases of mismatches between attested forms and his reconstruction which I will not list here. Occasionally Pulleyblank tried to reconcile mismatches with dubious results. According to his ‘grades of palatalization’ theory (5.2), Grade III was the second most palatalized Grade and Grade IV is the most palatalized Grade. Grade III was characterized by the vowel *i and Grade IV was characterized by the glide-vowel combination *yi. SK violates this theory because SK has u [t] in Grade III and i [i] in Grade IV. In order to make SK fit his ‘grades of palatalization’ theory, he reinterpreted Late Middle Korean u as [i] and i as [yi] (1984: 100–104). This would imply an otherwise unjustifiable chain shift (*yi > *i > t) between LMK and modern Korean. But Pulleyblank neither pursued the consequences of his claims for Korean historical phonology nor cited Korean-internal evidence to justify his claims. Coblin (1994) is the antithesis to Pulleyblank’s theory-heavy approach. His Compendium of Phonetics is almost all data and no theory. Surely Coblin, grounded more firmly in the real world, would be more likely to produce realistic results. Regrettably, the very nature of Coblin’s methodology bars him from obtaining such results. Coblin principally draws upon two types of data: Tibetan transcriptions of Chinese and Chinese transcriptions of Indic languages. The Tibetan script of the time had only six vowel letters. It probably could not accurately record all of the phonemic distinctions of LMC. It is roughly analogous to katakana transcriptions of English in phrase books for Japanese tourists. Using those transcriptions, one could not reconstruct English sounds such as [æ R θ 2 W] which have no Japanese equivalents. The Chinese Buddhist transcriptions pose a different problem. Ignoring vowel length and syllabic liquids (è, ù, ê), Sanskrit has only a five-vowel system (a, i, u, e, o). Middle Indic languages also have a five-vowel system. The Chinese would naturally tend to use characters with vowels similar to the five Indic vowels in their transcriptions. Coblin (1994: 79) finds himself unable to learn much about the early northwestern sound value of the
‘fish’ rhyme because it is rarely used to transcribe Indic. Obviously, the
‘fish’ rhyme was among the rhymes that did not resemble anything in Indic. How much could we determine about English phonology based on English transcriptions of Indic words? We could not learn anything about English sounds not used in Indic transcription. We would never know that English had a /z/ or /W/ on the basis of transcriptions of Sanskrit, which has no /z/ or /W/. 151

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Pulleyblank (1998: 201) also points out that Coblin is not entirely liberated from the philological tradition that he rejects. Coblin’s ‘Qieyun System’ is but a minor revision of Karlgren’s ‘Ancient Chinese.’ Coblin is more conservative than he realizes. Coblin (1994: 49–50) reconstructs an “intrinsically front” *i in Grade III and an “anti-palatal” *t in Grade IV. Since the Indic data he discusses for these vowel do not have a distinction between /i/ and /t/, he apparently falls back on the Karlgrenian assumption that Grade III was more palatal than Grade IV. This contradicts everything else known about those two Grades. Compare Coblin’s (1994: 49, 217, 226, 241) Sui-Tang Chang’an (STCA) reconstructions with (1) Coblin’s ‘Qieyun System’ (QYS), (2) the Tibetan transcriptions listed in Coblin (1994), (3) SK, and (4) SV in (5.60). (5.60)
‘sad’
‘compare’
‘machine’
‘discard’

Grade III IV III IV

STCA *pi *bt *ki *kht

QYS *pyi *bi *kyei *khi

Tib. pyi bt, ’byi, ’byt kt (none)

SK SV pi bi [(ii] pi tì [tii] kuy [kty] cd [kRR] ki khí [xii]

Notice that STCA *i correlates with the presence of a *y in QYS and that STCA *t correlates with the absence of a *y in QYS. So far, so good. However, the Tibetan transcriptions only confuse us: Tibetan yi and t correspond to STCA *i, and Tibetan t, yi, and yt correspond to STCA *t. The SK and SV forms, on the other hand, have a pattern. SK distinguishes Grades III and IV only after velars and SV distinguishes those Grades only after labials. SK uy [ty] corresponds to STCA *i and SK i corresponds to STCA *t. This is precisely the reverse of what we would expect given Coblin’s STCA reconstruction:
SK *ki ‘machine’ and
SK *kuy [kty] ‘discard.’ If Mineya (1972) et al. are correct in deriving SV t from a palatalized labial, then why is SV t in Grade IV (
SV tì ‘compare’) if Grade IV had Coblin’s “anti-palatal” vowel *t? And why is SV t not in Grade III (
SV bi ‘sad’), which Coblin reconstructs with an “intrinsically front” *i? The vowel of
SV cd [kRR] ‘machine’ (Grade III) also does not suggest an “intrinsically front” *i. It is true that
SV cd’ ‘machine’ is a ‘carryover’ reading from pre-Tang OSV; the expected LMC-based SV reading would be *ki. Nonetheless Coblin’s (1994: 241) fifth-century ‘Old Northwestern Chinese’ reconstruction *ki for
‘machine’ does not explain the non-front vowel in SV cd. On pp. 112 and 127, I have demonstrated that SK and SV have different origins. If they both reflect Grade III as non-palatal and Grade IV as palatal, these manifestations of the Grades are most likely to be traits shared by their source LMC dialects rather than coincidental Korean and Vietnameseinternal developments. It is theoretically possible that Chang’an LMC could have reversed the pattern found elsewhere, but it would be simpler for us to 152

OLD CHINESE, MIDDLE CHINESE, AND SINOXENIC

assume otherwise. If we ignore the hypothetical Karlgrenian QYS and look at the hard data, we see that Indic and Tibetan tell us nothing about Grades III and IV but that SK and SV do tell us something quite different from Coblin’s account. This is not much ado about nothing, for all four of the characters in (5.60) appear in Shoki.
‘sad’ and
‘machine’ are phonograms for OJ piy and kiy with B-type iy (NS 123.4.5a, 7.2.3) and
‘compare’ and
‘discard’ are phonograms for OJ pyi and kyi with A-type yi (NS 6.2.1, 96.21.3) We will see in Chapter 8 that OJ B-type iy correlates with Grade III and that OJ A-type yi correlates with Grade IV. The Grade III/IV distinction is crucial for the reconstruction of these two OJ ‘vowels.’ Neither Pulleyblank’s nor Coblin’s LMC reconstruction is satisfactory. The ideal solution would be to use the comparative method to create reconstructions untainted by either Karlgrenian or post-Karlgrenian preconceptions. But such a task is far beyond the scope of this book, so I shall not attempt it here. In the next section, I will explain how I will approximate LMC without using either Pulleyblank’s or Coblin’s reconstructions. The initials of Chang’an LMC Since no LMC equivalent of Qieyun exists, no lists of LMC finals compiled by LMC speakers exist. The post-LMC rhyme tables such as Yunjing still listed the long obsolete finals of Qieyun. Instead of trying to reconstruct LMC finals, I will use SK and SV as my main witnesses for LMC finals. As we have seen, the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern LMC finals are inconsistent and unreliable. Even though SK and SV probably do not descend from Chang’an LMC, the similarities between their finals and those of modern Kan-on suggest that there were no radical differences between the finals of their source LMC dialects and the Chang’an LMC source of Kan-on. However, SK and SV cannot tell us much about the initials of Chang’an LMC for two reasons. First, they were apparently based on LMC dialects which had not undergone the denasalization that was peculiar to CLMC. Second, neither currently reflects the original consonantal distinctions of LMC. SK aspiration is not correlated with aspiration in Chinese or in SV. Many consonant mergers and shifts have taken place in SV. Thus I will recycle the consonants of modified EMC (Table 5.13) with modifications to serve as a makeshift substitute for the initials of CLMC. But it is not clear whether all the EMC consonantal distinctions survived into CLMC. Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) reconstructs retroflexes but no palatals because he believes that EMC palatals had merged with EMC retroflexes in LMC. Although late LMC-based SV still maintains a distinction between the two series, we cannot be certain that such a distinction existed in the northwest as well as in the south. Coblin (1994) reconstructs separate series 153

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of palatals and retroflexes for Sui-Tang Chang’an, which would have been the basis of Kan-on and the orthography of Shoki. I believe it is best to err in the direction of overdifferentiation rather than underdifferentiation, so I will keep LMC palatals separate from LMC retroflexes. I will make only three changes to the EMC consonants of Table 5.13 to reflect the major characteristics of CLMC. (1) Pulleyblank (1991a: 6) believes that EMC voiced obstruents had become LMC ‘muddy’ obstruents “having voiceless onset with voiced aspiration or murmur at their release.” Even without referring to the voiceless modern Kan-on counterparts of LMC ‘muddy’ obstruents, we can confirm this by looking at the Tibetan transcriptions (Luo 1933a): (5.61) LMC *k *kh *k® Tibetan transcription k, g kh k, kh, g Similar patterns of correspondence exist for unaspirated, aspirated, and ‘muddy’ obstruents at other points of articulation: (5.62) LMC Tibetan transcription

*p p, b

*ph *p® ph ph, b

Apparently the Tibetans perceived ‘muddy’ obstruents as either nonaspirates (k, g, b) or aspirates (kh, ph). Pulleyblank’s *C® reconstructions account for both patterns of transcription. Therefore I will rewrite all EMC voiced obstruents (*b, *d,*g, etc.) as *C® clusters (*p®, *t®, *k®, etc.). (2) Unlike EMC, LMC distinguished between ‘heavy lip sounds’ (bilabials) and ‘light lip sounds’ (labiodentals). The ‘heavy/light’ distinction must have been known to the scribes of Shoki, since it is attested in the fanqie for Yan Shigu’s Han shu commentary of 641. The ‘light lip sounds’ have been reconstructed in a number of different ways (Table 5.15). Table 5.15 Reconstructions of the LMC labiodentals Yunjing initial name


‘not’ Unaspirated


‘spread’ Aspirated


‘present’ ‘Muddy’


‘small’ Nasal

Tib. translit. (Luo 1933a) Tôdô (1978, 1980) Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) Coblin (1994) Miyake

ph *f *f *pf *f

ph *fh *f *phf *fh

ph, b, ’b *v *f® *bv *f®

m, b, ’b *w *v *m(v) *mv

Note Coblin (1994: 58) reconstructs *m for seventh-century Sui-Tang Chang’an and *mv for eighthcentury Mid-Tang Chang’an.

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My reconstruction is a compromise between those of Tôdô (1978, 1980), Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a), and Coblin (1994). Although both Pulleyblank and I doubt the existence of a distinction between *f and *fh – there would be no other pair of fricatives distinguished by aspiration in LMC – I will err on the side of overdifferentiation and keep *f and *fh separate. For consistency with other ‘muddy’ obstruents, I will preserve Pulleyblank’s reconstruction of the ‘muddy’ labiodental as *f®. I will revise Pulleyblank’s *v as *mv to reflect the nasality evident in the Tibetan transcriptions m and ’b (probably *[mb] ). Following Coblin (1994: 34, 59), I will rewrite EMC bilabial initials (*p, *ph, *b, *m) followed by the vowel *u as CLMC labiodental initials: (5.63) EMC *p, *ph, *b / _u > CLMC *f, *fh, *f® (5.64) EMC *m / _u (except / _uw) > CLMC *mv A separate rule (5.64) is necessary for *m because EMC *m does not shift to CLMC *mv if it is followed by a *w: EMC *muw, *muwY, *muwk all have initial *m in CLMC (Pulleyblank 1984: 90). (3) *mv in (5.64) above is one of six prenasalized obstruent initials (*mb, *mv, *nd, *ndr, *ã9, *Yg) in LMC that developed from EMC nasal initials in all but certain environments (see below). All six correspond to modern Kan-on voiced obstruents and voiced obstruents prefixed with a.chung (symbolized here as an apostrophe) in Tibetan transcription (also see 5.42). Uighur transcriptions (Barat n.d.) also show denasalization in five of the six initials (*ndr is not represented in the data): (5.65) EMC LMC Kan-on Tib. translit. Uighur

*m *mb b ’b p

*m *mv b ’b v

*n *nd d ’d l

*nr *ndr d ’d –

*ã *ã9 z 9 z

*Y *Yg g ’g k

The exact circumstances under which denasalization was blocked are unclear. Coblin (1994: 58) thinks the process “occurred primarily in syllables whose finals lacked a nasal element of any kind . . . in some varieties of northwest Chinese it may have begun to spread beyond its original phonetic environment to syllables having final nasal elements.” For now, I will regard nasals before finals without nasal elements as denasalized: *m, *n > *mb, *nd, etc. I will regard nasals before finals with nasal elements as potentially denasalized: *m(b), *n(d), etc. In any case, denasalization was probably subphonemic in CLMC. Nothing in Kan-on or the transcriptions suggests the existence of minimal pairs such as *ma vs. *mba or *maY vs. *baY. However, what may have been 155

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CLMC allophone *[m] – perceived by non-Chinese as */m/? CLMC phoneme */m/ CLMC allophone *[mb] – perceived by non-Chinese as */mb/?

Figure 5.1 Foreign perceptions of CLMC nasals

Table 5.16 The consonants of CLMC Labial Voiceless stops/affr. *p Voiceless fricatives *f(h) Aspirated stops/affr. *ph ‘Muddy’ stops/affr. *p® ‘Muddy’ fricatives Prenasalized obst. *mb *mv Nasals *m Glides *w

Dental

Retroflex

*t

*ts *tr *s *th *tsh *thr *t® *ts® *t®r *s® *nd *ndr *n *nr *l

*cr *Z *chr *c®r *Z®

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

*c *\ *ch *c® *\® *ã9 *ã *y

*k (*x) *kh *k® (*x®) *Yg *Y *ò

*q *h *h®

subphonemic for a Chinese may have been quite distinct for a Korean or Japanese scribe (Figure 5.1), so I will distinguish between denasalized and (potentially) non-denasalized allophones of nasal phonemes. Using the above proposals, I derive the CLMC consonants in Table 5.16 from the EMC consonants of Table 5.13.

Summary In this chapter, I have surveyed all the types of evidence available for Chinese reconstruction as well as the latest Chinese reconstructions themselves. I adopted Starostin’s (1989) LOC reconstruction and Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) EMC reconstruction because they draw upon and account for the widest variety of data. I rejected the LMC reconstructions of Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) and Coblin (1994) and proposed a set of LMC initials. In the next chapter, I will outline my methodology for OJ reconstruction and explain how I will use the sources discussed up to this point.

Notes 1 EMC *tr represents a single consonant *[â]. Pulleyblank does not reconstruct any consonant clusters for EMC apart from consonant–glide clusters such as *tw-. 2 Pulleyblank’s (1984: 75) examples are from examples of the Four Grades in a manuscript fragment from Dunhuang. These examples are similar to four of the entries in table 25 of Tôdô and Kobayashi’s (1971: 74) edition of Yunjing.

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3 Kiyose (1991) uses the term ‘Altaic’ to denote a group of typologically similar languages rather than a family of genetically related languages. 4 I have adopted Kim-Renaud’s (1997: 2) translations of these terms. 5 I have not been able to identify Arisaka (1936). It is absent from Haewoo Lee’s bibliography. 6 Gregerson (1969: 165) reconstructs g as either *g or *γ, but I favor *g since (1) de Rhodes says “g is used just as it is with us” (Gregerson 1969: 182) and (2) *γ would have been written with a special letter or digraph instead of g. 7 According to Gage (1985), earlier *c, *j > *c and *k, *g > *k but *p, *b and *t, *d change directly into voiced implosives without the intermediate stages *p and *t that I propose in (5.12). 8 After the fall of the Eastern Han, the Wu state, one of China’s Three Kingdoms, ruled Jiaozhou (northern Vietnam) from 222 to 280. Jiaozhou was then controlled by various other states such as Eastern Jin and Song during the rest of the Six Dynasties period before falling under Sui and finally Tang control. 9 I have excluded characters which retain their SV readings and meanings when used in nôm: e.g.,
SV cô ‘father’s sister.’ 10 Some scholars including Downer treat Vietnamese e [t] and d [RR] as back vowels (i.e., as /T/ and /[/). However, notice that Downer’s ‘back’ (my ‘labial’) vowel class consists only of rounded back vowels and excludes these two unrounded central or back vowels. 11 I use the non-Wylie symbol t to transcribe the ‘inverse gi-gu (letter i)’ of the Tibetan transcriptions. The phonetic value of this vowel is uncertain (Che 1994: 75), though I suspect it may have been [t]. 12 Starostin (1989) uses the term ‘EMC’ to refer to sixth-century Chinese rather than the Chinese of Qieyun (601 CE).

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6 GOALS AND METHODOLOGY

This chapter will be quite short and relatively simple compared to earlier chapters. My aims and techniques are not as complex as the background knowledge and tools required for OJ reconstruction.

Goals I intend to reconstruct the segmental phonetics and phonology of the Old Japanese (OJ) language of the poetry of Kojiki and Nihon shoki. This reconstruction must be: (1) Statistically based: I will not draw conclusions about OJ on the basis of the readings of a few phonograms. Neither will I treat all phonograms for an OJ syllable equally. I will examine phonogram frequency to avoid being misled by nonce oddities. I am interested in finding dominant patterns of phonogram usage throughout the entire corpus of Kojiki and Shoki poetry. (2) Typologically sound: I want to reconstruct a plausible phonological system for OJ that (a) has precedents in natural human languages and (b) is as unmarked as possible. Extraordinary solutions will require extraordinary evidence. (3) Consistent with Japonic-internal evidence: I want my solution to fit what is already known about stages of Japanese after the eighth century.To avoid circularity, my solution will not be based on claims about pre-OJ made in Chapter 4. Instead, I will test such claims during the course of the following two chapters. There is no guarantee that philological reconstruction will confirm the results of internal and comparative reconstruction.

Methodology I have examined all poems from Kojiki and Nihon shoki in their original phonogram orthography, including all textual variants listed in the Shintô taikei (Outline of Shintô) edition of Kojiki and the Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Outline of Classical Japanese Literature) edition of Shoki. I have also examined textual variations between three modern printed editions of Kojiki 158

GOALS AND METHODOLOGY

and Shoki poetry: (1) the Shintô taikei edition of Kojiki, (2) the Nihon koten bungaku taikei edition of Shoki, and (3) the Nihon koten bungaku taikei anthology of non-Man’yôshû OJ poetry, Kodai kayô shû (Collection of Ancient Songs). I will quote OJ poetry in modified Yale romanizations for each phonogram based on (1) the kana transcriptions of the poems given in Kodai kayô shû and (2) the A/B-type classification of phonograms given in Igarashi’s (1969) dictionary of OJ orthography. I have chosen the poetry of Kojiki and Shoki to be my primary evidence for OJ phonetics and phonology for four reasons: (1) They constitute a large body of connected language. The poetry of Kojiki and Shoki contain a total of roughly 12,800 phonograms, including textual variants. It would be dangerous to reconstruct OJ on the basis of transcriptions of isolated proper nouns because they may contain archaic and/or aesthetic phonogram usages. One could not easily reconstruct the sounds of English on the basis of English personal and place names, which often have spelling irregularities lacking in the orthography for the rest of the language. Using two complete bodies of poetry (with the exception of a single poem; see below), I can reconstruct practically all of the syllables of the language rather than just those which happen to occur in names. I will also be able to reconstruct phonetic and phonological forms for many of the words in the language, since the bulk of the known OJ lexicon appears in poetry. (2) The System-D-based transcription (p. 18) of Kojiki and the System-Ebased transcription (p. 32) of Shoki are quite different, yet the poems being transcribed are often the same or very similar. Thus these two orthographies will give us two different perspectives on the phonetics and phonology of the poems shared by both works and of OJ in general. Since Kojiki and Shoki are contemporaneous, I hope to integrate their separate perspectives into a single coherent picture of the OJ sound system. (3) Kojiki and Shoki are both national histories produced for the Japanese court and presumably reflect the prestigious Central dialect of OJ. Man’yôshû, on the other hand, contains poems in the Azuma (Eastern) dialect of OJ as well as the Central dialect. The Azuma dialect is quite different from the Central dialect and is less well understood. It deserves separate treatment and I hope to examine its orthography, phonetics, and phonology elsewhere. I believe that the reconstruction of the Central dialect in this book is a prerequisite for reconstruction of the Azuma dialect. Hereafter, I will use the term OJ to refer only to the Central OJ dialect. (4) Unlike Man’yôshû, Kojiki and Shoki employ pure phonogram orthography without any ambiguous semantograms or tawamuregaki ( p. 26). The difficulties of interpretation that arise when dealing with the complex writing system of Man’yôshû poetry are largely absent from the simpler writing systems of Kojiki and Shoki poetry. As a general rule, I will exclude cases of variation including variant phonograms and variant interpretations of phonograms from my study. 159

OLD JAPANESE

Although I am frequently sure that some variant phonograms are scribal errors, I do not wish to explain away the statistical noise they can generate. Nor do I wish to deal with determining the correct readings of those rare phonograms which my sources interpret differently. But on the other hand, I do not wish to hide the warts of the extant texts. I am first and foremost interested in the big picture and will cite variants only when they can make major contributions to my study. For the most part I will treat Kojiki and Shoki as single texts. I will not take Mori’s (1991) division of Shoki into alpha and beta sections as a given. In Chapter 3, we have seen that the distinction between the two sections was not entirely clear-cut. I will further test Mori’s hypothesis in the next two chapters when I check to see whether certain traits of Shoki transcription are unique to one or the other section. Following the precedents set by Ôno’s (1953a) and Mori’s (1991) studies of Shoki orthography, I will exclude Shoki poem 122 from my analysis since it has not yet been adequately deciphered. However, I will use all other Kojiki and Shoki poems. From here onward, I will use the terms ‘Kojiki’ and ‘Shoki’ to refer only to the poetry of those two works and not to their prose unless otherwise specified. Now that I have explained my textual policies, I will now describe the three-stage process by which I will reconstruct the language of these texts. Chapter 7 constitutes the first stage. I will reconstruct the initial consonants of OJ on the basis of the initials of the Early Middle Chinese (EMC) readings of Kojiki phonograms and the Chang’an Late Middle Chinese (CLMC) readings of Shoki phonograms. My reconstructions of EMC initials will follow those of Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) with the modifications given on p. 146. My reconstructions of CLMC initials will be based on Pulleyblank’s (1984, 1991a) reconstructions of EMC initials with the modifications given on p. 154. These modifications will ‘update’ and ‘localize’ the EMC initials to reflect the characteristics of the Chang’an dialect during the early Tang Dynasty. I have chosen to rely primarily on the reconstructions of Middle Chinese (MC) initials rather than on attested Sinoxenic (SX) initials because MC initials are relatively uncontroversial and are poorly preserved in SX. Authentic Sino-Korean (SK), as opposed to the prescriptive variety of the Tongkwuk cengwun dictionary, consistently reflects neither the ‘muddiness’ nor the aspiration of MC: unaspirated and aspirated SK initials can correspond to ‘clear’ (unaspirated), ‘second clear’ (aspirated), or ‘muddy’ LMC consonants (p. 115). Vietnamese has undergone radical consonant shifts since the borrowing of Sino-Vietnamese (SV) during the late Tang (p. 120). Since the Tibetan transcriptions definitely reflect the denasalization of northwestern LMC but are limited in quality and quantity (p. 135), I will also cite SK initials from Cenwun okphyen (c. 1796), SV initials from Mineya 160

GOALS AND METHODOLOGY

(1972), and the initials found in alphabetic transcriptions of northwestern Chinese (Luo 1933a, Barat n.d.) as secondary and tertiary evidence. Although Pulleyblank (1984: 96–100, 154–159) did employ man’yôgana evidence for the reconstruction of the finals of his two stages of MC, his arguments for his reconstructions of EMC and LMC initials did not rely upon man’yôgana. Hence it is not circular to use his reconstructions of initials to reconstruct OJ initials. In each section of Chapter 7, I will determine which EMC initials most frequently appear in the readings of the phonograms for syllables with the same OJ consonant in Kojiki and reconstruct that OJ consonant on the basis of those initials. Then I will repeat this process with LMC initials in Shoki. Finally, I will reconstruct the OJ consonant on the basis of my consonantal reconstructions for Kojiki and Shoki. I will also look for correlations between MC consonants and OJ ‘vowels.’ For example, I may find that OJ s is predominantly written with MC *s before OJ u and wo, MC *ts before OJ a and o, and MC *\ before OJ i and e. In such instances, I will reconstruct allophones for each environment. The process of consonantal reconstruction is diagramed in Figure 6.1. Chapter 8 constitutes the second stage: the reconstruction of the ‘vowels’ of OJ. Since I am not using any reconstruction of LMC finals, I will look at which EMC final categories are most frequently correlated with each of the ‘vowels’ in the LMC-based orthography of Shoki as well as the EMC-based

OJ consonant X

EMC initials of phonograms for X-initial syllables in Kojiki

LMC initials of phonograms for X-initial syllables in Shoki

Most frequent EMC initials

Most frequent LMC initials

(EMC-based SX evidence)

(LMC-based SX and transcriptions)

EMC-based reconstruction of OJ X

LMC-based reconstruction of OJ X

Final reconstruction of OJ X

Environmentally conditioned allophones

Figure 6.1 Methodology of OJ consonantal reconstruction

161

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orthography of Kojiki. Although somewhat anachronistic, this practice of viewing later stages of Chinese through an EMC prism has a long history going back to the rhyme table tradition. Modern examples include the Hashimotos’ studies of Cantonese (1972) and Hakka (1973). Besides, the gap between EMC and LMC is hardly as dramatic as that between EMC and modern Cantonese and Hakka. I do not intend to imply that all the EMC final categories survived into LMC. The comparative and transcriptive evidence clearly shows many mergers between the two stages. I use EMC final categories rather than the reconstructed shapes of EMC finals as primary evidence for the OJ ‘vowels’ because I reject Pulleyblank’s (1984) man’yôgana-based EMC final reconstructions as potentially circular. In each section of Chapter 8, I will use SX and nôm to interpret phonetically the EMC final categories most commonly associated with a single OJ ‘vowel.’ Since few Old Sino-Vietnamese (OSV) words correspond to the phonograms in Kojiki, I will look at the regular OSV counterparts of their EMC finals whenever necessary. I will also look at the readings of vietographs from the 1997 edition of Ngw thiên t@ (Five Thousand Characters) whose phonetic elements (‘bases’) belong to these EMC final categories. I will reconstruct the phonetic shape of each OJ ‘vowel’ in Kojiki on the basis of this OSV and nôm data. Using the finals of the SK and SV readings of Shoki phonograms as substitutes for reconstructions of the LMC reflexes of OJ ‘vowel’ X

EMC final categories of phonograms for X-‘vowel’ syllables in Kojiki

LMC final categories of phonograms for X-‘vowel’ syllables in Shoki

Most frequent EMC final categories

Most frequent EMC final categories

EMC-based OSV counterparts of the above finals and finals of readings of vietographs with bases with the above finals

LMC-based SK and SV finals of phonograms with the above finals

EMC-based reconstruction of OJ X

LMC-based reconstruction of OJ X

Final reconstruction of OJ X

Environmentally conditioned allophones

Figure 6.2 Methodology of OJ ‘vocalic’ reconstruction

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GOALS AND METHODOLOGY

EMC rhyme categories, I will then reconstruct the phonetic shape of each OJ ‘vowel’ in Shoki. Finally, I will reconstruct each OJ ‘vowel’ on the basis of my vocalic reconstructions for Kojiki and Shoki. I will also look for correlations between EMC final categories and OJ ‘vowels.’ For example, I may find that OJ C-type i is transcribed with EMC *-i except after OJ w, where it is transcribed as EMC *-uy. In such instances, I will reconstruct allophones for each environment or even reinterpret the A/B/C-type classification of the ‘vowel’ if necessary. We may discover that some or all ‘C-type’ ‘vowels’ are really A-type or B-type ‘vowels.’ Chapter 9 constitutes the third and last stage: the reconstruction of the structure and inventory of OJ syllables. At this point I will have complete inventories of both the consonants and the ‘vowels’ of OJ. I will formulate rules to combine these elements into syllables. Using these rules, I will generate a complete list of reconstructed OJ syllables. I will conclude with an attempt to resurrect the eighth-century pronunciation of an OJ poem attributed to the mythological hero Yamato Takeru.

163

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7 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

Overview In this chapter, I will reconstruct OJ consonants in an order determined by the phonetic classes implied by their Yale romanizations. I have grouped OJ consonants into sets according to their apparent places of articulation, with the zero initial ordered last. Within each of the above sets, I have grouped OJ consonants according to their apparent manners of articulation. I must emphasize the distinction between the romanization and the reconstruction of an OJ consonant. The former is an algebraic notation. Only the latter has phonological substance. The Yale symbol p does not necessarily represent an OJ bilabial stop *p. It may have been an OJ bilabial fricative *φ or even an OJ glottal fricative *h. I have grouped OJ s and z with the dentals, though they may actually be palatals (*c and *j). The orthographic zero initial ($ ) could be a glottal stop (*}). My arrangement of the OJ consonants may not match their reconstructions’ places and manners of articulation. During the course of these next two chapters, we will see how closely my OJ reconstruction corresponds to Yale romanization. Before I begin my reconstructions, I should note that I use the terms ‘Kojiki’ and ‘Shoki’ to refer only to the poetry of those two works unless otherwise specified.

OJ p Three EMC consonants (*p, *ph, and *b) correspond to OJ p in Kojiki (Table 7.1). 65.6 per cent (339/517) of OJ p in Kojiki were without a doubt written with EMC *p. 24.6 per cent (127/517) of OJ p in Kojiki in theory may have been written with either EMC *b or EMC *p. All of these cases involve the OJ syllable pyi. 99.2 per cent (127/128) of OJ pyi in Kojiki were written with the phonogram
, which had three EMC readings with *b and two EMC readings with *p. I will assume that
was selected for its *p readings. It would make no sense to reconstruct allophonic variation (*p~*b) only 164

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

Table 7.1 OJ p in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*p

*ph

*p/*b

*b

a yi iy u ey ye o Subtotals Total

204 0 0 54 18 0 63 339 517

0 0 10 0 0 0 0 10

0 127 0 0 0 0 0 127

4 1 3 0 0 31 2 41

Table 7.2 OJ p in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*p

*p/*ph

*ph

*p/*p®

*p®

*f

*fh

*f®

a yi iy u ye ey o Subtotals Total

134 18 4 6 7 6 15 190 475

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

52 8 0 0 0 0 0 60

0 64 0 0 0 0 0 64

16 13 0 0 15 21 41 106

0 0 0 17 0 0 0 17

2 0 0 17 0 0 0 19

0 0 0 17 0 0 1 18

before the OJ ‘vowel’ yi. If we regard
as an EMC *p-initial phonogram, then 90.1 per cent (466/517) of OJ p corresponded to EMC *p. OJ pye is the only p-initial syllable in Kojiki which was consistently written with EMC *b. Nonetheless I am reluctant to reconstruct an allophone *b for OJ p only before ye (or ye and yi). Thus I reconstruct OJ p in Kojiki as *p for pye as well as for pyi. Although OJ piy is usually written with EMC *ph, I would rather not reconstruct *ph (or a labial fricative in OJ but absent in EMC) before iy. Hence I will reconstruct OJ p in Kojiki as *p before all ‘vowels.’ Six CLMC consonants correspond to OJ p in Shoki (Table 7.2). 88.6 per cent (421/475) of OJ p in Shoki were written with CLMC stops (*p, *ph, *p®). The most common of these stops is *p. There is only one instance of CLMC *ph in the entire alpha section:
for OJ pyi (75.19.7). The 59 other instances of unambiguous *ph are in the beta section. If Mori is correct in claiming that the alpha section is phonetically more accurate, then the near-absence of CLMC *ph in the alpha section and the low frequency of CLMC *ph throughout Shoki prevents us from reconstructing OJ p as an aspirated *ph. 165

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There are two phonograms which have CLMC readings with and without simple *p:
*p-/*p®- for OJ pyi and
*p-/*p®- for OJ pey,1 which account for all 65 cases of ambiguous *p in Shoki. If I add these 65 ambiguous cases to the total of 190 unambiguous cases of *p, then the total for CLMC *p in Shoki rises to 53.7 per cent (255/475). Only 11.3 per cent (54/475) of OJ p in Shoki correspond to CLMC fricatives (*f, *fh, and *f®). All of these fricatives are found in the readings of phonograms for the OJ syllables pa, pu, and po. Only 1.0 per cent (2/204) of OJ pa and 1.8 per cent (1/57) of OJ po were written with an CLMC fricative, whereas 89.5 per cent (51/57) of OJ pu was written with an CLMC fricative. OJ pu was always written with an CLMC fricative (*f or *f®) in the alpha section. Should I reconstruct a fricative allophone (*φ or *f) before OJ u and a stop allophone (*p) elsewhere? I do not think a fricative allophone before OJ u is necessary for two reasons. First, CLMC probably had no syllables such as *pu, *phu, or *p®u. Pulleyblank (1984: 86) and Coblin (1994: 34) agree that EMC labials became CLMC labiodentals before the vowel *u: *pu > *fu, etc. Assuming that (1) this change occurred without any exceptions, (2) OJ p was *p, and (3) OJ u was *u (i.e., a vowel similar to EMC *u), scribes faced with the problem of writing OJ *pu would have to compromise. They would have to select (a) phonograms with inappropriate initials and appropriate vowels (e.g.,
=CLMC *f-, perhaps *fuh; cf. SK pwu [pu] and SV phú [fuu] ) or (b) phonograms with appropriate initials and inappropriate vowels (
CLMC *p-, perhaps *poh; cf. SK phwo [pho] and SV b3 [(oo] ). They apparently preferred the former solution and wrote OJ *pu as CLMC *fu rather than as CLMC *po. Second, even if one disregards the above assumptions, one cannot deny that EMC *ph, the closest EMC approximation of a labial fricative (*φ or *f ), never appears in Kojiki spellings for OJ pu. Now that I have rejected *ph and *φ or *f as possible reconstructions of OJ p in Shoki, there are only two candidates left: *p and *p®. Since *p clearly outnumbers *p® and is less exotic than *p®, I reconstruct OJ p as a voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop *p in Shoki as well as in Kojiki.

OJ b EMC *p and *b correspond to OJ p in Kojiki (Table 7.3). There are 20 ambiguous cases involving phonograms which could be read with either EMC *p or *b. If we ignore these cases, 96.9 per cent (95/98 [= 118 − 20] ) of OJ b in Kojiki were written with EMC *b. Perhaps I should reconstruct OJ b in Kojiki as *b. However, before I come to that conclusion, we should examine the data from Shoki (Table 7.4). Let us suppose that OJ b was *b for Shoki as well. Since CLMC has no *b, the best substitute available for *b would be *mb (cf. its Tibetan 166

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

Table 7.3 OJ b in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*p

*b

*p/*b

a yi iy u ey ye o Subtotals Total

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 118

0 1 0 19 0 0 0 20

63 15 4 0 6 1 6 95

Table 7.4 OJ b in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*p

*p/*p®

*p®

*mb

*mv

a yi iy u ye ey o Subtotals Total

4 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 84

0 0 0 3 0 0 0 3

3 0 2 2 0 9 10 26

31 16 1 0 2 0 0 50

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

transliteration as ’b *[mb]?), even though the CLMC voiced stop has prenasalization absent in OJ *b. *p® also might be a viable substitute, since the Tibetans transcribed it as b or even ’b as well as ph. Thus it is unsurprising that 90.5 per cent (76/84) of OJ b in Shoki were written either with *mb or *p®. Nevertheless, I am hesitant to reconstruct a simple OJ *b which would not explain prenasalization in later reflexes of OJ b ( p. 75). The sound change *b > mb is rather bizarre. I would rather reconstruct *mb for OJ and assume that LMJ mb had inherited this prenasalization. But how would I explain the fact that 31 per cent (26/84) of OJ b were written with *p®? Mori believed that the alpha section was written by Chinese. If both CLMC and OJ had prenasalized obstruents, then we would expect CLMC native speakers to identify their own *mb with OJ *mb. So we might expect the alpha section to have few or no instances of *p® for OJ b. This is not quite the case, for we find that only two-thirds (22/33) of OJ b in the alpha section were written with CLMC *mb (Table 7.5). Why would CLMC speakers write OJ *mb as *p or *p®? Furthermore, OJ bu and bo were always written with *p® in the alpha section. All six instances of OJ bo in the beta section were written with *p®. 167

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Table 7.5 OJ b in Shoki alpha section poetry OJ \ CLMC

*mb

*p

*p®

a yi u o Subtotals Total

11 11 0 0 22 33

5 0 0 0 5

1 0 1 4 6

All nine instances of OJ bey are in the beta section and were written with *p®. Yet it would make no sense to reconstruct a non-nasal allophone *b preceding certain random ‘vowels’ (OJ ey, o, etc.) and a nasal allophone *mb preceding all other ‘vowels’ (OJ a, yi, etc.). I will refine my earlier statement to account for the above phenomena by adopting Ramsey and Unger’s (1972) proposal of nasalized vowels preceding OJ voiced obstruents: 1 2 3

OJ b was generally a prenasalized voiced unaspirated bilabial stop *mb. ‘Vowels’ preceding *mb may have been nasalized (*~). *mb may have been reduced to *b if a preceding ‘vowel’ was nasalized (*~). Thus OJ *mb may have had the following allophones in free variation:

(7.1) (1) *[mb]

(2) *[~mb] (3) *[~b]

Since all instances of OJ *mb in Shoki are intervocalic, any OJ *mb could potentially be reduced to OJ *~b. There was no *~b in CLMC, so scribes wrote this non-nasal voiced stop allophone of OJ b as CLMC *mb (a prenasalized voiced stop), *p (a non-nasal voiceless stop), or *p® (a nonnasal stop with voiceless onset and voiced aspiration). One could write my reconstruction of OJ b as *~b or even as *b or *np without specifying nasality or voicing, but I will continue to write it as *mb.

OJ m OJ m in Kojiki corresponds only to EMC *m (Table 7.6). Therefore I will reconstruct OJ m in Kojiki as *m. The picture is more complicated in Shoki, where CLMC *m, *m(b), and *mv correspond to OJ m (Table 7.7). CLMC *mb is the most frequent initial (82.3 per cent = 525/638). Were OJ m and b homophonous? Should I

168

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

Table 7.6 OJ m in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*m

a yi iy u ey ye wo o Total

198 180 15 72 29 24 37 135 690

Table 7.7 OJ m in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*m(b)

*mb

*mv

a yi iy u ye ey o Subtotals Total

28 0 0 3 3 0 17 51 634

151 151 0 12 15 38 154 521

0 0 8 54 0 0 0 62

reconstruct a post-OJ phonemic split? I do not think such a drastic measure is necessary. The key to the solution lies in the phonotactics of CLMC. CLMC allowed initial nasals (as opposed to prenasalized obstruents such as *mb or *mv) only in syllables with final nasal elements: CLMC *mVN was possible, but CLMC *mV was impossible, since earlier *mV syllables had become *mbV and *mvV syllables. If we assume that OJ m was *m, scribes had to choose between CLMC *mbV and *mvV phonograms or CLMC *mVN phonograms to write OJ m-initial syllables. Apparently, they favored using open syllable phonograms even though those phonograms’ prenasalized obstruents were not perfect matches for OJ *m. We should not project the lack of *mV syllables in CLMC onto OJ. If OJ m were *mb, we might expect to see at least a few cases of EMC *b for OJ m in Kojiki, but we find only EMC *m (Table 7.6). Furthermore, we know that OJ m corresponds to m in all later stages of the language. Therefore I reconstruct OJ m as a bilabial nasal *m for both Kojiki and Shoki.

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Table 7.8 OJ w in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*®w

*w

a i e o Subtotals Total

69 0 13 0 82 228

0 12 0 134 146

OJ w OJ w in Kojiki corresponds to EMC *®w and *w (Table 7.8). EMC *®w and *w are in complementary distribution: EMC *®w precedes OJ a and e and EMC *w precedes OJ i and o. But I will not reconstruct two allophones for OJ w, because *®w and *w were in complementary distribution in EMC. EMC *®w appeared only before non-high (i.e., low and mid) vowels (*a, *e, etc.) and EMC *w appeared only before high vowels (*i, *t, *u). If OJ wa and we had (1) initial *w- and (2) non-high ‘vowels’ (e.g., *a and *e), then the closest EMC equivalents would have initial *®w- coupled with non-high vowels. I do not think one should project a distributional peculiarity of EMC into OJ.2 It is also possible that the variety of Chinese underlying the Kojiki orthography had *w instead of *®w. EMC *®w phonograms may have been borrowed before the shift of *w to *®w before non-high vowels. I will reconstruct OJ w in Kojiki as a labial glide *w. OJ w in Shoki corresponds to CLMC *h®, *h®w, *q, *qw, and *w (Table 7.9). Surprisingly, the most common CLMC initial is the glottal stop *q [}]. CLMC initials without any *w account for 52.3 per cent (114/218) of the total. How can we account for this bizarre state of affairs? Was OJ w really *w? Why would anyone write a labial glide *w with a glottal stop *q [}] or a glottal fricative *h®? The answers to the above questions lie in the finals rather than the initials of the Shoki phonograms for OJ w-initial syllables. All of the phonograms Table 7.9 OJ w in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*h®

*h®w

*q

*qw

*w

a i e o Subtotals Total

0 0 0 5 5 218

51 0 6 6 63

0 3 0 106 109

24 2 1 1 28

0 8 5 0 13

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with *w-less CLMC initials (i.e., *q and *h®) have EMC, SK, and SV readings with labial glides or vowels (7.2). (7.2) OJ wo wo wo wo wi

Ph.






Freq. 47 34 25 5 3

EMC *qo *qo *qoq *®o *quy

Go CLMC u *qu *qu *qwo, go *h®wi *q-

Kan wo wo wo ko wi

SK wo [o] wo [o] wo [o] hwo [ho] wi [uy]

SV ô [}oo] ô [}oo] 7 [}oo] h4 [hoo] uy [}wii] oai [}waay]

Coblin (1994: 153, 245) notes that Amoghavajra (705–774) of the northwest used the first phonogram
to write Sanskrit o and e and that the fifth phonogram
is transcribed as Tibetan u in Tiandi bayang shenzhoujing. The other three phonograms do not appear in the northwestern LMC transcriptional materials. One might conclude that OJ wi was *wi and that OJ wo was *o. However, there is no strong evidence for a distinction between *qo and *wo in LMC. (Although SV alone distinguishes between [}] and [v] before o-like vowels, SV readings such as vo and vô always derive from LMC *mv- rather than LMC *w-.) CLMC *q- < EMC *qo (cf.
SK wo [o], SV ô [}oo] ) was the closest equivalent of OJ wo. I will reconstruct OJ w as *w.

OJ t OJ t in Kojiki corresponds to EMC *t, *th, *tr, and *d (Table 7.10). 80.5 per cent (566/703) of OJ t were unambiguously written with EMC *t. All 60 attestations of OJ te in Kojiki were written with the phonogram H which is not listed in Guangyun. Tôdô (1978: 431) speculates that H is a variant of
, which is listed in Guangyun with two fanqie, one for EMC *tey and another for EMC *tri. If I treated H as an EMC *t-initial phonogram, then the figure for EMC *t in Kojiki would rise up to 89.0 per cent (626/703). Table 7.10 OJ t in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*t

*t?

*th

*tr

*d

a i u e wo o Subtotals Total

222 0 135 0 14 195 566 703

0 0 0 60 0 0 60

1 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 74 0 0 0 0 74

0 0 1 0 0 1 2

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Table 7.11 OJ t in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*t

*th

*t®

*n(d)

*tr

*thr

*t®r

*ch/*c®/*t/*thr

a i u e wo o Subtotals Total

101 0 50 66 11 86 314 509 (+78)

2 0 49 0 0 0 51

8 (+45) 0 4 3 12 36 (+33) 63 (+78)

1 0 0 1 0 0 2

0 62 0 0 0 0 62

0 1 0 0 0 0 1

0 3 0 0 0 0 3

13 0 0 0 0 0 13

But what about the remaining 10.7 per cent (74/703) of OJ t in Kojiki which corresponded to EMC *tr? All 74 of these cases involve the OJ syllable ti, though skeptics may wish to include the 60 cases of H ≅
EMC *tey/ *tri. OJ ti was never written with EMC *t. Should I reconstruct a retroflex allophone *tr [â] in OJ before the ‘vowel’ i (and the ‘vowel’ e?) and a dental allophone *t elsewhere? It may be better to ask about the distribution of EMC *t and *tr first. EMC *t could never occur before the high front vowel *i. Thus EMC had no syllables such as *ti or *tiR, though it did have syllables such as *tri and *triR. The complementary distribution of *t and *tr is a trait of EMC that should not be projected onto OJ. OJ ti (*tV) was written with EMC
*triR(h) and
EMC *triRh in Kojiki because there were no phonograms with readings like EMC *tiR. We cannot always assume that the Chinese readings of phonograms were exact phonetic equivalents of OJ syllables. Hence I will reconstruct OJ t in Kojiki as *t. OJ t in Shoki corresponds to nine CLMC initials (Table 7.11). Like EMC *tr in Kojiki, CLMC *tr in Shoki is found only in phonograms for OJ ti. Like EMC, CLMC probably did not have a *ti, but it did have many similar syllables with *tr- [â] (
TKCW and sixteenth-century SK ti > later SK ci, SV tri, Tibetan transcription ci) and one anomalous syllable with *t®- (
SK ti, SV $ha, Tibetan transcription di). The use of CLMC retroflex initials for OJ ti probably tells us more about the phonotactics of CLMC than OJ. Thus I reject *tr as a possible allophone for OJ t. Three other high-frequency CLMC initials corresponding to OJ t are *t, *th, and *t®. *th is restricted to phonograms for the syllables ta and tu. It seems arbitrary to reconstruct *th only before OJ a and u, so I reject *th. *t® appears to be more infrequent than it actually is only because it is predominantly found among the variant phonograms that I have excluded from this study. I have added the figures for variants in parentheses in Table 7.11. These variants do not alter the general picture. Even if I include the 78 probable cases of CLMC *t® for OJ t), CLMC *t still outnumbers CLMC *t® by a ratio of two to one (314 to 141 = 63 + 78). Also, 172

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

CLMC *t® mostly appears in phonograms for OJ ta, two, and to. It would be arbitrary to reconstruct *t® only before these three ‘vowels.’ The statistics for *t may not be overwhelming – 61.7 per cent (314/509) – but *t is less marked as well as more common than *t®. Therefore I will reconstruct OJ t as a voiceless unaspirated dental stop *t in both Kojiki and Shoki.

OJ d OJ d in Kojiki corresponds to EMC *t, *d, *dr, and *9 (Table 7.12). There are only two strong possibilities: *d and *dr. Half the instances of *dr involve phonograms for OJ di. EMC had only one syllable combining a dental initial with a high front vowel (
*dih). In Kojiki poetry, OJ di was written with
EMC *dri and
EMC *drt(h). These graphs were the closest EMC counterparts to OJ di apart from EMC
*dih, which is found as a phonogram for OJ di in the prose of Kojiki and in Man’yôshû. If OJ di really did have a retroflex initial *dr- [¶ ], why write it with a dental initial phonogram such as EMC
*dih? We find EMC *d corresponding to d in OJ da, du, and dwo. Why not reconstruct *d for OJ di as well? I cannot explain why
EMC *drwiRn(h) and
EMC *drtR / *9tR with the EMC initial *dr- are the sole phonograms for OJ de and do in the poetry of Kojiki. I would have expected phonograms with the EMC initial *d-. But before I reconstruct *dr for OJ de and do, I should note that, in the prose of Kojiki, EMC dental-initial phonograms coexist alongside the aforementioned *dr-initial phonograms for these syllables: (7.3) OJ de OJ do


EMC *denh / *tenh,
EMC *tey
EMC *dRY,
EMC *dRY

Hence I think it is possible to reconstruct OJ d as *d for all d-initial syllables in Kojiki. OJ d in Shoki corresponds to six CLMC initials (Table 7.13). Most of the initials are partly or wholly voiced: *t®, n(d), *nd, *ndr. As we would expect Table 7.12 OJ d in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*t

*d

*dr

*dr/*9

a i u e wo o Subtotals Total

1 0 0 0 0 1 2 143

55 0 46 0 2 0 103

0 9 0 14 0 0 23

0 0 0 0 0 15 15

173

OLD JAPANESE

Table 7.13 OJ d in Shoki poetry OJ \ CLMC

*t

*th

*t®

*n(d)

*nd

*ndr

a i u e wo o Subtotals Total

6 0 1 2 0 1 10 120 (+5)

1 0 1 0 0 0 2

1 (+5) 0 35 6 2 5 49 (+5)

12 1 1 13 4 12 43

12 0 0 0 0 0 12

0 4 0 0 0 0 4

from our previous experience with the phonograms for OJ ti and di, we find an CLMC retroflex initial *ndr [å¶ ] for 80 per cent (4/5) of OJ di in Shoki. There was no CLMC *ndi. The one definite case of *nd for OJ di (NS 31.5.2) involves the phonogram
which probably had a mid vowel in CLMC (cf. Tibetan transcription ’de *[nde]? and SV nê [nee], nq [nee] ). If OJ d were *nd, then CLMC syllables such as *ndri and *nde would have been the closest equivalents to OJ di (= *ndV). I will not project the distributional idiosyncrasies of CLMC into OJ by reconstructing a retroflex allophone of OJ d before i. The only candidates left are *n(d), *nd, and *t®. None is quite like the *d that I reconstructed for OJ d in Kojiki. *n(d) and *nd together (45.8 per cent = 55/120) are somewhat more common than *t® (40.8 per cent = 49/120), but there is no obvious majority candidate. If I add five variants with probable *t® to the 49 cases of definite *t®- in Table 7.13, the total of *t® phonograms (43.2 per cent = 54/125 = 120 + 5) is nearly equal to the total of *n(d) and *nd phonograms (44.0 per cent = 55/125 = 5 + 120). Any reconstruction of OJ d for Shoki would have to account for both the nasal and non-nasal correspondences. I propose a solution parallel to that given for OJ b in section 7.3: 1 2 3

OJ d was generally a prenasalized voiced unaspirated dental stop *nd. ‘Vowels’ preceding *nd may have been nasalized (*~). *nd may have been reduced to *d if a preceding ‘vowel’ was nasalized (*~). OJ *nd may have had the following allophones in free variation:

(7.4) (1) *[nd]

(2) *[~nd]

(3) *[~d]

Since nearly all instances of OJ *nd in Shoki are intervocalic,3 almost any OJ *nd could potentially be reduced to OJ *~d. There was no *~d in CLMC, so scribes generally wrote this non-nasal voiced stop allophone of OJ d as 174

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

CLMC *nd(r) (a prenasalized voiced stop) or *t® (a non-nasal stop with voiceless onset and voiced aspiration). Although I could write my reconstruction of OJ d as *~d or even as *d or *nt without specifying nasality or voicing, I will continue to write it as *nd.

OJ n OJ n in Kojiki corresponds to EMC *n and *ã (Table 7.14). EMC *ã corresponds to OJ n before i and EMC *n corresponds to OJ n elsewhere. At face value, this would imply that OJ n was *ã before i and *n elsewhere. Although the MSJ syllable ni is [nyi], I am not sure whether I should project a palatal or palatalized allophone of n back into OJ. The LMJ syllable ni did not have a palatal initial, for the Portuguese did not romanize it as *nhi *[ ãi] (cf. the Portuguese-based practice of writing Vietnamese [ ãii] as nhi). There was no EMC *ni. The Kojiki phonograms for ni (
EMC *ãiRq and
EMC *ãiRq) may be inexact attempts to write an OJ *ni. Although I cannot rule out a palatalized or palatal initial before OJ i, it is simpler to reconstruct *n before all vowels. OJ n in Shoki corresponds to CLMC *n(d), *nd, *ndr, and *ã9 (Table 7.15). This would seem to contradict my earlier reconstruction of OJ n as *n. Table 7.14 OJ n in Kojiki poetry OJ \ EMC

*n

*ã

a i u e wo o Subtotals Totals

126 0 18 49 12 272 477 669

0 192 0 0 0 0 192

Table 7.15 OJ n in Shoki poetry OJ \CLMC

*n(d)

*nd

*nd(r)

*ã9

a i u e wo o Subtotals Total

0 0 0 0 0 252 252 620

138 1 26 21 3 12 201

0 4 0 0 0 0 4

0 163 0 0 0 0 163

175

OLD JAPANESE

However, I have already explained that syllables with initial nasals and non-nasal finals were impossible in CLMC (p. 169). Let us assume that OJ n was *n. The scribes of Shoki could write OJ *nV syllables either with *nd/*ã9-initial, non-nasal final phonograms or with *n-initial nasal-final syllable phonograms. The former solution predominated for all OJ n-syllables with the possible exception of OJ no. 95.5 per cent (252/264) of no in Shoki are written with the phonogram=
whose CLMC initial may have been either *n- or *nd-.
appears in Tibetan transcriptions with both ’d (*[nd] ) and (’)n. If we assume that the CLMC initial of
was *nd-, then all OJ n-syllables in Shoki would be written with CLMC prenasalized obstruents (*nd, *ndr, and *ã9). Why not reconstruct OJ n as a prenasalized obstruent *nd? Although I have already reconstructed OJ d as *nd, one might argue for a phonemic split of *nd: i.e., some OJ *nd became post-OJ n and others became post-OJ d. This solution is not only messy but also contradictory to what we already know about OJ d = *nd. OJ d = *nd corresponded exclusively to EMC non-nasal obstruents in Kojiki and corresponded frequently to the CLMC non-nasal obstruent *t® in Shoki. Yet we never find OJ n corresponding to a MC non-nasal obstruent in either text. Since the correspondence patterns for OJ d and n are quite distinct, they must be reconstructed separately. I reconstruct OJ n as *n for Shoki because it is always written with prenasalized or nasal CLMC initials. The high frequency of CLMC *ã9 for the initial of OJ ni in Shoki may suggest a palatal allophone of OJ n. However, recall that EMC had no syllable *ni. Such a *ni would have developed into an equally nonexistent CLMC *ndi. CLMC *ndr- and *ã9- were the only choices for OJ ni available to Shoki scribes, who preferred the latter to the former. But the high frequency of CLMC *ã9- may tell us only that the n of OJ ni was non-retroflex, not that it was specifically palatal. Although I accept the possibility of a palatal allophone of n in OJ ni, it would be simplest to reconstruct OJ n as a dental nasal *n before all vowels.

OJ r OJ r in both Kojiki and Shoki corresponds to MC l (Table 7.16). On the basis of the data, I could reconstruct OJ r as *l. Lange (1973: 124) and Mori (1991: 135) have also reconstructed OJ r as *l. However, other data point toward an alternative reconstruction *r. The Portuguese transcribed the LMJ reflex of OJ r as r and MSJ r is still an [r]. I could posit a change of *l to *r between OJ and LMJ, but I would rather not do so. Furthermore, neither EMC nor CLMC had an *r. Eastern Han *r had become *l in early LOC (Starostin 1989: 485). This *l remained unchanged in EMC and CLMC. Although Tôdô (1978) and Pulleyblank (1984, 1991a) have reconstructed 176

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OLD JAPANESE CONSONANTS

Table 7.16 OJ r in Kojiki and Shoki poetry OJ

EMC *l (Kojiki)

CLMC *l (Shoki)

a i u e wo o Totals

102 144 87 53 11 28 425

120 104 74 55 9 31 393

the CLMC
‘sun’ initial as *r, their *r corresponds to zh [9] rather than to r in the Tibetan transcriptions of northwestern Chinese (Luo 1933a: 19). The Uighurs transcribed the northwestern LMC
‘sun’ initial as sh, zh, or y, and not as r, which did exist in their alphabet (Barat n.d.: 44 –45). I reconstruct the CLMC
‘sun’ initial as *ã9. Sanskrit r was transcribed with CLMC *l, not CLMC *ã9. By analogy, OJ *r could also have been transcribed with CLMC *l. Given what we know of post-OJ, it would be simplest to reconstruct an *r for OJ r. This *r would then continue more or less unchanged in later stages of Japanese.

OJ s OJ s in Kojiki corresponds to five EMC initials (Table 7.17).
, the sole Kojiki phonogram for OJ so, has two EMC readings, *tsRY and *dzRY. Since none of the other phonograms for OJ s-syllables in Kojiki has voiced EMC initials, I assume that
was chosen for its voiceless initial reading *tsRY rather than its voiced initial