Old Japanese Phonology and the Korean–Japanese Relationship

要旨

Samuel E. Martin has recently, for the first time, unequivocally demonstrated the Korean-Japanese relationship, but his sound correspondences are in the main based on comparisons between Middle Korean and Modern Japanese cognates. The Japanese forms which enter into his reconstructions are phonologically ‘antiqued’ on the basis of the traditional (and largely historical) orthography, but they do not take full cognizance of our present knowledge of the phonology of Old Japanese. The problem is particularly critical because of the nature of the Old Japanese vocalism, which, in contrast to the modern five-vowel system of the standard language of Tokyo, can be shown to have been an eight-vowel system. The present paper collects the available Old Japanese evidence for those Japanese forms which enter into Martin's comparisons, with the particular aim of seeing what light Old Japanese phonology may cast upon his reconstructions for the proto-Korean-Japanese unity.

主題