A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Early Middle Japanese | |
|---|---|
| 中古日本語 | |
 The oldest cursive kana written in early Heian period, indicating the birth of hiragana from Man'yōgana | |
| Region | Japan |
| Era | Evolved into Late Middle Japanese at the end of the 12th century |
Early form | |
| Hiragana, Katakana, and Han | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ojp (Old Japanese) |
ojp Described as "The ancestor of modern Japanese. 7th–10th centuries AD." The more usual date for the change from Old Japanese to Middle Japanese is ca. 800 (end of the Nara era). | |
| Glottolog | None |
Early Middle Japanese (中古日本語, Chūko-Nihongo)[1] is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian period (平安時代). The successor to Old Japanese (上代日本語), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (中世日本語, after 1185) than to Old Japanese (before 794).
Background
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2008) |
Old Japanese had borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese. In Early Middle Japanese, two new scripts emerged: the kana scripts hiragana and katakana. That development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature, with many classics such as The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and The Tales of Ise.
Writing system
Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana (万葉仮名), literally "ten thousand leaves borrowed labels", in reference to the Man'yōshū poetry anthology and the "borrowing" of the kanji characters as "labels" for the sounds of Japanese. Certain Chinese characters were borrowed to phonetically spell out Japanese sounds. Cursive handwriting gradually gave rise to the hiragana (平仮名, "flat/simple borrowed labels") and Buddhist shorthand practices of using pieces of kanji to denote the sounds then developed into the katakana (片仮名, "partial/piece borrowed labels").
| phoneme
Man'yō, hira, kata |
Ø ア行 |
カ行 | /s/ サ行 |
タ行 | /n/ ナ行 |
/ɸ/ ハ行 |
/m/ マ行 |
/j/ ヤ行 |
/r/ ラ行 |
?pojem= ワ行 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /k/ | /g/ | /t/ | /d/ | |||||||||
| /a/ ア段 |
/a/ 安、あ、ア |
/ka/ | /ga/ | /sa/ 左、さ、サ |
/ta/ | /da/ | /na/ 奈、な、ナ |
/ɸa/ 波、は、ハ |
/ma/ 末、ま、マ |
/ja/ 也、や、ヤ |
/ra/ 良、ら、ラ |
/wa/ 和、わ、ワ |
| 加、か、カ | 太、た、タ | |||||||||||
| /i/ イ段 |
/i/ 以、い、イ |
/ki/ | /gi/ | /si/ 之、し、シ |
/ti/ | /di/ | /ni/ 仁、に、ニ |
/ɸi/ 比、ひ、ヒ |
/mi/ 美、み、ミ |
Ø | /ri/ 利、り、リ |
/wi/ 爲、ゐ、ヰ |
| 幾、き、キ | 知、ち、チ | |||||||||||
| /u/ ウ段 |
/u/ 宇、う、ウ |
/ku/ | /gu/ | /su/ 寸、す、ス |
/tu/ | /du/ | /nu/ 奴、ぬ、ヌ |
/ɸu/ 不、ふ、フ |
/mu/ 武、む、ム |
/ju/ 由、ゆ、ユ |
/ru/ 留、る、ル |
Ø |
| 久、く、ク | 川、つ、ツ | |||||||||||
| /e/ エ段 |
/e/ 衣、(え)、 
|
/ke/ | /ge/ | /se/ 世、せ、セ |
/te/ | /de/ | /ne/ 禰、ね、ネ |
/ɸe/ 部、へ、ヘ |
/me/ 女、め、メ |
/je/ 江、𛀁、エ |
/re/ 礼、れ、レ |
/we/ 惠、ゑ、ヱ |
| 計、け、ケ | 天、て、テ | |||||||||||
| /o/ お段 |
/o/ 於、お、オ |
/ko/ | /go/ | /so/ 曽、そ、ソ |
/to/ | /do/ | /no/ 乃、の、ノ |
/ɸo/ 保、ほ、ホ |
/mo/ 毛、も、モ |
/jo/ 與、よ、ヨ |
/ro/ 呂、ろ、ロ |
/wo/ 遠、を、ヲ |
| 已、こ、コ | 止、と、ト | |||||||||||
It is worth noting that the man'yōgana in each cell only indicates one possible option for spelling each Japanese mora – in the table above, each chosen character is the direct origin of the corresponding modern hiragana. See also Hentaigana for a fuller description of how multiple hiragana could be used to spell a single sound. Also note that hiragana forms were not standardized at that time.[2]
Although man'yōgana specify different kanji to represent voiced phonemes versus unvoiced phonemes, it is not until the Meiji period that we see standardized usage of the dakuten diacritic ゛ to explicitly mark voicing for hiragana and katakana.
Japan officially adopted simplified shinjitai (新字体, "new character forms") in 1946 as part of a round of orthographic reforms intended to improve literacy rates. The so-called kyūjitai (旧字体, "old character forms") are equivalent to Traditional Chinese characters, and these forms were the ones used in historical man'yōgana. Modern transcriptions of classical texts are predominantly written in shinjitai. To avoid unnecessary ambiguity, quotes from classical texts would be written in kyūjitai.
Additionally, there are many spelling differences between Modern Japanese and Early Middle Japanese even for the same word. For example, 万葉集 is spelled in modern Japanese hiragana as まんようしゅう (man'yōshū), while in Early Middle Japanese, this would have been まんえふしふ (man'yefushifu). Details on these spelling rules are helpful for understanding historical kana usage.
Phonology
Developments
Major phonological changes were characteristic of the period.
The most prominent difference was the loss of certain spelling distinctions found in the Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai ("Ancient Special Kana Usage"), which distinguished two types of /i/, /e/, and /o/. While these distinctions had begun to blur already at the end of the Old Japanese stage, they were completely lost in Early Middle Japanese. The final distinction to be lost was /ko1, go1/ vs. /ko2, go2/.[3] For example, around the year 800 in very early Early Middle Japanese, in the same text /ko1/ was still represented by cursive 「古」, while /ko2/ was represented by cursive 「已」.[4]
In the 10th century, /e/ and /je/ progressively merged into /je/, and /o/ and /wo/ had merged into /wo/ by the 11th century.[5][6][7]
An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological effects:
- Introduction of palatal[8] and labial[9] consonant clusters such as /kw/ and /kj/
- Introduction of the uvular nasal /ɴ/
- Length becoming a phonemic feature with the development of both long vowels and long consonants
The development of the uvular nasal and geminated consonants occurred late in the Heian period and brought about the introduction of closed syllables (CVC).[10]
Phonetics
Vowels
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Stop | (p) | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | ɸ | s | z | |||||
| Liquid | r | |||||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||||
Phonetic realization
/s, z/
Theories for the realization of /s, z/ include , , and . It may have varied depending on the following vowel, as in Modern Japanese. [citation needed]
/ɸ/
By the 11th century, /ɸ/ had merged with ?pojem= between vowels.[11]
Grammar
 | This article or section uses color as the only way to convey important information. (17/11/2023) |
Syntactically, Early Middle Japanese was a subject-object-verb language with a topic-comment structure. Morphologically, it was an agglutinative language.
Phrase
A paragraph of Early Middle Japanese can be divided into the following units from large to small.
- Sentence (文) ：A series of meaningful words divided from a paragraph by 「。」(period).
- 今は昔、竹取の翁といふ者ありけり。
- (from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)
- Romanization: ima wa mukasi, taketori no okina to ifu mono arikeri.
- Modern Japanese translation：今からみるともう昔のことだが、竹取の翁という者がいた。
- English translation: Long before the present, it is said that there was someone called Old Man Bamboo Cutter.
- It is to be noted that the noun「昔」("long past") is actually a predicate (means "is long past"). The predicate is not necessarily a verb in Early Middle Japanese.
- Phrase (文節): The smallest unit naturally divided from the rest of a sentence by its meaning.
- 今は昔、竹取の翁といふ者ありけり。
- The function of the auxiliary particle「は」is to highlight the noun「今」(now), which cannot be separately explained, so they should be in the same phrase. Similarly, the particle 「の 」 represents the relation between the modifier「竹取」("bamboo cutter", a compound noun) and the modified noun 「翁」(old man), like the preposition "of". Additionally, the particle 「と」 connects the called name 「翁」(modified by 「竹取」) to the verb「いふ」( "call"), just like a preposition. As for the auxiliary verb「けり」, it further clarifies that what the verb「あり」 ("be, exist") describes is a rumor about the past, but not a direct experience (i.e. 間接過去), so it should be included in the same phrase as 「あり」. In contrast, even if the verb 「いふ」 does modify the noun「者」 ("someone"), its meaning can still be realized naturally without any help from other words.
- Word (単語): The smallest grammatical unit.
- 今は昔、竹取の翁といふ者ありけり。
- Although 「竹取」is a combination of the noun 「竹」and the verb 「取り」("get", infinitive), any compound noun, verb, or adjective should be considered as a single grammatical unit.
Classes of words
Words were classified as follows:
- Cannot stand alone as a phrase
- (Auxiliary) particle (助 詞): Without inflection. Has various functions like emphasis, acting like a postposition, hinting about the subject or expressing interrogative mood.
- Auxiliary verb (助動 詞): With inflection. Describes additional information of Yougen like tense, aspect, mood, voice, and polarity. Alternate descriptions include grammaticalized verb or Verb-like ending.
- Can stand alone as phrase
- Without inflection
- Cannot be subject
- Adverb(副 詞): mainly modifies Yougen.
- Conjunction (接続詞)
- Interjection (感動詞)
- Rentaisi (連体詞): mainly modifies Taigen.
- Can be subject: Taigen (体言, the words that are the main body of the sentence)
- Noun (名 詞)
- Pronoun (代 名 詞)
- Number (数 詞)
- Cannot be subject
- With inflection: Yougen (用言, the words to predicate or to "use" other words)
- Verb (動 詞)
- Adjective (形容 詞): actually the stative verbs.
- Adjective verb (形容動 詞): a different kind of "adjective", which is derived from a noun. Hence also referred to as adjectival noun in English.
- Without inflection
Auxiliary particle
(Auxiliary) Particles had various functions, and they can be classified as follows:
| Class of particle | Functions | Example
(Particle is labeled in red.) |
|---|---|---|
| Case particles 格助詞 |
indicating the relationship between a phrase and its following phrase.
(i.e. not limited to nouns, so slightly differs from "case" in English) |
いづ 方へか 罷りぬる (The Tale of Genji)In which direction of escape has gone (the bird)? (The verb 「罷る」 is the polite form, i.e.「丁寧語」, of the verb 「行く」"go") |
| Conjunctive particles 接続助詞 |
indicating the relationship between clauses. | 文を書きてやれども返り事もせず。(The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) Even though「文を書きてやれ」, but 「返り事もせず」. (「ども」has to be preceded by the realis mood, e.g.,「やれ」is the realis mood of the verb「やる」, to express the appropriate meaning.) |
| Adverbial particles 副助詞 |
mainly modifying its following yougen. | ただ浪の白きのみぞ見ゆる (Tosa Nikki) ...can only see (exactly) the white wave (actually, 「のみ」 limits the expressive range of 「見ゆる」) (The verb 「見ゆ」is "bound" by the binding particle 「ぞ」, so it occurs in the attributive form「見ゆる」.) |
| Binding particles 係助詞 |
emphasizing its phrase or making it interrogative, and limiting the inflection
form of the ending yougen or auxiliary verb. |
いづ 方へか 罷りぬる In which direction of escape has gone (the bird)? (The perfect auxiliary verb「ぬ」is "bound" by the binding particle 「か」, so it occurs in the attributive form 「ぬる」.) |
| Final particles 終助詞 |
mainly at the end of sentence, indicating many kinds of moods
(e.g. interrogative mood, emotive assertion) |
我はこの比惡きぞかし(Sarashina Nikki) At that time I'm definitely not good! (Although the binding particle 「ぞ」 is at the end of sentence, it still requires its preceding words to be attributive.) |
| Interjectory particles 間投助詞 |
similar to final particle, but occurs more freely, and is often
used as a short stop between sentences. |
朝臣や。さやうの落ち葉をだに拾へ (The Tale of Genji) (Yugiri) Ason! At least pick these kinds of falling leaves up! |
Case particleedit
- 「が」 (ga) and 「の」 (no) : "of, ...'s". It hints the present of subject, relation of modification between phrases or nouns.
- 「を」(wo) (accusative). Optional.
- 「に」(ni) (dative/locative). It had a wide range of functions ('to' or 'for' a person; 'by' an agent'; 'at' or 'to' a place; 'at' a time), and in some uses, especially when indicating time, it was optional.
- 「より」(yori) (ablative).
- 「まで」(made) (terminative: 'until'; 'as far as').
- 「と」(to) (comitative: 'with'; essive 'as').
- 「へ」(fe) (allative: 'to'). 「へ」 was derived from the noun「 邊」'vicinity; direction', which 「わ」 occasionally found in the location noun structure Noun + 「の」 + Location Noun to mean 'near', or in the noun-deriving suffix 「べ」 (< 「のへ」) in such words as 水べ 'beside the water' .
The nominative function was marked by the absence of a particle in main clauses and by the genitive particles in subordinate clauses. The dative/locative particle -ni was homophonous with the simple infinitive form of the copula -ni, with verbal suffixes supplies more complex case markers -ni-te ('at' a place) and -ni si-te or -ni-te ('by means of'). A number of particle + verb + -te sequences provided other case functions: -ni yori-te 'due to' (from yor- 'depend'), -ni tuki-te 'about, concerning' (from tuk- 'be attached'), and -to si-te 'as' (from se- 'do'). More complex structures were derived from genitive particle + Location Noun + appropriate case particle (typically locative -ni) and were used particularly to express spatial and temporal relations. Major location nouns were mafe 'front' (Noun-no mafe-ni 'in front of Noun'), ufe 'top' (Noun-no ufe-ni 'on top of Noun' ~ 'above Noun'), sita 'under' (Noun-no sita-ni 'under Noun), saki 'ahead' (Noun-no saki-ni 'ahead of Noun)', etc.
Conjunctive particleedit
- Infinitive + 「て」(te): 'and (then/so), when, because'. It usually expressed a close sequential link between the predicates that it connects. The subjects of the two verbs connected by「て」 were usually the same.
- Realis + 「ば」(ba): 'and (then/so), when, because'. It usually expressed a looser sequential link between the predicates that it connected. The subject of both verbs connected by 「ば」 was usually different.
- Irrealis + 「ば」(ba): 'if...', It usually expressed a unreal condition.
- Irrealis + 「で」(de):[12] negative 'and', 'without ... ing', 'rather than ... ', derived from old infinitive of negative auxiliary verb「ず」(i.e. 「に」) + the particle 「て」with sound change.
- Various forms + 「と/とも」 (do / domo): 'even if, even though'. Most yougens and auxiliary verbs took the conclusive form, bigrade verbs take the infinitive in earlier texts, r-irregular verbs took the attributive form,and some auxiliary verbs inflecting like adjective and negative auxiliary verbs「ず」also took the attributive.
- Infinitive + 「つつ」 (tutu): 'while (at the same time)'.
- Infinitive of verb / stem of adjective + 「ながら」(nagara): 'while, while still' or 'despite'.
Binding particleedit
There were some special particles that limited the inflectional form of the yougen or auxiliary verb at the end of a sentence. These particles are called binding particles(係助詞). These limitations are called binding rules(係り結びの法則).