Late Old Japanese
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Late Old Japanese (中古日本語, chūko nihongo^?) is a stage of the Japanese language used between 794 and 1185, a time known as the Heian Period. It is the successor to Old Japanese.

Background

Whereas Old Japanese borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese, during the Late Old period two new scripts emerge: Hiragana and Katakana. This development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature with such classics as The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, The Tales of Ise and many others.

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Phonemes

Whereas Old Japanese made 88 syllabic distinctions, Late Old reduces that count to 66.

Phonological developments

Major phonological changes are a characteristic of this period.

The most prominent difference is the loss of Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai, which distinguished between two types of -i, -e, and -o. While the beginnings of this loss can already be seen at the end of Old Japanese, it is completely lost early in Late Old Japanese. The final phonemes to be lost are /ko₁/ and /ko₂/.^[1]

During the 10th century, /e/ and /ye/ merge into /e/ while /o/ and /wo/ merge into /o/ by the 11th century.^[2][3][4]

An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological effects:

• Palatal and labial consonant clusters such as /kw/ and /ky/
• Uvular nasal [ɴ]
• Length became a phonetic feature with the development of both long vowels and long consonants

The development of the uvular nasal and germinated consonants occurred late in the Heian period and brought about the introduction of closed syllables (CVC). ^[5]

Other changes include:

• The change of the prenasalized consonants to voiced consonants^{citation needed}
• The change in timing from syllable-timing to mora-timing^{citation needed}

Phonetics

Vowels

• /a/: [a]
• /i/: [i]
• /u/: [u]
• /e/: [je]^[2][3][4]
• /o/: [wo]

Consonants

/k, g/

/k, g/: [k, g]

/s, z/

Theories for /s, z/ include [s, z], [ts, dz], and ʃ, ʒ. It may have varied depending on the following vowel, as it does with modern Japanese.

/t, d/

/t, d/: [t, d]

/n/

/n/: [n]

/h/

/h/ continues to be phonetically realized as ɸ . With one exception: By the 11th century, Intervocalic /h/ is realized as w.

/m/

/m/: [m]

/y/

/y/: [j]

/r/

/r/: [r]

/w/

/w/: [w]

Syllable structure

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Grammar

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Verbs

Late Old Japanese inherits all eight verbal conjugations from Old Japanese and adds one new one: Lower Monograde (下一段).

Conjugation

Consonant / Vowel Stem

Verbs having a base that ends in a consonant are known as consonant-stem. These are exhibited by the following conjugation classes: Quadrigrade, Upper Bigrade, Lower Monograde, Lower Bigrade, S-irregular, R-irregular, K-irregular, and N-irregular.

Verbs having a base that ends in a vowel are known as vowel-stem. These are exhibited by the following conjugation classes: Upper Monograde.

Irregular Verbs

There are several verbs with irregular conjugations.

• K-irregular: k- "come"
• S-irregular: s- "do"
• N-irregular: sin- "die", in- "go, die"
• R-irregular: ar- "be, exist", wor- "be, exist"

The conjugation class for each is named after the final stem consonant.

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:

The -kar- and -sikar- forms are derived from the verb ar- "be, exists". The adverbial conjugation (-ku or -siku) is suffixed with ar-. The conjugation yields to the R-irregular conjugation of ar-. The resulting -ua- elides into -a-.

The adjectival noun retains the original nar- conjugation and adds a new tar-:

The nar- and tar- forms share a common etymology. The nar- form is a contraction of case particle ni and r-irregular verb ar- "is, be": ni + ar- > nar-. The tar- form is a contraction of case particle to and r-irregular verb ar- "is, be": to + ar- > tar-. Both derive their conjugations from the verb ar-.

Writing system

Late Old Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana, Chinese characters used as a phonetic transcription as in Early Old Japanese. This usage later produced the hiragana and katakana syllabic scripts which were derived from simplifications of the original Chinese characters.

Notes

1. ^ Yoshida, 2001: 64
2. ^ ^{a b} Kondō, Nihongo no Rekishi, pages 67-71
3. ^ ^{a b} Yamaguchi, Nihongo no Rekishi, pages 43-45
4. ^ ^{a b} Frellesvig, page 73
5. ^ Nakata, pages 26-29

References