is a stage of the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

between 794 and 1185, which is known as the

Heian Period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese ...

(). The successor to

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...

(), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to

Late Middle Japanese was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form. The period ...

(, after A.D. 1185) than to Old Japanese (before A.D. 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 is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

and

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

. 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 is a (fictional prose narrative) containing elements of Japanese folklore. Written by an unknown author in the late 9th or early 10th century during the Heian period, it is considered the oldest surviving work in the form. The story detail ...

'', and ''

The Tales of Ise is a Japanese ''uta monogatari'', or collection of '' waka'' poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems in most version ...

''.

Writing system

Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...

(), literally "ten thousand leaves borrowed labels", in reference to the '' Man'yōshū'' poetry anthology and the "borrowing" of the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

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

(, "flat/simple borrowed labels") and Buddhist shorthand practices of using pieces of kanji to denote the sounds then developed into the

(, "partial/piece borrowed labels"). Note that the

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...

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

. See also

Hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. History Today, with few exceptions, there is only one hiragana for each of the forty-five moras that are written without diacritics or digraphs. However, traditionally there ...

for a fuller description of how multiple

could be used to spell a single sound. Also note that hiragana forms were not standardized at that time. Although

specify different

to represent voiced phonemes versus unvoiced phonemes, but strangely it is not until the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

that we see standardized usage of the ''dakuten'' diacritic ゛ to explicitly mark voicing for hiragana and katakana. Japan officially adopted simplified ''

shinjitai are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found in ''shinjitai'' are also found in Simplified Chinese characters, but ''shinjitai'' is generally not as extensiv ...

'' (, "new character forms") in 1946 as part of a round of orthographic reforms intended to improve literacy rates. The so-called ''

kyūjitai ''Kyūjitai'' ( ja, 舊字體 / 旧字体, lit=old character forms) are the traditional forms of kanji, Chinese written characters used in Japanese. Their simplified counterparts are ''shinjitai'' ( ja, 新字体, lit=new character forms, lab ...

'' (, "old character forms") are equivalent to

Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took ...

, and these forms were the ones used in historical

. Modern transcriptions of classical texts are predominantly written in

. To avoid unnecessary ambiguity, the following quotes from classical texts would be written in

. Additionally, there are many spelling differences between

Modern Japanese Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosoph ...

and Early Middle Japanese even for the same word. For example, is spelled in modern Japanese hiragana as (''man'yōshū''), while in Early Middle Japanese, this would have been (''man'yefushifu''). For details on the spelling rules, please refer to the "Historical kana usage" section of the Classical Japanese article.

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 begin to blur already at the end of the

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: *

Palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...

and labial consonant clusters such as /kw/ and /kj/ *The

uvular nasal The voiced uvular nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter n; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbo ...

* Length became a phonemic feature with the development of both

long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

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

Phonetic Realization

Theories for the realization of include , , and . It may have varied depending on the following vowel, like in Modern Japanese.

By the 11th century, had merged with between vowels.

Grammar

Syntactically, Early Middle Japanese was an subject-object-verb language with a

topic-comment In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally ...

structure. Morphologically, it was an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to r ...

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

) : :

Romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

: ima wa mukasi, taketori no okina to ifu mono arikeri. : :

translation： : :English translation: Long ago from now, it's said that there's someone called old man of bamboo cutter. :Noted that the noun「」("long past") is actually a predicate (means "is long past"). Predicate is not necessarily a verb in Early Middle Japanese. *Phrase (): A smallest unit naturally divided from a sentence by its meaning. :、。 :The function of auxiliary particle「」is to highlight the noun「」(now), which can't separately explain, so they should be in the same phrase. Similarly the particle 「」 represents the relation between the modifier「」("bamboo cutter", a compound noun) and modified noun 「」(old man), like the preposition "of". Additionally, particle 「」 connects the called name 「」(modified by 「」) to the verb「」( "call"), just like a preposition. As for auxiliary verb「」, it further clarifies the content that the verb「」 ("be, exist") describes is a rumor about past, but no a direct experience (i.e. ), so it should be included in the same phrase of 「」. In contrast, even if the verb 「」 does modify the noun「」 ("someone"), we still can naturally realize its meaning without any help from other words. *Word (): A smallest grammatical units. :、。 :Although 「」is a combination of the noun 「」and the verb 「」("get", infinitive), any compound noun, verb and adjective should be considered as a single grammatical unit.

Classes of words

Words were classified as following: * stand alone as phrase ** (Auxiliary) particle (): inflection. Has various function like emphasis, acting like

postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

, hinting the subject or expressing interrogative mood. ** Auxiliary verb (): inflection. Describe additional information of Yougen like tense, aspect, mood, voice, and polarity. There's other translation like grammaticalized verbs 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 (): acutually the

stative verbs According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...

. *** Adjective verb (): other kind of "adjective", which derived from noun. Therefore, it's also called adjectival noun in English.

Auxiliary Particle

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

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' . 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

* Infinitive + 「」(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「」 were usually the same. * Realis + 「」(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 「」 was usually different. * Irrealis + 「」(ba): 'if...', It usually expressed a unreal condition. * Irrealis + 「」(de): negative 'and', 'without ... ing', 'rather than ... ', derived from old infinitive of negative auxiliary verb「」(i.e. 「」) + the particle 「」with sound change. * Various forms + 「」 ''(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「」also took the attributive. * Infinitive + 「」 (tutu): 'while (at the same time)'. * Infinitive of verb / stem of adjective + 「」''(nagara)'': 'while, while still' or 'despite'.

Binding particle

There was some special particles that limiting the inflectional form of yougen or auxiliary verb in the end of a sentence. These particles are called binding particles(). These limitation is called as binding rule(). Noted that the case particle「と」has the function to indicates a preceding quote, and a quote should be considered as an independent sentence to use the linking rule.

Susumu Ōno was a Tokyo-born linguist, specializing in the early history of the Japanese language. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1943, where he studied under Shinkichi Hashimoto. He was professor emeritus at Gakushuin University. Career Ō ...

assumed that these binding particles was originally final particle. For example:

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...
: (from Man'yōshū, 265th) Modern Transliteration:

Notice that 「」 is attributive(Due to the modification to the noun 「」). According to

's assumption, if we want to emphasize the questioned noun(i.e.「」), we can invert the whole sentence as the following:

Obviously, this gives birth to the binding rule. Since other binding particles can also consider as final particle in

, this assumption is reasonable.

Verbs

Early Middle Japanese verb inflection was

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

. Most verbs were conjugated in a 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 are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

to highlight these difference. For example, the Upper bigrade verbs「」means "get used to", but its also means "become familiar" which is represented by「」. Meanwhile, the quadrigrade verb「」has the same pronunciation with 「」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 「」("kick by foot") classified as Lower Monograde in Early Middle Japanese. Early Middle Japanese Verbs were divided into 5 class of regular conjugations: Quadrigrade ('', yodan''), Upper monograde ('', kami ichidan''), Lower monograde ('', shimo ichidan''), Upper bigrade ('', kami nidan''), Lower bigrade ('', shimo nidan''). There were also 4 "irregular" () conjugations: K-irregular ('', kahen''), S-irregular ('', sahen''), N-irregular ('', nahen''), R-irregular ('', rahen''). The conjugation of each is divided into 6 Inflectional forms(): * Irrealis ('', mizenkei,'' "imperfect form") * Infinitive ('', ren'yōkei'', "form linking to Yougen") * Conclusive ('', shūshikei,'' "form to end sentence) * Attributive ('', rentaikei'', "form linking to Taigen") * Realis ('', izenkei'', "perfect form") * Imperative ('', meireikei'',"form to give order") The English names for the irrealis and the realis differ from author to author, including negative and evidential, imperfective and perfective, or irrealis and realis. In following table, red part means , while blue part means . * Inflectional form = () + ( = + ) * = root consonant + real suffix (root consonant is unique to every verb.) , (-a) , , (-i) , , colspan="2" , (-u) , , colspan="2" , (-e) , 'hear' , - ! rowspan="2" , Upper Monograde
, - , colspan="2" , (-i) , , colspan="2" , (-iru) , , (-ire) , , (-i o , 'see' , - , colspan="2" , , colspan="2" , , , , 'use' , - ! Lower Monograde
, - , colspan="2" , (-e) , , colspan="2" , (-eru) , , (-ere) , , (-e o , 'kick' , - ! Upper Bigrade
, colspan="2" , (-i) , , (-u) , , (-uru) , , (-ure) , , (-iyo) , 'pass' , - ! Lower Bigrade
, colspan="2" , (-e) , , (-u) , , (-uru) , , (-ure) , , (-e o , 'receive' , - ! K-irregular
, - , (-o) , , (-i) , , } (-u) , , (-uru) , , (-ure) , , (-o) , 'come' , - ! rowspan="2" , S-irregular
, - , (-e) , , (-i) , , } (-u) , , (-uru) , , (-ure) , , (-e o , 'do' , - , , , , , , , 'set the date' * , - ! N-irregular
, (-a) , , (-i) , , (-u) , , (-uru) , , (-ure) , , (-e) , 'die' , - ! R-irregular
, (-a) , , colspan="2" , (-i) , , (-u) , , colspan="2" , (-e) , 'be, exist' *Noted that most S-irregular is the combination of a noun and 「」, for example, 「」 is a combination of the noun 「」 ('date') and 「」. The 「」 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 consonant-root verbs (quadrigrade, N-irregular and R-irregular verbs) * the vowel-root verbs (others) 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 In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...

. Vowel-root verbs consist of bigrade verbs (the majority), a few monograde verbs (especially 'see' and '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: *The irrealis doesn't have an independent existence. *The classical

passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...

auxiliary verb 「」(「」in

) is required to add after Irrealis -a ending (i.e. quadrigrade, N-irregular and R-irregular), while the other classical passive auxiliary verbs 「」(「」in

) requires irrealis -a ending(i.e. other classes). This raises the assumption that this -a ending appears to be part of auxiliary verb, but not part of verb conjugation(The causative auxiliary verbs 「」 and 「」have same kind of requirement). According to this assumption, some scholars like Nicolas Tranter‬ doesn't agree with the existence of irrealis (they think it just a more primitive "stem" + -a ending from other words). But this assumption can't explain irrealis + the particle 「」("if") represents a unreal condition(i.e. Subjunctive mood) in classical Japanese. Actually, the term 「」 literally means "imperfect form", and it's named after this kind of usage. Additionally, this assumption can't explain the modal auxiliary verb 「」("as someone though it should/could...") is also required to occur after irrealis.
ex. Quadrigrade verb: ( The Tale of Genji)
Quadrigrade verb: (

Kokin Wakashū The , commonly abbreviated as , is an early anthology of the '' waka'' form of Japanese poetry, dating from the Heian period. An imperial anthology, it was conceived by Emperor Uda () and published by order of his son Emperor Daigo () in abo ...

, 411th)
Lower Bigrade: (

The Pillow Book is a book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi during the 990s and early 1000s in Heian-period Japan. The book was completed in the year 1002. The work is a collection o ...

)
K-irregular: (

)
Noted that auxiliary verbs has its own inflection, for example, 「」 is the attributive of 「」, while「」 is the attributive of 「」. Additionally, both of their inflection are classified as lower bigrade. * The infinitive had two functions, a linking function with another Yougen or auxiliary verb and a nominal function as a verb-noun, but these two functions have different pitch patterns. * Generally, The Yougen or auxiliary verb occurred before conjunction particle「」 ("even if") in the form of conclusive, but in some case of

upper monograde verbs 「」 appears as infinitive before「」:

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...
: 之婆之婆等母安加無伎禰加毛 ( Man'yōshū, 4503th)
Modern Transliteration:

Probably, the monograde verb form that was used before 「」 was the earlier true conclusive form * Additionally, before auxiliary verb 「」("should/could") generally the yougens should use the conclusive, while R-irregular verbs use the attributive instead (「」'be' at the end of a sentence but 「」'should be'). With endings such as 「」, there is strong evidence that they were originally the adverb 「」("certainly") and probably that a fusion of the root of the verb with the ''u''-sound of the ending (* + → ) has been interpreted as conclusive +「」. This suggests that the apparently-anomalous ''u'' in 「」was part of the ending, not of the verb form.

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 「」and 「」. 「」 requires to be preceded by irrealis -a ending (i.e. quadrigrade, N-irregular and R-irregular), while 「」requires irrealis -a ending(i.e. other classes). They have 4 different functions. # Representing passive mood:
(

)
translation: thing that despised people # Representing slight respect to someone (by means of passive mood):
( Tosa Nikki)
translation: the thing that make the mother (author's wife) sad (i.e. representing slight respect to his own wife) # Expressing possibility or potential.
(

)
translation: bow and arrow shoot (it down). (Noted that 「」is a modal auxiliary verb that requires to be preceded by irrealis) # Representing a spontaneous voice(i.e. without volitional control).
(

, 169th)
translation: the sound of wind () me startled.
(Noted that「」is attributive of perfect auxiliary verb「」. Since it's "bound" by binding particle「」, it has to occur as attributive.)

Rough Classification

Voice: 'passive' and 'causative': * Consonant-stem verbs + 「」, vowel-stem verbs + 「」 (lower bigrade): passive voice; spontaneous voice (expressing lack of volitional control); honorific; potential ('can'). * Consonant-stem verbs + 「」, vowel-stem verbs + 「」 (lower bigrade): causative; honorific. * Any verb + 「」 (lower bigrade): causative; honorific. It often occurs in

Kanbun A is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. ...

. Tense/Aspect: * Irrealis +「」 (R-irregular): progressive or perfect aspect. Only attached to quadrigrade or S-irregular verbs. * Infinitive + 「」 (R-irregular): progressive or perfect aspect. Attached to any verbs. * Infinitive + 「」 (N-irregular): perfective aspect. * Infinitive + 「」 (lower bigrade): perfective aspect. * Infinitive + 「」(unique conjugation): witnessed past tense. * Infinitive + 「」 (R-irregular): unwitnessed past tense, or emotive assertion. * Irrealis + 「」 (unique conjugation): counterfactual ('would have ... ed'). The combination 「」(Irrealis + ) expresses a counterfactual condition ('if ... had ... ed'). Mood: * 「」 (quadrigrade): tentative mood, expressing among other functions uncertainty ('maybe', 'shall I?'), intention ('I shall'), and hortative ('let's'). * 「」 (siku-adjective): debitive mood, expressing 'can', 'should', or 'must'. * 「」 (R-irregular): hearsay mood. Polarity: * 「」(unique conjugation): negative. * 「」 (uninflected): negative of the tentative mood (not seem...). * 「」(siku-adjective): negative of the debitive mood.

Adjectives

There were two types of adjectives: regular

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

s and adjectival nouns. The regular adjective was subdivided into two types: those for which the adverbial form ended in 「-」(-''ku)'' and those that ended in 「-」(-''siku''). , ( / ) , , (-ku) , , (-si) , , (-ki) , , (-kere) , , , rowspan="2" , 'be high' , - !(-kari) , (-kara) , , (-kari) , , , , (-karu) , , , , (-kare) , - ! rowspan="2" , -siku !(main) , rowspan="2" , ( / ) , , (-siku) , , (-si) , , (-siki) , , (-sikere) , , , rowspan="2" , 'be beautiful' , - !(-kari) , (-sikara) , , (-sikari) , , , , (-sikaru) , , , , (-sikare) The class of siku-adjectives included a few adjectives that had 「-」(-z), rather than 「-」: , (-) , , - , , - , , - , , - , , , rowspan="2" , 'be the same' , - !kari , - , , - , , , , - , , , , - They usually had 「-」 rather than 「-」 in its attributive form. The -''kar''- and -''sikar''- forms () were derived from the verb 「」"be, exists.":

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...
: 可奈之家牟 ( Man'yōshū, 4333th)
Modern Transliteration:

Since the axiliary verb of pass tentative mood「」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「」is in infinitive form. And then naturally, the adjective 「」links to 「」 by infinitive (). In Man'yōshū there's also example of 「-」.

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...
: 加奈之家理 ( Man'yōshū, 793th)
Modern Transliteration:

Since the auxiliary verb of unwitnessed past「」needs to be preceded by infinitive, 「」is in infinitive form. So It's reasonable to assume that the infinitive suffix「-」is derived from 「-」that had lost its initial u-sound(i.e. sound change of infinitive suffix + 「」). 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:

(
Senzai Wakashū , often abbreviated as ''Senzaishū'', is an imperial anthology of Japanese waka poetry. It was compiled in 1187 by Fujiwara no Shunzei at the behest of the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who ordered it in 1183. It consists of twenty volumes ...
, 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

* , rowspan="2" , (-tara), , (-tari) , , rowspan="2" , (-tari) , , rowspan="2" , (-taru) , , colspan="2" rowspan="2" , (-tare) , rowspan="2" , ''be quiet, soft" , - , (-to) *The Japanese term (''seuzen'', modern ''shōzen'') is a borrowing from

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...

word with reconstructed pronunciation , meaning ‘quietly, softly’. Like (''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「」and the ''-r'' irregular verb「」"be, exist": + → , while the ''tari'' inflection was a contraction of the adverbial particle and : + → .

Yougen in auxiliary form

* 「」 (R-irregular): progressive aspect. 'sit; live; be'. * 「」 (Upper monograde): progressive aspect. 'continue, …ing'. * 「」 (Quadrigrade): preparative aspect, expressing an action performed in readiness for some future action. 'put'. * 「」(Upper monograde): speculative aspect, expressing an action performed experimentally, to 'see' what it is like. 'see'.

Special Inflection

Mi-Inflection

Ku-Inflection

References

Sources

* * * Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). ''A history of the Japanese language''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * * * * * * * * * * {{Authority control Japanese language Archaic Japanese language * Languages attested from the 8th century