Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai

Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai (上代特殊仮名遣) is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables that later merged.

The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of scholarly debate in the study of the history of the Japanese language.

Syllables

The following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese.

Those syllables marked in gray are known as jōdai tokushu kanazukai.

Transcription

The two groups merged by the 9th century. It predates the development of kana, and the phonetic difference is unclear. Therefore, an ad hoc transcription system is employed.

Syllables written with subscript 1 are known as type A (甲, kō) and those with subscript 2 as type B (乙, otsu) (these are the first two celestial stems, and are used for such numbering in Japanese).

There are several competing transcription systems. One popular system places a dieresis above the vowel: ï, ë, ö. This typically represents i₂, e₂, and o₂, and assumes that unmarked i, e, and o are i₁, e₁, and o₁. It does not necessarily have anything to do with pronunciation. There are several problems with this system.

• It implies a particular pronunciation, indirectly on the vowel.
• It neglects to distinguish between words where the distinction is not clear, such as the /to/ in /toru/ as well as in /kaditori/.

Another system uses superscripts instead of subscripts.

Meaning

There are many hypotheses to explain the distinction. However, it is not clear whether the distinction applied to the consonant, vowel, or something else. There is no general academic agreement.

Usage

A word is consistently, without exception, written with syllables from a specific group. For example, /kami₁/ "above" and /kami₂/ "god". While both words consist of an /m/ and an /i/, mi₁ can not substitute for mi₂ or vice versa. This strict distinction exists for all of the syllables marked in gray.

This usage is also found in the verb morphology. The quadrigrade conjugation is as follows:

The verb /sak-/ "bloom" has quadrigrade conjugation class. Thus, its conjugation is as follows:

Before the jōdai tokushu kanazukai discovery, it was thought that quadrigrade realis and imperative shared the same form: -e. However, after the discovery, it became clear that realis was -e₂ while imperative was -e₁.

Also, jōdai tokushu kanazukai has a profound effect on etymology. It was once thought that /kami/ "above" and /kami/ "god" shared the same etymology, a god being an entity high above. However, after the discovery, it is known that "above" is /kami₁/ while "god" is /kami₂/. Thus, they are distinct words.

Man'yōgana chart

The following chart lists syllable and man'yōgana correspondences.

Development

The distinction between /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ is only made in the oldest text: Kojiki. After that, they merged into /mo/.

In later texts, confusion between types A and B can be seen. Nearly all of the A/B distinctions had vanished by the Classical Japanese period. As seen in early Heian Period texts such as Kogo Shūi, the final syllables to be distinguished were /ko₁, go₁/ and /ko₂, go₂/. After the merger, CV₁ and CV₂ became CV.

See also

• Kogo Shūi, an 807 text that maintains several historical phonetic distinctions
• Tōdaiji Fujumonkō, a c. 9th-century text that maintains the /ko₁, ko₂/ distinction

Bibliography

• Omodaka, Hisataka (1967). Jidaibetsu Kokugo Daijiten: Jōdaihen (in Japanese). Sanseidō. ISBN 4-385-13237-2. 
• Ōno, Susumu. Kanazukai to Jōdaigo (in Japanese). Iwanami Shoten.