asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

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LinguistCat
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asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

(Cross posted from ZBB to cast a larger net)

I'm mostly looking for papers on phonology, especially if the author favors a 6 or 7 vowel reconstruction for Proto-Japonic. I have recently found a paper (The Spelling of /mo/ in Old Japanese, by John R. Bentley, 2015) that suggests that portions of the Nihon Shoki retained a split in spelling between mo1 and mo2, which has already helped me decide something for a language I'm making that would have otherwise been left completely to chance. I've also found papers (would have to check on authors and dates) that claim East Old Japanese, along with data from Proto-Ryukyuan points to Proto-Japonic having 6 or 7 vowels, instead of the usually reconstructed 4 from primarily West Old Japanese.

Something I have been having a hard time finding has been reconstruction of tone accent. I've seen a mention that long vowels reconstructed for some form of the language before Old Japanese (I think Proto-Japonic but may have been Pre-Old Japanese) corresponded to low tone in at least one branch of Old Japanese, as well as that conclusive and adnominal forms that were otherwise identical differed by tone accent as well. But I don't know what those would have been. (In one of the papers involving data from EOJ, the author mentioned that conclusive and adnominal forms were different - -u vs -o1 - and ALSO differed by tone accent, as opposed to their WOJ counterparts.) And even if I choose to start from Old Japanese over Proto-Japonic, it would still be useful to have some extra information to draw on of course.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by k1234567890y »

I also want an online resource for Old Japanese...especially a dictionary that lists the two types of vowels..
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

k1234567890y wrote: 29 Apr 2018 11:25 I also want an online resource for Old Japanese...especially a dictionary that lists the two types of vowels..
Honestly I've considered compiling my own, but I'm not sure I'm organized enough for that. If I find one specifically for Old Japanese, I'll be sure to share.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by k1234567890y »

LinguistCat wrote: 30 Apr 2018 04:39
k1234567890y wrote: 29 Apr 2018 11:25 I also want an online resource for Old Japanese...especially a dictionary that lists the two types of vowels..
Honestly I've considered compiling my own, but I'm not sure I'm organized enough for that. If I find one specifically for Old Japanese, I'll be sure to share.
ok thanks (:
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by clawgrip »

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%99%82%E4%B ... B000JA6C7G

If you have 30,500 yen to spare. Also it's 1967, so any reconstruction developments made since then won't be in it. Contents unknown.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

clawgrip wrote: 02 May 2018 08:28 https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%99%82%E4%B ... B000JA6C7G

If you have 30,500 yen to spare. Also it's 1967, so any reconstruction developments made since then won't be in it. Contents unknown.
If I get that much to spare I will definitely check it out and report back, but at the moment it's a little out of my reach.

ETA^2: I found the book linked below first, and then the author of both linked works pointed out the paper, which is a shorter overview if the book is too long of a read straight off.

Overview of two theories about tone data can be found here, covering the mainstream view and Ramsey's theory. And of course, there are references that might also be mined for more information.

(original edit to post) I did find this book in pdf form which is interesting from the pitch accent pov as regards Middle Japanese and further back. It's also a bit of a read (600+ pages), but a lot of that is going over the accepted theories of how Japanese pitch accent is thought to have developed and goes over why the author, de Boer, thinks differently. It doesn't exactly help as a source for knowing what words fit in what accent classes outside of examples that she gives, but it has been interesting to me. And if you don't agree with her theory, you can always look up the authors she cited. So useful all around. [:3]
Last edited by LinguistCat on 06 Jun 2018 23:10, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by emdeboer »

Excuse me for butting in, but the article linked to above, is actually my 600+ page book. A much more handy introduction to the topic is this paper:
https://www.academia.edu/34692968/Unive ... n_Japanese
Good luck! (It is a complicated subject...)
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

emdeboer wrote: 30 May 2018 20:26 Excuse me for butting in, but the article linked to above, is actually my 600+ page book. A much more handy introduction to the topic is this paper:
https://www.academia.edu/34692968/Unive ... n_Japanese
Good luck! (It is a complicated subject...)
Elisabeth
Not butting in at all! I linked to the book because it had a lot of information that I found useful and thought others might as well, even if it's a lot of reading to go through. Please let me know if I should take down the link or if there's anything I should do regarding it. The actual paper is probably easier to get a handle on anyway.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by emdeboer »

No need at all to take down the link! It is just that for a first read, the scope of the book may be discouraging. The articles by Ramsey on the subject are a very good introduction too (and very well written!).
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

emdeboer wrote: 06 Jun 2018 13:58 No need at all to take down the link! It is just that for a first read, the scope of the book may be discouraging. The articles by Ramsey on the subject are a very good introduction too (and very well written!).
Thank you for the reply. I will edit my post to add the link to the paper with a note about the scope/length of both.
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by AlwaysForget »

I know this thread is a bit old now, but have you read Bjarke Frellesvig's A History of the Japanese Language? It has a little bit of everything in it from Proto-Japanese up to modern times. Here's a link to download the pdf, but if you want it more directly I can try to do that for you.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md ... 689E7D9023
:usa: [tick] :de: [:)] :es:/:fr: (Basque) [:S] :jp: [:'(]
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Re: asking again on Old Japanese/Proto-Japonic resources

Post by LinguistCat »

AlwaysForget wrote: 23 Jul 2018 23:28 I know this thread is a bit old now, but have you read Bjarke Frellesvig's A History of the Japanese Language? It has a little bit of everything in it from Proto-Japanese up to modern times. Here's a link to download the pdf, but if you want it more directly I can try to do that for you.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md ... 689E7D9023
Somehow I never found a pdf of it that wasn't behind a paywall, so I very much appreciate this!

As a note, as long as it isn't against the board rules, I am fine with additions to this thread regardless of length of time since the last post. I personally am going to be working on my conlang for a while, and other people working on Japonic based conlangs might want to look as well.
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