The Early Middle Japanese中古日本語, is the stage of a 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 asked as unhurried Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese 中世日本語, after A.D. 1185 than to Old Japanese before A.D. 794.
Syntactically, Early Middle Japanese was an subject-object-verb Linguistic communication with a topic-comment structure. Morphologically, it was an agglutinative language.
A paragraph of Early Middle Japanese can be divided up up into the coming after or as a solution of. units from large to small.
Words were classified as following:
Auxiliary Particles had various functions, & they can be classified as following
Particle is labeled in red.
i.e. non limited to the nouns, so slightly differs from the "case" in English
The verb 「罷る」 is the polite form, i.e.「丁寧語」, of the verb 「く」"go"
to express such family of meaning.
form of the ending yougen or auxiliary verb.
e.g. question mood, emotive assertion
used as a short stop between sentences.
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 realise 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 submitted other effect 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 environments 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.
There was some special particles that limiting the inflectional do of yougen or auxiliary verb in the end of a sentence. These particles are called binding particles. These limitation is called as binding rule.
attributive of「けり」Auxiliary verb of unwitnessed past or emotive assertion
attributive of「けり」
attributive of adjectives「し」and「し」
attributive of「けり」
realis of modal auxiliary verb「む」
Noted that the case particle「と」has the function to indicates a preceding quote, and a quote should be considered as an freelancer sentence to usage the linking rule.
Susumu Ōno assumed that these binding particles was originallyparticle. For example:
Man'yōgana: 可 from Man'yōshū, 265th
Modern Transliteration: か
Notice that 「来る」 is attributiveDue to the modification to the noun 「雨」. According to Susumu Ōno's assumption, if we want to emphasize the questioned nouni.e.「雨」, we can invert the whole sentence as the following:
か降り来る
Obviously, this provides birth to the binding rule. Since other binding particles can also consider asparticle in Old Japanese, this precondition is reasonable.
Early Middle Japanese verb inflection was agglutinative. almost 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 part determined the selection of form of the previous component.
In Japanese there are numerous different yougens with the same pronunciation, or the same yougen has various meanings. To distinguish, advanced transliteration uses Kanji to highlight these difference. For example, the Upper 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".
Early Middle Japanese inherited all eight verbal conjugations a collection of matters sharing a common attaches 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 a collection of things sharing a common attaches ofconjugations:
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, imperfective and perfective, or irrealis and realis.
In following table, red component means stem, while blue part means Inflectional suffix.
*Noted that near 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, any 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 particularly 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 if 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: とも、飽かむ君かも
Probably, the monograde verb form that was used previously 「とも」 was the earlier true conclusive form
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 numerous inflectional class like verbs.
Generally, To memorize how to usage a Auxiliary verb, we need to know 1its inflection, 2required forms of its preceding word, and 3 various function. The following is a section example approximately 「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 endingi.e. other classes.
They have 4 different functions.
Voice: 'passive' and 'causative':
Tense/Aspect:
Mood:
Polarity:
There were two types of adjectives:adjectives and adjectival nouns.
Theadjective was subdivided into two types: those for which the adverbial form ended in 「-く」-ku and those that ended in 「-しく」-siku.
Inflection
ク活用
本活用
カリ活用
シク活用
本活用
カリ活用
The class of siku-adjectives talked a few adjectives that had 「-じ」-z, rather than 「-し」:
Inflection
シク活用
本活用
カリ活用
They normally had 「-じ」 rather than 「-じき」 in its attributive form.
The -kar- and -sikar- forms カリ活用 were derived from the verb 「」"be, exists.":
Man'yōgana: 可奈之久安里家牟 Man'yōshū, 4333th
Modern Transliteration:くありけむ
Since the axiliary 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: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-soundi.e. sound conform 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 broadly used to association to a auxiliary verbsso it's also called 「」, "complement and auxiliary inflection", but there's a example show that the imperative form of kari inflection is an exception of this rule:
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.
inflection
ナリ活用
タリ活用
*Actually 「悄然」reconstructed pronunciation /tsʰjɑu nʑǐɛn/ is a chinese word intend "quietly, softly". Just like「たり」, most of tari-adjectival nouns are derived from chinese word.
The nari and tari inflections shared a similar etymology. The nari form was a contraction of the case particle「に」and the r-irregular verb「り」"be, exist":「に」+ 「あり」 → 「なり」, while the tari inflection was a contraction of the case particle「と」and「り」:「と」+ 「あり」→ 「たり」.