Old Japanese

Old Japanese
上代日本語
Manuscript of the Man'yōshū, recording Old Japanese using Chinese characters
Region	Japan
Era	Evolved into Early Middle Japanese during the Heian period
Language family	Japonic Old Japanese
Writing system	man'yōgana
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ojp
Linguist List	ojp
Glottolog	oldj1239

Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. It is attested in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It evolved into Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, although the precise separation of these two languages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic family; no conclusive links to other language families have been demonstrated.

Old Japanese was written using Chinese characters, using an increasingly standardized and phonetic form that eventually evolved into man'yōgana. Typically for a Japonic language and for a step in the evolutionary line of modern Japanese, Old Japanese was a primarily agglutinative language with subject–object–verb word ordering. However, the language was marked by a few phonemic differences from later forms of Japanese, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables pronounced identically in Early Middle Japanese and later. The phonetic realization of this differentiation is uncertain.

Sources and dating

Rubbing of Bussokuseki-kahi poems carved c. 752

Linguistic changes are gradual, and the periodization of Japanese is "both delicate and controversial", with multiple competing methods and criteria for division. For both practical and conventional reasons, these divisions often correlate to political events, particularly shifts in power or changes of capital.

Old Japanese is usually defined as the language of the Nara period (710–794), when the capital was Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). This is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the Kojiki (712). The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki (720) and the Man'yōshū (c. 759), a compilation of over 4,500 poems. Shorter samples are 25 poems in the Fudoki (720) and the 21 poems of the Bussokuseki-kahi (c. 752). The latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas for all the other texts the oldest surviving manuscripts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors. Prose texts are more limited, but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately than verse. The most important are the 27 Norito (liturgies) recorded in the Engishiki (compiled in 927) and the 62 Senmyō (imperial edicts) recorded in the Shoku Nihongi (797).

A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts such as the "Wei Zhi" portion of the Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd century AD), but the transcriptions by Chinese scholars are unreliable. The oldest surviving native inscriptions, dating from the 5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the Suda Hachiman Shrine Mirror, the Inariyama Sword and the Eta Funayama Sword. These inscriptions are written in Classical Chinese, but contain several Japanese names transcribed phonetically using Chinese characters. Such inscriptions become more common from the Suiko period (592–628). These fragments are usually considered a form of Old Japanese.

Writing system

Main articles: Man'yōgana and Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai

Artifacts inscribed with Chinese characters dated as early as the 1st century AD have been found in Japan, but it appears that detailed knowledge of the script did not arrive in the islands until the early 5th century. According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, it was brought by scholars from Baekje (southwest Korea). The earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, probably by immigrant scribes. Later "hybrid" texts show the influence of Japanese grammar, such as the word order (for example, placing the verb after the object).

Chinese and Koreans had long used Chinese characters to write non-Chinese terms and proper names phonetically, by selecting characters for Chinese words that sounded like each syllable. Koreans also used the characters phonetically to write Korean particles and inflections added to Chinese texts as an aid to reading (Idu script). In Japan, the practice was developed into man'yōgana, a complete script for the Japanese language using Chinese characters phonetically, and the ancestor of modern kana syllabaries. This system was already in use in the verse parts of the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720). For example, the first line of the first poem in the Kojiki was written with five characters:

	夜	久	毛	多	都
Middle Chinese	yae	kjuw	maw	ta	tu
Old Japanese	ya-kumo1			tatu
	eight-cloud			rise.ADN
	'many clouds rising'

This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds (ongana) was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the Man'yōshū (c. 759).

Syllables

In man'yōgana, each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any one of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis revealed that 88 syllables were distinguished in the Kojiki:

Syllables in the Kojiki

a

ka

ga

sa

za

ta

da

na

pa

ba

ma

ya

ra

wa

i

ki1

gi1

si

zi

ti

di

ni

pi1

bi1

mi1

ri

wi

ki2

gi2

pi2

bi2

mi2

u

ku

gu

su

zu

tu

du

nu

pu

bu

mu

yu

ru

e

ke1

ge1

se

ze

te

de

ne

pe1

be1

me1

ye

re

we

ke2

ge2

pe2

be2

me2

o

ko1

go1

so1

zo1

to1

do1

no1

po

bo

mo1

yo1

ro1

wo

ko2

go2

so2

zo2

to2

do2

no2

mo2

yo2

ro2

The system has the same gaps of yi and wu found in later forms of Japanese. However, many syllables that have a modern i, e or o occurred in two forms, termed types A (甲, kō) and B (乙, otsu), denoted by subscripts 1 and 2 respectively in the above table. The syllables mo₁ and mo₂ are not distinguished in the slightly later Nihon Shoki and Man'yōshū, reducing the syllable count to 87. All of these pairs had merged by the Early Middle Japanese of the Heian period.

Transcription

Several different notations for the type A/B distinction are found in the literature, including:

Common notations for the type A/B distinction

indexed notation	i1	i2	e1	e2	o1	o2
Kindaichi, Miller, Ōno	i	ï	e	ë	o	ö
modified Mathias–Miller	î	ï	ê	ë	ô	ö
Yale (Martin)	yi	iy	ye	ey	wo	o̠
Frellesvig and Whitman	i	wi	ye	e	wo	o

Phonology

There is no consensus on the pronunciation of the syllables distinguished by man'yōgana. One difficulty is that the Middle Chinese pronunciations of the characters used are also disputed, and since their reconstruction is partly based on Sino-Japanese pronunciations, there is a danger of circular reasoning. Additional evidence has been drawn from phonological typology, subsequent developments in the Japanese pronunciation, and comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages.

Restrictions

Old Japanese had open syllables, of the form (C)V, subject to additional restrictions:

• Words do not begin with r or the voiced plosives b, d, z and g, with the exception of a few loanwords.
• A bare vowel does not occur except for word-initially: vowel sequences were not permitted.

In 1934, Arisaka Hideyo proposed a set of phonological restrictions permitted in a single morpheme. Arisaka's Law states that -o₂ is generally not found in the same morpheme as -a, -o₁ or -u. Some scholars have interpreted this as a vestige of earlier vowel harmony, but it is very different from patterns observed in e.g. the Turkic languages.

Vowels

The Chinese characters chosen to write syllables with the Old Japanese vowel a suggest that it was an open unrounded vowel /a/. The vowel u was a close back rounded vowel /u/, unlike the unrounded /ɯ/ of Modern Standard Japanese.

Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the A/B distinctions made in man'yōgana. The issue is hotly debated, and there is no consensus. The widely accepted traditional view, first advanced by Kyōsuke Kindaichi in 1938, is that there were eight pure vowels, with the type B vowels being more central than their type A counterparts. Others, beginning in the 1930s but more commonly since the work of Roland Lange in 1968, attribute the type A/B distinction to medial or final glides /j/ and /w/. The diphthong proposals are often connected to hypotheses about pre-Old Japanese, but all exhibit an uneven distribution of glides.

Examples of reconstructions of type A/B distinctions

i1	i2	e1	e2	o1	o2	Author
i	wi	e	we	wo	o	Kikusawa (1935)
i	ï	e	ë	o	ö	Kindaichi (1938), Miller (1967)
i	ïj	e	əj	o	ə	Arisaka (1955)
ji	i	je	e	o	ɵ	Hattori (1958)
ji	i	je	e	wo	o	Lange (1968, 1973)
i	wi	je	e	wo	o	Unger (1977), Frellesvig and Whitman (2008)
i	ï	e	ɛ	o	ɵ	Ōno (1982)
i	ɨ	e	əj	o	ə	Miyake (2003)

The distinction between mo₁ and mo₂ is only seen in Kojiki and vanished afterwards. Distributionally, there may have once been *po₁, *po₂, *bo₁ and *bo₂. If this is true, then a distinction was made between Co₁ and Co₂ for all consonants C except for w. Some take this as support that Co₁ may have represented Cwo.

Pre-Old Japanese

Most scholars derive the Old Japanese vowel system from an earlier four-vowel system, with the most common Old Japanese vowels a, u, i₁ and o₂ reflecting earlier *a, *u, *i and *ə respectively. Internal reconstruction suggests that the other, less common, Old Japanese vowels are derived from fusions of these vowels. For example, the place name take₂ti is derived from a compound of taka- 'high' and iti 'market'. Another piece of evidence is that many nouns have different forms when used independently and when used within compounds. An example is sake₂ 'rice wine', which becomes saka- in compounds such as sakaduki 'saké cup'. In such cases the bound form is considered basic, and the independent form may be explained by postulating a suffix *-i that fused with the final vowel of the root. The following reductions are proposed:

• i₂ < *ui: kami₂/kamu- 'god, spirit', mi₂/mu- 'eye', nagi₂/nagu- 'a calm'.
• i₂ < *əi: ki₂/ko₂- 'tree', yomi₂/yomo₂- 'Hades'.
• e₁ < *ia: sake₁ri 'blooming' < saki₁ 'to bloom' + ari 'to be'.
• e₁ < *iə: pe₁ku (proper name) < pi₁ 'sun' + o₂ki₁ 'put'.
• e₂ < *ai: me₂/ma- 'eye', ame₂/ama- 'heaven', ame₂/ama- 'rain', kage₂/kaga- 'shade'.
• o₁ < *ua: kazo₁pu 'to count' < kazu 'number' + apu 'to combine'.
• o₁ < *uə: sito₁ri 'kind of native weaving' < situ 'native weaving' + ori 'weaving'.

There are also alternations suggesting e₂ < *əi, such as:

• se₂/so₂- 'back', me₂/mo₂- 'bud'

Some authors believe these belong to an earlier layer than i₂ < *əi, while others reconstruct two central vowels *ə and *ɨ, which merge everywhere except before *i. Other authors attribute this variation to different reflexes in different dialects, noting that *əi yields e in Ryukyuan languages. Some authors also suggest that *e and *o are required to account for word-final e₁ and o₁ respectively.

Consonants

Miyake 2003 reconstructs the following inventory, in addition to a zero vowel-initial onset /∅/:

Old Japanese consonants

		Labial	Coronal		Palatal	Velar
Obstruent	voiceless	*p	*t	*s		*k
	voiced prenasalized	*ᵐb	*ⁿd	*ⁿz		*ᵑɡ
Nasal		*m	*n
Liquid			*r
Approximant		*w			*j

The voiceless obstruents /p, t, s, k/ had the voiced prenasalized counterparts /ᵐb, ⁿd, ⁿz, ᵑɡ/. This prenasalization was still present in the late 17th century (according to the Korean textbook Chephay sine), and is found in some modern Japanese and Ryukyuan dialects, but has disappeared in Modern Japanese, except for the intervocalic nasal stop allophone [ŋ] of /ɡ/. The sibilants /s/ and /ⁿz/ may have been palatalized before e and i.

Comparative evidence from Ryukyuan languages suggests that Old Japanese p derives from an earlier voiceless bilabial stop *p. There is general agreement that word-initial p had become a voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ] by Early Middle Japanese, as suggested by its transcription as f in later Portuguese works and as ph or hw in the Korean textbook Chephay sine. In Modern Standard Japanese, it is romanized as h and has different allophones before various vowels. In medial position, it became [w] in Early Middle Japanese, and has since disappeared except before a. Many scholars argue that p had already lenited to [ɸ] by the Old Japanese period, but Miyake argues that it was still a stop.

Pre-Old Japanese

Internal reconstruction suggests that the Old Japanese voiced obstruents, which always occurred in medial position, arose from weakening of earlier nasal syllables before voiceless obstruents:

• b /ᵐb/ < *-mVp-, *-nVp-: e.g. abi₁ki₁ 'trawling' < ami₁ 'net' + pi₁ki₁ 'pull'.
• d /ⁿd/ < *-mVt-, *-nVt-: e.g. yamadi 'mountain path' < yama 'mountain' + mi₁ti 'path'.
• z /ⁿz/ < *-mVs-, *-nVs-: e.g. the title murazi < mura 'village' + nusi 'master'.
• g /ᵑɡ/ < *-mVk-, *-nVk-.

In some cases there is no evidence for a preceding vowel, leading some scholars to posit final nasals at the earlier stage.

Some linguists suggest that Old Japanese w and y derive respectively from *b and *d at some point before the oldest inscriptions in the 6th century. Southern Ryukyuan varieties such as Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni retain /b/ and /d/ in these words:

• ba 'I' and bata 'stomach' corresponding to Old Japanese wa and wata
• Yonaguni da 'house', du 'hot water' and dama 'mountain' corresponding to Old Japanese ya, yu and yama

However, many linguists, especially in Japan, argue that the Southern Ryukyuan voiced stops are local innovations. Some supporters of *b and *d also add *z and *g, both disappearing in Old Japanese, for reasons of symmetry. However, there is very little Japonic evidence for these.

Morphophonemics

Vowel elision occurred to prevent vowel clusters. When a monosyllabic morpheme is followed by a polysyllabic morpheme beginning with a vowel, the second vowel is dropped:

• wa + ga + ipe₁ → wagape₁

In other environments, the first vowel is dropped:

• ake + u → aku
• to₂ko₂ + ipa → to₂kipa
• ko₂ + i → ki

Accent

Although modern Japanese dialects have pitch accent systems, these are usually not shown in man'yōgana. However, in one part of the Nihon Shoki, the Chinese characters appear to be chosen to represent a pitch pattern similar to that recorded in the Ruiju Myōgishō, a dictionary compiled in the late 11th century. In this section, a low pitch syllable is represented by a character with the Middle Chinese level tone, and a high pitch is represented by a character with one of the other three Middle Chinese tones. (A similar division was used in the tone patterns of Chinese poetry, which were emulated by Japanese poets in the late Asuka period.) Thus it appears that the Old Japanese accent system was similar to that of Early Middle Japanese.

Grammar

As in later forms of Japanese, Old Japanese word order was predominantly subject–object–verb, with adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modify, and auxiliary verbs and particles consistently appended to the main verb.

Pronouns

Many Old Japanese pronouns had both a short form and a longer form with attached -re of uncertain etymology. Where the pronoun occurred in isolation, the longer form would be used. With genitive particles or in nominal compounds, the short form was used, whereas in other situations either form was possible.

Personal pronouns were distinguished by taking the genitive marker ga, in contrast to the marker no₂ used with demonstratives and nouns.

• The first person pronouns were a(re) and wa(re), were used for the singular and plural respectively, though with some overlap. The wa- forms were also used reflexively, suggesting that wa was originally an indefinite pronoun and gradually replaced a.
• The second person pronoun was na(re).
• The third person pronoun si was much less commonly used than the non-proximal demonstrative so₂, from which it was derived.
• There were also an interrogative pronoun ta(re) and a reflexive pronoun o₂no₂.

Demonstratives often distinguished proximal (to the speaker) and non-proximal forms marked with ko₂- and so₂- respectively. Many forms had corresponding interrogative forms i(du)-.

Old Japanese demonstratives

	Proximal	Non-proximal	Interrogative
Nominal	ko2(re)	so2	idu(re)
Location	ko2ko2	so2ko2	iduku
Direction	ko2ti	–	iduti
Degree	ko2kV-	so2kV-	iku-
Manner	ka	sate	–
	kaku	sika	ika
Time	–	–	itu

In Early Middle Japanese, the non-proximal so- forms were re-interpreted as hearer-based (medial), and the formerly speaker-based forms divided into proximal ko- forms and distal ka-/a- forms, yielding the three-way distinction still found in Modern Japanese.

Verbs

Old Japanese had a richer system of verbal suffixes than later forms of Japanese. Old Japanese verbs used inflection for modal and conjunctional purposes. Other categories, such as voice, tense, aspect and mood, were expressed using optional suffixed auxiliaries, which were also inflected.

Inflected forms

As in later forms of Japanese, Old Japanese verbs had a large number of inflected forms. In traditional Japanese grammar, these are represented by six forms (katsuyōkei, 活用形) from which all the others may be derived, in a similar fashion to the principal parts used for Latin and other languages:

Mizenkei (irrealis)

This form never occurs in isolation, but only as a stem to which several particles and auxiliaries are attached. Unger calls it a "pseudostem", because the purported inflection was originally an initial *a of the suffixes attached to this stem.

Renyoukei (adverbial, infinitive)

This form was used as the infinitive. It also served as a stem for auxiliaries expressing tense and aspect.

Shushikei (conclusive, predicative)

This form was used as the main verb concluding a declarative sentence. It was also used before modal extensions, final particles and some conjunctional particles. The conclusive form merged with the attributive form by about 1600, but the distinction is preserved in Ryukyuan languages and the Hachijōjima dialects.

Rentaikei (attributive, adnominal)

This form was used as the verb in a nominalized clause or a clause modifying a noun. It was also used before most conjunctional particles.

Izenkei (realis, exclamatory, subjunctive)

This form was used as the main verb in an exclamatory sentence or as the verb in an adverbial clause. It also served as a stem for the particles -ba (provisional) and -do (concessive).

Meireikei (imperative)

This form expressed the imperative mood.

This system has been criticized because the six forms are not equivalent, with one being solely a combinatory stem, three solely word forms, and two being both. It also fails to capture some inflected forms. However, five of the forms are basic inflected verb forms, and the system also describes almost all extended forms in a consistent way.

Conjugation classes

Japanese verbs are classified into eight conjugation classes, each characterized by different patterns of inflected forms. Three of these classes are grouped as consonant bases:

Yodan (quadrigrade)

This class of regular consonant-base verbs includes approximately 75% of verbs. The class is so named because the inflections in later forms of Japanese span four rows of a kana table, corresponding to four vowels. However, in Old Japanese five different vowels are involved. These bases are almost all of the form (C)VC-, with the final consonant limited to p, t, k, b, g, m, s or r.

Na-hen (n-irregular)

The three n-base verbs form a class of their own: sin- 'die', -in- 'depart' and the auxiliary -(i)n- expressing completion of an action. They are often described as a "hybrid" conjugation, because the adnominal and exclamatory forms follow a similar pattern to vowel-base verbs.

Ra-hen (r-irregular)

The irregular r-base verbs are ar- 'be, exist' and other verbs incorporating it, as well as wor- 'sit', which became the existential verb or- in later forms of Japanese.

Conjugation of consonant-base verbs

Verb class	Irrealis	Infinitive	Conclusive	Adnominal	Exclamatory	Imperative	Gloss
Quadrigrade	kaka-	kaki1	kaku	kaku	kake2	kake1	'write'
n-irregular	sina-	sini	sinu	sinuru	sinure	sine	'die'
r-irregular	ara-	ari	ari	aru	are	are	'be, exist'

The distinctions between i₁ and i₂ and between e₁ and e₂ are lost after s, z, t, d, n, y, r and w.

There are five vowel-base conjugation classes:

Shimo nidan (lower bigrade or e-bigrade)

The largest regular vowel-base class comprises bases ending in e₂, and includes approximately 20% of verbs.

Kami nidan (upper bigrade or i-bigrade)

This class of bases ending in i₂ contains about 30 verbs.

Kami ichidan (upper monograde or i-monograde)

This class contains about 10 verbs of the form (C)i_i-. Some monosyllabic upper bigrade verbs had already shifted to this class by the Old Japanese period, and the rest followed in Early Middle Japanese.

Ka-hen (k-irregular)

This class consists of the single verb ko₂- 'come'.

Sa-hen (s-irregular)

This class consists of the single verb se- 'do'.

Early Middle Japanese also had a Shimo ichidan (lower monograde or e-monograde) category consisting of a single verb kwe- 'kick', which reflects the Old Japanese lower bigrade verb kuwe-.

Conjugation of vowel-base verbs

Verb class	Irrealis	Infinitive	Conclusive	Adnominal	Exclamatory	Imperative	Gloss
e-bigrade	ake2-	ake2	aku	akuru	akure	ake2	'open'
i-bigrade	oki2-	oki2	oku	okuru	okure	oki2	'arise'
monograde	mi1-	mi1	mi1ru	mi1ru	mi1re	mi1(yo2)	'see'
k-irregular	ko2-	ki1	ku	kuru	kure	ko2	'come'
s-irregular	se-	si	su	suru	sure	se(yo2)	'do'

The bigrade verbs seem to belong to a later layer than the consonant-base verbs. Many e-bigrade verbs are transitive or intransitive counterparts of consonant-stem verbs. In contrast, i-bigrade verbs tend to be intransitive. Some bigrade bases also appear to reflect pre-Old-Japanese adjectives with vowel stems combined with an inchoative *-i suffix:

• *-a-i > -e₂, e.g. ake₂- 'redden, lighten' vs aka 'red'.
• *-u-i > -i₂, e.g. sabi₂- 'get desolate, fade' vs sabu- 'lonely'.
• *-ə-i > -i₂, e.g. opi₂- 'get big, grow' vs opo- 'big'.

Adjectives

There were two types of adjectives: regular adjectives and adjectival nouns.

The regular adjective is sub-classified into two types: those where the adverbial form (連用形) ends in -ku and those that end in -siku. This creates two different types of conjugations:

Adjective Class	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
-ku	-ke1	-ku	-si	-ki1	-ke1 -ke1re
	-kara	-kari	-si	-karu	-kare	-kare
-siku	-sike1	-siku	-si	-siki1	-sike1 -sike1re
	-sikara	-sikari	-si	-sikaru	-sikare	-sikare

The -kar- and -sikar- forms are derived from the adverbial conjugation (-ku or -siku) suffixed with verb ar- "be, exists". The conjugation yields to the R-irregular conjugation of ar-. As Old Japanese avoids vowel clusters, the resulting -ua- is reduced to -a-.

The adjectival noun has a single conjugation:

	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
Adjectival noun	-nara	-nari	-nari	-naru	-nare	-nare

Dialects

Although the majority of Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Nara court in central Japan, some sources come from eastern Japan:

• 230 azuma uta 'eastern songs' in volume 14 of the Man'yōshū,
• 93 sakimori uta 'borderguard songs' in volume 20 of the Man'yōshū, and
• 9 songs in the Hitachi fudoki (714–718).

They record Eastern Old Japanese dialects, with features such as:

• There is no type A/B distinction on front vowels i and e, though o₁ and o₂ are distinguished.
• Pre-Old Japanese *ia yielded a in the east, where Central Old Japanese has e₁.
• The adnominal form of consonant-base verbs ended in -o₁, where Central Old Japanese has -u as in the conclusive form. A similar difference is preserved in Ryukyuan languages, suggesting that Central Old Japanese had innovated by merging these endings.
• The imperative form of vowel-base verbs attached -ro₂, instead of the -yo₂ used in Central Old Japanese.
• There are a group of distinctive negative auxiliaries. However, they do not seem to be the source of the different negatives in modern eastern and western Japanese dialects.

See also

• Classical Japanese language
• List of extinct languages of Asia

References

Works cited

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• Unger, J. Marshall (2000). "Reconciling Comparative and Internal Reconstruction: The Case of Old Japanese /ti, ri, ni/". Language. 76 (3): 655–681. doi:10.2307/417138. JSTOR 417138.
• Vovin, Alexander (2005). A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part One: Sources, Script and Phonology, Lexicon, Nominals. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-901903-14-0.
• ——— (2010). Korea-Japonica: A Re-Evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3278-0.
• Whitman, John (2008). "The source of the bigrade conjugation and stem shape in pre-Old-Japanese". In Frellesvig, Bjarne; Whitman, John. Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects. John Benjamins. pp. 160–173. ISBN 978-90-272-4809-1.
• Yamaguchi, Akiho; Suzuki, Hideo; Sakanashi, Ryūzō; Tsukimoto, Masayuki (1997). Nihongo no Rekishi 日本語の歴史 [A history of the Japanese language] (in Japanese). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. ISBN 978-4-13-082004-2.

Further reading

• Frellesvig, Bjarne; Whitman, John, eds. (2008). Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects. John Benjamins. ISBN 978-90-272-4809-1.
  • Pellard, Thomas (2010). "Bjarke Frellesvig & John Whitman (2008) Proto-Japanese : Issues and prospects". Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale. 39 (1): 95–114. doi:10.1163/1960602810x00089.
• Hayata, Teruhiro (2000). "The liquid and stem-final vowel alternations of verbs in ancient Japanese". Gengo Kenkyu (118): 5–27. doi:10.11435/gengo1939.2000.118_5.
• Martin, Samuel E. (1987). The Japanese Language Through Time. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-03729-6.
• Ōno, Susumu (2000). Nihongo no Keisei 日本語の形成 [The Formation of the Japanese Language] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 978-4-00-001758-9.
• Tōdō, Akiyasu; Kanō, Yoshimitsu (2005). Gakken Shin Kan-Wa Daijiten 学研新漢和大字典 [Gakken new Chinese-Japanese character dictionary] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Gakushū Kenkyūsha. ISBN 978-4-05-300082-8.
• Vovin, Alexander (2009). A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part Two: Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles, Postpositions. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-905246-82-3.
• Yuko, Yanagida (2012). "The Syntactic Reconstruction of Alignment and Word Order: The Case of Old Japanese". Historical Linguistics 2009: Selected papers from the 19th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Historical Linguistics: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. 320. John Benjamins. pp. 107–128. doi:10.1075/cilt.320.06yan. ISBN 978-90-272-7480-9.

External links

• Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese – all Old Japanese texts in original script and transcription.
• Japanese Historical Linguistics – collection of materials at Cornell University, including drafts of the Old Japanese chapters of Frellesvig 2010.