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On the Non-Trivial Role of the Otsu Vowels in Old Japanese Verb Inflections

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On the Non-Trivial Role of the Otsu Vowels in Old Japanese Verb Inflections 435 On the Non-Trivial Role of the otsu Vowels in Old Japanese Verb Inflections Donald L. Smith University of Michigan I. Background The earliest extensive records we have of Japanese are from the eighth century, written in a phonetic script adapted from Chinese called ManyOgana after a collection of poems, the ManyOsha One of the most interesting observations made of this syllabary is that with certain consonants there are eight mutually exclusive sets of characters. This fact was first observed by Motoori Norinaga and his student Ishizuka Tatsumaro in the late eighteenth century but was brought to the attention of linguists in this century only, after Hashimoto Shinkichi in 1917, apparently inde- pendently, rediscovered this fact. Ishizuka's book was not printed until 1929.1 From studies made of the phonological system of eighth century Japanese, it appears that there was an eight vowel system, five vowels enjoying relatively free distribution in CV combina- tions with all the consonants except and .3i, and three vowels having a rather restricted distribution. Shortly after the eighth century it appears that the inventory of vowels rapidly diminished to five, the number we have in modern Japanese. The three "extra!' vowels are viewed as having been lost, merging with i, e, and o. A traditional distinction has been set up between the five basic vowels and the "extra" vowels called the ko-otsu distinction and the vowels will be referred to here as the ko vowels and the otsu vowels respectively. Work and speculation on what might have been the exact phonetic shape of the ko and otsu vowels has been exten- sive, and has required of those who have done justice to the study, a phenominal amount of work in old Chinese, old Korean, studies of scribal practices, etc.2 More recently work has been going on with what few earlier texts there are for evidences of the eight vowel system and also in internal reconstruction, with the expected conclusions that in earlier stages of Japanese the otsu vowels enjoyed a wider, less restricted distribution. This paper is concerned with the hitherto unobserved morphophonemic role of the ko-otsu distinction in the verb in- flectional system and will not touch directly on either of the above mentioned topics. The only original research done on eighth century morphology within the tradition of American linguistics was a morphemic analysis in the cut and classify tradition of Bernard Bloch by his student Masako Yokoyama in 1950, who, unfortunately, failed to take account of the eight vowel system or of the contributions of traditional Japanese linguists at all. Consequently she arrived at a classification of verb stem types which has nothing to do with the underlying types necessary to account for the facts of the verb inflections which are widely known but by 436 accident were not included in her corpus. Roy Miller, in his recent book The Japanese Language, although observing her failure to incorporate the otsu vowels in her analysis, has nevertheless adopted her mistaken classification of stems and gone on from there to produce a completely confused internal reconstruction of old Japanese verb inf1ections.3 This analysis follows closely the classifications made in traditional Japanese linguistics and since there is almost univer- sal consensus on this particular classificatory system, we will stick fairly closely to the traditional termino1ogy.4 The claim here is that though for entirely different reasons, the verb class distinctions made by traditional Japanese linguists are the correct ones to make, the three basic types, ichi-dan, ni-dan, and yo-dan (sometimes called go-dan), representing under- lying ko vowel stems, otsu vowel stems, and consonant stems respec- tively. The only basic difference in old Japanese verb stem types from those of modern Japanese are in the existence of the ko-otsu distinction in the underlying verb stems ending in a vowel, i.e., the ichi-dan ni-dan distinction. II. The otsu Vowels The cdncept of the phonological system employed here is as it is described by Hashimoto Shinkichi and other linguists relating to the most informative text of the time, the ManyOsha (645-760 A.D.). Nara Japanese is viewed as having a purely CV, open syllable structure except for the possibility of word initial vowels. Liquids do not occur initially and there is.word initial neutrali- zation of voicing. Palatal-non palatal contrasts, voicing of initial stops, syllabic nasals, etc. are thought to be later innovations and borrowings, especially influenced by the heavy influx of Chinese loans which began about that time. The otsu vowels which merged with i and e occur only after the grave consonants which are k, L, p, F, b and m. The otsu vowel which merged with o occurs only after the non-labial consonants which are k, s, z, t, d, n, z, and r. There have been many different proposals for the shapes of the otsu vowels. Here we will simply adopt the umlaut notation and remain fairly noncomMittal on their phonetic values. The loss of the otsu vowels might be most easily characterized as the loss of one distinctive feature which can be assumed to be that of rounding, which is, of course, not a dis- tinctive feature with the present five vowel system. Certainly other characterizations are possible, but the particular distri- butions of these vowels in connection with a distinction involving rounding seems to be more appealing than say a solution involving tenseness.5 For the purposes of my arguments here I will fairly arbitrarily mark the otsu vowels I ocback -0(roundl III. Verb Inflections There is widespread agreement on the form of the verb paradigms for the ManyL5shu in the traditional Japanese grammatical format. Forms referred to here are primarily the forms found in Sasaki's paradigm in his ManyOsha Dictionary, however, since he very care- fully marks syllables which contain otsu vowels as well as 437 distinguishing the Azuma dialectal forms from standard forms and forms not attested in the Many6sha itself. Figure I (traditional paradigm) . mizen reny8 shashi rental izen meirei (imperf.)(adverb.)(conclus.)(attrib.)(perfect)(imper.) yo-darl verbs (to hear) kik-a kik-i kik-u kik-u kik-e! kik-e ichi-dan verbs (to see) mi mi mi-ru mi-ru mi-re mi-yo ni-dan verbs (to awake)°kV' old' ok-u ok-uru ok-ure okY-yo (to cry) flake' nake nak-u nak-uru nak-ure nake-yo Figure one is part of a traditional paradigm including examples of the major classes having velar consonants in the final syllables to illustrate the possible occurrences of the otsu vowels in the derived forms where neutralization will not take place. The breaks given between vowels in the charts are my own. Japanese syllabic notation requires a break before the last consonant of the stem in the yo-dan and ni-dan paradigms which helps to explain why they haven't noted the obvious distinction to be made between vowel-final and consonant-final stems. Notice here that it is the ni-dan verbs which have final otsu vowels. In larger paradigms this also is somewhat obscured because of the above mentioned neutralization of otsu and eafter acute consonants. Conclusive, attributive, perfenTald imperative forms are all formed by regular suffixation. The imperfective and adverbial forms on the other hand are simply listed to show the differences in a and i vowel insertion after consonantal stems resulting from the affixa- tion of two different sets of consonant-initial auxilaries. The same kind of vowel insertion can be found in modern Japanese. McCawley states it as one rule in modern Japanese. We will see that there is reason to write it here as two different rules. They are: 1-cns Negative I +voc l+cnsi A. Conjecture 0 +back 'Verb = 1 +low 1-cns B. +voc rons l = Past -back Verb i Perfective +high Below, in order to account for some irregularities in the verbs kuru and suru, it will be necessary to place a rule between rules =and B.. At that point we will also discuss the environments for A. and B. 438 Figure II (underlying forms) shfishi rental izen meirei (imperf.)(adverb.)(conclus.)(attrib.)(perfect)(imper.) yo-dan verbs kik-a kik-i kik-ru kik-uru kik-urg kik-yo ichi-dan verbs mi ml mi-ru Ad-uru mi-ure mi-yo ni-dan verbs oki oki oki-ru okr-uru oki=ure okr-yo flake nakg nakg-ru nak&uru nakg-ure nakg-yo Figure II is of the same paradigm showing the underlying forms proposed. The claim is that morphophonemically the otsu vowels show unlimited distribution. They enter into a unique role in the phonological rules and at a much lower level the ko-otsu distinction is neutralized after certain consonants. Aside from the support this claim gains in terms of system, there is historical evidence to lend some degree of support to this claim. Mabuchi, Ono, Miller, and others have shown that the otsu vowels were once more freely distributed so that we are not positing completely anomalous forms. Also, the gradual loss of the ni-dan inflections follows shortly after the loss of the ko-otsu distinction in sur- face phonology and it seems likely that theynot unrelated events. In modern Japanese, most of the old ni-dan verbs have resulted in their respective vowel stem verb forms as one might expect from the given underlying forms and the given neutralization of the vowel distinction. Other arguments for the posited underlying forms are in the formulation of the phonological rules and the possible explanations for the exceptions which exist.
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