Category: Historical linguistics

It seems that most stelai inscribed druing the Ryūkyū Kingdom are either in Classical Chinese, or in Middle (or literary Early Modern) Japanese. Very few are actually in the contemporary vernacular Old or Middle Okinawan. The stele erected at the eastern entrance to Sōgen-ji (崇元寺) is one of the few exceptions, with one face in Classical Chinese, and another in Middle Okinawan.

Background on Sōgen-ji
Sōgen-ji was located between Tomari (泊村 Tomari-mura) and Makishi Villages (牧志村 Makishi-mura) near where the Asato River (安里川 Asato-gawa) split into Tomari Harbor (泊港 Tomari-kō) and the Kumoji River (久茂地川  Kumoji-gawa), on the western edge of classical Naha. Originally built as a Rinzai (臨済宗 Rinzai-shū) Zen Buddhist temple, it later served as a Royal Mausoleum (until the construciton of Tamaudun in 1501 CE). It was built early on during the reign of Shō Shin (尚眞, r. 1477–1526 CE), and was one of several Rinzai temples Shō Shin constructed¹. Much of the temple was destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 CE. Thankfully, the stele itself survived, and, along with a large number of other important stelai, was included in both facsimile and transcribed form in Tsukada 1970.

Description of the Stele
The stele itself is made of stone, with inscriptions on the front (Classical Chinese) and the back (Middle Okinawan). Unfortunately, the version in Tsukada 1970 does not describe where on the stele the date is inscribed, and the facsimile does not show where it is either.

The facsimile (and, presumably, the inscription itself) is perfectly legible. The Classical Chinese text is inscribed in regular script (楷書 kaisho), while the Middle Okinawan text is inscribed in cursive script (草書 sōsho).

The Classical Chinese text and the Middle Okinawan texts are equivalent to one another. They serve as a prohibition, warning potential visitors to the temple of its significance (as a Royal Mausoleum), and ordering them to dismount.

The inscriptions

Front (Classical Chinese)

但<俱>官員人等至此下馬

dàn <jù> guānyuán rén děng zhì cĭ xià mă
only <all> anji common.people and.the.like arrive here go.down horse

‘All anji and commoners arriving here, dismount.’

The character 但 dàn ‘only’ is erroneously used as a variant of 俱 jù ‘all’. Both share the radical 人, and some graphical variants partially overlap (see the Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants entries on 但 dàn ‘only’ and 俱 jù ‘all’, respectively, for examples).

官員 guānyuán ‘(an) official’ is used here in place of the Okinawan あんし or 按司² anji, a class of landed nobility in Okinawa, which existed not only during the Ryūkyū Kingdom, but also previous to it.

Back (Middle Okinawan)

あんしとけすもくまにてむまからおれるへし

anji=to kesu=mo kuma n-ite muma=kara orer-ube-shi
anji=COM common.people=ASF here COP-COOR horse=ABL go.down-DEB-RLS

‘Anji and also commoners must dismount from [their] horses.’

Here, like in many other Middle Okinawan texts, we see etymological or pseudo-etymological spellings throughout the text. A three-way vowel height distinction is maintained in writing, while it would have likely merged into a two-way distinction in speech (with front and back mid vowels merging into the front and back high vowels, respectively).

Despite the text being very short, there is at least one diagnostic lexical item hinting that the text is intended to be Middle Okinawan as opposed to Middle Japanese. Namely, Middle Okinawan くま kuma ‘here’, rather than Middle Japanese ここ koko ‘here’. While not as decisive, the unetymological spelling of orir- as orer- is interesting, and shows that there was confusion between mid and high vowels, which merged quite early in the history of Okinawan.

However, the influence of Middle Japanese can clearly be seen in the loan of the debitive suffix -ube- (see discussion in Vovin 2009: 879-880).

It is unclear to me if むま muma ‘horse’ is a loan from Middle Japanese, or an attempt at rendering the regressive assimilation of nasality into the initial vowel. Modern Okinawan ʔNma ‘horse’ is likely from earlier *uma ‘horse’, as it has a glottal stop as its initial segment, rather than a nasal. Compare ‘horse’ with the historical outcome of ‘all’, Modern Okinawan nNna ‘all’, which is from earlier *mina ‘all’. This too has regressive nasalization of the vowel, but additionally had regressive palatalization of the initial segment *m > n.

Date

大明嘉靖六年丁亥七月二十五日

’25th day of the 7th lunar month, 24th of the sexagenary cycle, 6th year of [the reign of the] Ming Emperor Jiājìng’

In the Gregorian calendar, this date is 22 August 1527 CE. Note that I have no reference to the inscription, as a facsimile or otherwise; I am relying solely on Tsukada (1970)’s transcription.

Edit (13 May 2016) — Added forgotten citation to Vovin 2009.

Notes

1. I am not as well versed as I would like on the history of Buddhism in Ryūkyū Kingdom. However, it seems to me that the introduction of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism by Shō Shin is a calculated move imitating Rinzai’s intimate ties to government in Japan. The Rinzai school was closely associated with the Muromachi Shogunate—more or less the “official” sect—and more widely, nobility in general (Matsuo 2007: 195). It also retained a strong connection with Chinese practice, including that Chinese monks were present in some Rinzai temples, and Rinzai monks were used in addition to diplomats as intermediaries between Japan and China (Matsuo 2007: 195–6). This seems even more clear in light of the fact that the head temple of Rinzai in Kamakura and in Shuri are both named Engaku-ji (円覚寺).
2. This is likely ateji—Chinese characters used soley (or at least primarily) for their phonetic value.

Abbreviations
ABL – ablative case
ASF – additive-scalar focus paticle
COM – commitative case
COOR – coordinating converb
COP – copula
DEB – debitive mood
RLS – realis mood

References

Matsuo Kenji. 2007. A History of Japanese Buddhism. Folkestone: Global Oriental.

Tsukada Seisaku. 1970. 「琉球国碑文記」 Inscriptions of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. Tōkyō: Keigaku Shuppan.

Vovin, Alexander. 2009. A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part Two: Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles, Postpositions. Folkestone: Global Oriental.

The Ryūka Zenshū¹ (「琉歌全集」, ‘Complete Collection of Ryūka²‘) is the largest collection of the ryūka style of Okinawan poetry. It was compiled in the 1960s Shimabukuro Seibin (島袋盛敏) and Onaga Toshio (翁長俊郎), and transcribed phonetically into the Shuri lect¹ of Okinawan by the latter.

Ryūka (琉歌 ‘Ryūkyūan³ poems’) are the traditional poems of Okinawa. They date to at least the 1700s CE, as the term ryūka itself first appears in the Konkōkenshū (「混効験集」, compiled 1711 CE), the earliest dictionary of Okinawan. This uniquely Okinawan poetic tradition likely dates back to even before the invasion of the Satsuma domain in 1609 CE, perhaps even as far back as the 1400s CE. Ryūka as a poetic style are not confined to the capital of Shuri, with several surviving examples from throughout the Ryūkyū Archipelago. Neither are they confined to the upper classes, as several examples exist from Onna Nabe (恩納なべ), a woman who lived as a farmer in the village of Onna (恩納村) in northern Okinawa, as well as from Yoshiya (よしや), a woman sold into slavery as a prostitute in the Nakajima (仲島) red-light district of Naha (previously on the southern banks of the mouth of the Kumoji River (久茂地川 Kumoji-kawa).

Ryūka have a set meter, most typically having three lines of 8 syllables and one line of 6 syllables, for a pattern of 8-8-8-6 (or 30 total syllables). At first blush, however, almost no written ryūka appear to resemble this meter. For example, the poem I will discuss in this post, RZ 16, is written as follows:

Original Text
かれよしやいつもかれよしどめしやいるただいとの上から行ぎやい来ちやい

Transliteration⁴
kareyosi ya itumo / kareyosi do mesiyairu / tada ito no UE kara / Igiyai KItiyai

The poem appears to have 35 syllables, arranged in a pattern of 8-10-9-8. We know, however, that even very early in the history of Okinawan, sequences of vowels are reduced to individual vowels through coalescence (where CV₁+V₂ → CV₃ː) and/or glide formation (where CV₁+V₂ → CGV₂ː). For example, 上 ‘up; top’, which I transcribe as UE, would have likely already undergone a process of glide formation (and further changes) into something resembling modern Okinawan ッウィー [ʔʷíː] ‘up; top’. By way of these phonological changes, we can “fix”, or perhaps more accurately, reconstruct the poem as it was intended, which just happens to “fix” the hypermetrical lines, rendering all metrical, as below:

Reconstruction
ka.i.ju.ɕi ja ʔí.tsi.n̩ / ka.i.ju.ɕi du mi.se.ɾu / tá.da ʔi.tu nu ʔʷíː ka.ɾa / ʔń̩.dʑa.i tɕi.tɕa.i

It is likely the case that syllables, rather than morae, count when it comes to determining the number of units allowed in a line. There is some evidence from modern Okinawan that ッウィー [ʔʷíː] ‘up; top’ is two morae: it has a clear fall in pitch over the length of the vowel, something that cannot occur with one mora words. It also has a long vowel, which means it cannot also have a geminite (or “heavy”, if you prefer) onset. But in this poem, the author is at least bending the rules, if not using syllable counts over mora counts when it comes to determining whether or not a line is metrical.

Onaga inconsitently has the more conservative karijusi (rather than the more innovative kaijusi) and the more innovative cicai (rather than the more conservative cicari). While it is unclear when the syllable /ɾi/ loses its consonant, the fact that there is variation between <ri> and <i> in the original text, with a more etymological spelling of かれよし <kareyosi> and a less etymological spelling of 来ちやい <KItiyai> (from earlier *ki-te ar-i) suggests that this had already taken place.

Interlinear gloss and free translation
kariyushi=ya ‘ítsiN / kariyushi=du mise-ru / táda itu=nu ‘wíi=kara / ‘Ndza-i chicha-i
good.fortune=TOP always / good.fortune=FOC give.HON-ADN / just silk=GEN top=ABL / go\PFV-RLS come\PFV-RLS

‘Good fortune! Always give [me] the good fortune [of travelling]! Only coming and going from the tops of silks.’

This is a poem asking for good fortune in the form of travel. As a courtier in the court of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, being assigned to be on a mission to Japan, China, Korea, or the like, was among the most prestigious duties that one could be granted.

1. Abbreviated as RZ.
2. Shuri is generally considered a dialect (or topolect) of Okinawan. While Shuri is geographically contained to the former capital of Okinawa, Shuri, it is perhaps better thought of as a sociolect, being spoken by the descendants of the Okinawan gentry. Compare this to the status of its neighboring Naha, spoken in an adjacent geographical area, but by the descendants of the common people of the capital region. I use lect here as a compromise, rather than choosing between the more traditional terminology of calling it a dialect, or the perhaps more historically accurate term sociolect.
3. Or Okinawan, as opposed to waka (和歌 ‘Japanese poems) and kanshi (漢詩 ‘Chinese poems’).
4. This is intended as a strict transliteration—not a transcription—of the original text, going from the poem as it is written. No analytic devices other than slashes, to divide lines, are used.

Last time, I talked about one way of periodizing Okinawan, based off of non-linguistic criteria. This time, I’m going to talk about two linguistic criteria we might use to differentiate Modern Okinawan from earlier forms of Okinawan.

The first criterion is a major reanalysis in the verbal system which occurred at some point in the history of Okinawan, sometime after our Old Okinawan texts (to 1609 CE), and presumably sometime during Middle Okinawan (from 1609 to 1879 CE), though it isn’t clear to me at this point when this would have occurred—especially owing to the fact that I don’t have access to the Ryūka Zenshū, the major collection of Middle and Early Modern Okinawan poetry, but if memory serves me correctly, this sort of construction is not attested in the Ryūka.

This reanalysis took the derived, morphologically complex construction of the infinitive form of the main verb plus the auxiliary verb or- ‘to exist’—but in this case the progressive auxiliary, and reanalyzed it as the basic, morphologically simplex imperfective form of the verb, an analysis first proposed by Hattori Shirō (Vovin 2009: 611).

So for instance, the verb ‘to approach’ is given as Old Okinawan <よる> yor-u |approach-ADN| in the Omoro Sōshi (OS I: 13), while it is Modern Shuri Okinawan <ゆゆる> yuyu-ru |approach.IPFV-ADN| (from pre-Modern Okinawan *yor-i or-u |approach-INF PROG-ADN|).

The second morphological change, which post-dated this first change, is another reanalysis. This time, an extension of the use of the adnominal -ru with both consonant and vowel stem verbs, rather than just vowel stem verbs. Historically, consonant stem verbs would use the allomorph -u.

This can be seen in the example above, but for a further example, compare Old Okinawan <てる> ter-u |shine-ADN| with Modern Shuri Okinawan <てぃゆる> tiyu-ru |shine.IPFV-ADN|.

So in summary: two innovations which can be used to divide Modern from pre-Modern (Middle?) Okinawan are the reanalysis of the morphologically complex progressive construction as the morphologically simplex imperfective form of the verb, as well as the expansion of the adnominal -ru to all verb classes.

Update (23 December 2014)

I found the verb form <待る> MAT-Uru|wait-ADN| (the capitals indicate my inference of a semantographic Chinese character) in the Ryūka Gimon Roku (Gyokuzan 1900: 2b). Compare Western Old Japanese mat-u |wait-ADN|.

Reference

Gyokuzan. 1900. Ryūka Gimon Roku  ‘A List of Questions [About] Ryūka.’ University f the Ryūkyūs manuscript. URI: http://ir.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/handle/123456789/10289

Vovin, Alexander. 2009. A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. Part Two: Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles, and Postpositions. Folkestone: Global Oriental.

While the likes of Robert Austerlitz and Roman Jakobson did some initial work reconstructing the language history of Nivkh, much remains, especially in terms of the vowel system of Nivkh.

Nivkh, a critically endangered language isolate spoken in the Russian Far East, can roughly be divided into two dialect groups: Amur-Northwest Sakhalin (abbreviated NWN) varieties and Southeast Sakhalin (abbreviated SEN) varieties. Speakers reportedly claim further differences to be small, and no thorough research has been done on the language up to this point (Shiraishi 2006: 10–12).

One interesting correspondence has to do with /ɨ/. It seems that at least two vowel phonemes underwent a merger to /ɨ/ in the Amur-Northwest Sakhalin varieties, but not in the Southeast Sakhalin varieties, which have either /ɨ/ or /a/. Some examples (all data taken from Savel’eva and Taksami 1970):

(1) NWN [mrɨ-] ‘to swim’
SEN [mra-] ‘to swim’

(2) NWN [ŋɨŋg] ‘hair’
SEN [ŋamx] ‘hair’
PN ?*ŋVmVk

(3) NWN [vɨlki] ‘chain’
SEN [valki] ‘chain’
PN ?*vVlki

(3) NWN [indɨ-] (with no direct object) ~ [ŋr̥ɨ-] (with no DO) ‘to see’
SEN [idɨ-] (w/ no DO) ~ [ŋr̥ɨ-] (/w DO) ‘to see’
PN ?*(i-)ŋr̥ɨ- ‘to see’

(4) NWN [kɨls] ‘length’
SEN [kɨlr̥] ‘length’

(2) is a bit suspicious, due to the number of changes needed between NWN [ŋɨŋg] and SEN [ŋamx]—the deletion of the second vowel, the assimilation of PN *m to NWN [ŋ] due to the following velar, the spirantization of PN *k to SEN [x], and the voicing assimilation of PN *mk to NWN [ŋg], but I think these forms are ultimately cognate.

Another interesting thing is the large number of consonant clusters found in Nivkh. This is unlike the situation found its neighbors, and, both internal variation as well as loanwords into Ainu and Ul’ta (Orok) make it clear that this vowel loss is recent. A good example of this is the word for ‘reindeer’, where we have good internal evidence, as well as good external evidence—the Nivkh word was loaned into Ainu and into Japanese.

(5) NWN [cʰolŋi]
SEN [tlaŋi]
PN ?*Tolanki
Sakhalin Ainu [tunakaj]
Japanese [tonakai]

It is likely that Nivkh /ŋ/ has a secondary origin, from earlier *nk. Also interesting, but perhaps not at all surprising, is the correspondence of Nivkh [l] to Sakhalin Ainu [n]—unsurprising because Ainu does not have [l]. The internal evidence points to just final *-i, while the external evidence points to a final diphthong, *-ai. Here I privileged the former kind of evidence over the latter.

Finally, I still have no good explanation for the distribution of [cʰ] and [t], which I reconstruct with the placeholder *T. Compare the above with the word for ‘tree’, which is frustratingly reversed in terms of which group has which consonant:

(6) NWN [tiɣr] ‘tree’
SEN [cʰxar̥] ‘tree’
PN ?*Tikar̥ (n.b., initial and medial fricatives are secondary in Nivkh)

References
Savel’eva, Valentina Nikolaevna and Chuner Mixaylovich Taksami. 1970. Nivxsko-Russkiy Slovar’ [Nivkh-Russian Dictionary]. Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya.

Shiraishi, Hidetoshi. 2006. Topics in Nivkh Phonology. PhD dissertation: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.