Early Middle Japanese (中古日本語) 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

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"). 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. 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, , 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/. 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」. In the 10th century, and progressively merged into, and and had merged into /wo/ by the 11th century. An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological effects: The development of the uvular nasal and geminated consonants occurred late in the Heian period and brought about the introduction of closed syllables (CVC).

Phonetics

Vowels

Consonants

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.

Classes of words

Words were classified as follows:

Auxiliary particle

(Auxiliary) Particles had various functions, and they can be classified as follows:

Case particle

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 particle

Binding particle

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. These limitations are called binding rules(りびの). Note that the case particle「 と 」indicates a preceding quote, and when it is used, a quote should be considered an independent sentence when using the linking rule. Susumu Ōno assumed that these binding particles originally acted as final particles. For example: Man'yōgana: 苦毛 零來雨可 (from Man'yōshū, 265th) Modern transliteration: しくも　りるか Notice that 「来る」 is attributive(Due to the modification to the noun 「雨」). According to Susumu Ōno's assumption, if we want to emphasize the noun in question(i.e.「雨」), we can invert the whole sentence as the following:"雨か降り来る"Obviously, this gives birth to the binding rule. Since other binding particles can also be considered final particles in Old Japanese, this assumption is reasonable.

Verbs

Early Middle Japanese verb inflection was agglutinative. Most verbs were conjugated in 6 forms and could be combined with auxiliary verbs to express tense, aspect, mood, voice, and polarity. Several of the auxiliary verbs could be combined in a string, and each component determined the choice of form of the preceding component. In Japanese there are many different yougens with the same pronunciation, or the same yougen has various meanings. To distinguish, modern transliteration uses Kanji to highlight these differences. For example, the lower bigrade verbs「る」means "get used to", but its also means "become familiar" which is represented by「る」. Meanwhile, the quadrigrade verb「る」has the same pronunciation with 「る」but it actually means "become".

Conjugation

Early Middle Japanese inherited all eight verbal conjugations class from Old Japanese and added new one: Lower Monograde, but there's only 「る」("kick by foot") classified as Lower Monograde in Early Middle Japanese. Early Middle Japanese Verbs were divided into 5 class of regular conjugations: Quadrigrade (四段, yodan), Upper monograde (上一段, kami ichidan), Lower monograde (下一段, shimo ichidan), Upper bigrade (上二段, kami nidan), Lower bigrade (下二段, shimo nidan). There were also 4 "irregular" (変格) conjugations: K-irregular (カ変, kahen), S-irregular (サ変, sahen), N-irregular (ナ変, nahen), R-irregular (ラ変, rahen). The conjugation of each is divided into 6 Inflectional forms: The English names for the irrealis and the realis differ from author to author, including negative and evidential, or imperfective and perfective. In following table, red part means stem, while blue part means Inflectional suffix.

• Noted that most S-irregular is the combination of a noun and 「」, for example, 「す」 is a combination of the noun 「」 ('date') and 「」. The 「よ」 at the end of the imperative forms is optional, although exceedingly common. The system of 9 conjugation classes appears to be complex. However, all nine conjugations can be subsumed into variations of two groups: The irregularity of N-irregular verbs occurred only in the conclusive and the attributive, and as there are no quadrigrade verbs with n-roots, quadrigrade and N-irregular verb patterns may be treated as being in complementary distribution. Vowel-root verbs consist of bigrade verbs (the majority), a few monograde verbs (especially る 'see' and る 'sit'), the K-irregular verb 'come', and the S-irregular verb se- 'do' (or -ze- in some compounds). The difference between 'upper' and 'lower' bigrade or monograde verbs is whether the vowel at the end of the root was i or e. The difference between bigrade and monograde was whether in the conclusive, attributive, and realis, the initial u of the ending elided the vowel of the root or the vowel of the roots elides the initial u of the ending. There are some questions about this arrangement of forms: Man'yōgana: 之婆之婆美等母 安加無伎禰加毛 (Man'yōshū, 4503th) Modern transliteration: しばしばとも、かむかも It is possible that the monograde verb infinitive form mi above that was used before 「とも」 was the earlier true conclusive form. Alternatively, the form above may have been an instance of poetic contraction to limit the number of morae on the line to the expected seven.

Auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs are attached to the various forms of yougen, and a yougen could be followed by several such endings in a string. Auxiliary verbs are classified into many inflectional class like verbs. Generally, To learn how to use a Auxiliary verb, we need to know (1)its inflection, (2)required forms of its preceding word, and (3) various function. The following is a detail example about 「る」and 「らる」. 「る」 requires to be preceded by irrealis with -a ending (i.e. quadrigrade, N-irregular and R-irregular), while 「らる」requires irrealis without -a ending(i.e. other classes). They have 4 different functions. にあなづらるるもの (The Pillow Book) translation: thing that is despised by people 母のしがらるること (Tosa Nikki) translation: the thing that make the mother (author's wife) sad (i.e. representing slight respect to his own wife) してられじ (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) translation: It doesn't seem bow and arrow can shoot (it down). (Noted that 「じ」is a modal auxiliary verb that requires to be preceded by irrealis) のにぞかれぬる (Kokin Wakashū, 169th) translation: the sound of wind (exactly) has made me startled. (Noted that「ぬる」is attributive of perfect auxiliary verb「ぬ」. Since it's "bound" by binding particle「ぞ」, it has to occur as attributive.)

Rough classification

Voice: 'passive' and 'causative': Tense/Aspect: Mood: Polarity:

Adjectives

There were two types of adjectives: regular adjectives and adjectival nouns. The regular adjective was subdivided into two types: those for which the adverbial form ended in 「-く」(-ku) and those that ended in 「-しく」(-siku). The class of siku-adjectives included a few adjectives that had 「-じ」(-z), rather than 「-し」: The -kar- and -sikar- forms (カリ活用) were derived from the verb 「り」"be, exists.": Man'yōgana: 可奈之久安里家牟 (Man'yōshū, 4333th) Modern transliteration:しくありけむ Since the auxiliary verb of pass tentative mood「けむ」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「あり」is in infinitive form. And then naturally, the adjective 「し」links to 「あり」 by infinitive (連用形). In Man'yōshū there's also example of 「-かり」. Man'yōgana: 加奈之可利家理 (Man'yōshū, 793th) Modern transliteration:しかりけり Since the auxiliary verb of unwitnessed past「けり」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「し」is in infinitive form. So it's reasonable to assume that the infinitive suffix「-かり」is derived from 「-くあり」that had lost its initial u-sound(i.e. sound change of infinitive suffix + 「あり」). There's also similar example about other forms in Man'yōshū. From above paragraph, we can realize that kari inflection is generally used to link to a auxiliary verbs(so it's also called 「」, "complement and auxiliary inflection"), but there's an example to show that the imperative form of kari inflection is an exception of this rule: "はげしかれとは (Senzai Wakashū, 708th)"That is, the imperative form of kari inflection is independently used without linking to any auxiliary verb.(However, it actually expresses a wish but not a order.)

Adjectival noun

• The Japanese term 悄然 (seuzen, modern shōzen) is a borrowing from Middle Chinese word 悄然 with reconstructed pronunciation, meaning ‘quietly, softly’. Like 悄然 (seuzen), most tari adjectives are derived from Chinese borrowings. The nari and tari inflections shared a similar etymology. The nari form was a contraction of the adverbial particle「に」and the -r irregular verb「り」"be, exist": に + あり → なり, while the tari inflection was a contraction of the adverbial particle と and り: と + あり → たり.

Yougen in auxiliary form

Special inflection

Mi-inflection

Ku-inflection

Sources