Martin (1987:77) is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian period (). The successor to Old Japanese (), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (, after 1185) than to Old Japanese (before 794).
Background
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 Tosa Nikki, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, The Tales of Ise, The Tale of Genji, and The Pillow Book.
Writing system Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana (), 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 (, "flat/simple borrowed labels") and Buddhist shorthand practices of using pieces of kanji to denote the sounds then developed into the katakana (, "partial/piece borrowed labels").
+Phoneme and Kana of Early Middle Japanesephoneme Man'yō, hira, kataØ/n//m//j//r//w//k//g//s//z//t//d////b//a//a//ka//ga//sa//za//ta//da//na//a//ba//ma//ja//ra//wa//i//i//ki//gi//si//zi//ti//di//ni//i//bi//mi/Ø/ri//wi//u//u//ku//gu//su//zu//tu//du//nu//u//bu//mu//ju//ru/Ø/e//e//ke//ge//se//ze//te//de//ne//e//be//me//je//re//we//o//o//ko//go//so//zo//to//do//no//o//bo//mo//jo//ro//wo/
It is worth noting that the man'yōgana in each cell only indicates one of many contemporary options 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.
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 (, "new character forms") in 1946 as part of a round of orthographic reforms intended to improve literacy rates. The so-called kyūjitai (, "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, is spelled in modern Japanese hiragana as (), while in Early Middle Japanese, this would have been (). 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 , , and . 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/.Yoshida, 2001: 64 For example, around the year 800 in very early Early Middle Japanese, in the same text /ko1/ was still represented by cursive 「」, while /ko2/ was represented by cursive 「」.
In the 10th century, and progressively merged into , and and had merged into /wo/ by the 11th century.Kondō (2005:67-71)Yamaguchi (1997:43-45)Frellesvig (1995:73)
An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological effects: Introduction of palatal: "Consonantal palatalization is not original in Japanese. It is generally considered to have appeared in the language under the influence of Chinese loans. Indeed, palatalizations are particularly frequent in Sino-Japanese morphemes. They occasionally occur in Yamato words like kyou ‘today’, but this is always the result of a secondary development". and labial: "Moras of the CwV shape (called gôyôon 合拗音 in the traditional terminology) existed up until recently in certain Sino-Japanese words, for example okwashi お菓子 ‘cake’, gwaikoku 外国 ‘foreign country’. They reflect the presence of a labial glide in the Chinese original forms. Old Chinese accepted /w/ after a large variety of consonants, but, apart from a small number of exceptions attested in documents of the Heian period, it is only after the velar consonants /k/ and /g/ that /w/ could be found in Japanese. Although the combinations /kwa/, /gwa/, /kwe/, /gwe/, /kwi/, and /gwi/ all existed, only /kwa/ and /gwa/ have been maintained until the middle or end of the nineteenth century, and still exist nowadays in certain dialects, mainly in the Tôhoku or Kyûshû areas." consonant clusters such as /kw/ and /kj/ Introduction of the uvular nasal 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).Nakata (1972:26-29)
Phonetics Vowels
Consonants +Consonant phonemes Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Nasal Stop Fricative Liquid Approximant
Phonetic realization
Theories for the realization of include , , and . It may have varied depending on the following vowel, as in Modern Japanese.
By the 11th century, had merged with between vowels.
Grammar
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 () ：A series of meaningful words divided from a paragraph by 「。」(period).
(from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)
Romanization: ima fa mukasi, taketori no okina to ifu mono arikeri.
Modern Japanese translation：
English translation: Long before the present, it is said that there was someone called Old Man Bamboo Cutter. The noun「」("long past") is actually a predicate (means "is long past"). The predicate is not necessarily a verb in Early Middle Japanese. Phrase (): The smallest unit naturally divided from the rest of a sentence by its meaning. 、。
The function of the auxiliary particle「」is to highlight the noun「」(now), which cannot be separately explained, so they should be in the same phrase. Similarly, the particle 「 」 represents the relation between the modifier「」("bamboo cutter", a compound noun) and the modified noun 「」(old man), like the preposition "of". Additionally, the particle 「」 connects the called name 「」(modified by 「」) to the verb「」( "call"), just like a preposition. As for the auxiliary verb「」, it further clarifies that what the verb「」 ("be, exist") describes is a rumor about the past, but not a direct experience (i.e. ), so it should be included in the same phrase as 「」. In contrast, even if the verb 「」 does modify the noun「」 ("someone"), its meaning can still be realized naturally without any help from other words. Word (): The smallest grammatical unit.
、。 Although 「」is a combination of the noun 「」and the verb 「」("get", infinitive), any compound noun, verb, or adjective should be considered as a single grammatical unit.
Classes of words Words were classified as follows: stand alone as a phrase (Auxiliary) particle (): inflection. Has various functions like emphasis, acting like a postposition, hinting about the subject or expressing interrogative mood. Auxiliary verb (): inflection. Describes additional information of Yougen like tense, aspect, mood, voice, and polarity. Alternate descriptions include grammaticalized verb or Verb-like ending. stand alone as phrase inflection be subject Adverb(): mainly modifies Yougen. Conjunction () Interjection () Rentaisi (): mainly modifies Taigen. be subject: Taigen (, the words that are the main body of the sentence) Noun () Pronoun () Number () inflection: Yougen (, the words to predicate or to "use" other words) Verb () Adjective (): actually the stative verbs. Adjective verb (): a different kind of "adjective", which is derived from a noun. Hence also referred to as adjectival noun in English.
Auxiliary particle (Auxiliary) Particles had various functions, and they can be classified as follows: +Class of particleFunctionsExample (Particle is labeled in .)Case particlesindicating the relationship between a phrase and its following phrase. (i.e. not limited to nouns, so slightly differs from "case" in English)(The Tale of Genji) which direction of escape has gone (the bird)? (The verb 「」 is the polite form, i.e.「」, of the verb 「」"go")Conjunctive particlesindicating the relationship between clauses.(The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)「」, 「」.(「」has to be preceded by the realis mood, e.g.,「」is the realis mood of the verb「」,
to express the appropriate meaning.)Adverbial particlesmainly modifying its following yougen. (Tosa Nikki)...can only see (exactly) white wave (actually, 「」 limits the expressive range of 「」)(The verb 「」is "bound" by the binding particle 「」, so it occurs in the attributive form「」.)Binding particlesemphasizing its phrase or making it interrogative, and limiting the inflection form of the ending yougen or auxiliary verb.In direction of escape has gone (the bird)(The perfect auxiliary verb「」is "bound" by the binding particle 「」, so it occurs in the attributive form 「」.)Final particlesmainly at the end of sentence, indicating many kinds of moods (e.g. interrogative mood, emotive assertion)(Sarashina Nikki)At that time I'm definitely not good(Although the binding particle 「」 is at the end of sentence, it still requires its preceding words to be attributive.)Interjectory particlessimilar to final particle, but occurs more freely, and is often used as a short stop between sentences. (The Tale of Genji)(Yugiri) Ason At least pick these kinds of falling leaves up!
Case particle 「」 (ga) and 「」 (no) : "of, ...'s". It hints the present of subject, relation of modification between phrases or nouns. 「」(wo) (accusative). Optional. 「」(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. 「」(yori) (ablative). 「」(made) (terminative: 'until'; 'as far as'). 「」(to) (comitative: 'with'; essive 'as'). 「」(fe) (allative: 'to'). 「」 was derived from the noun「 」'vicinity; direction', which 「」 occasionally found in the location noun structure Noun + 「」 + Location Noun to mean 'near', or in the noun-deriving suffix 「」 (< 「」) in such words as 'beside the water' .