Second, the reconstruction of the pJN accent of *punsi as 2.3 (LL) may not really be as certain as Martin has presented it (1987: 420). In addition to the Tokyo accent pointing to 2.4 (LH) or 2.5 (LF), there is another problem which concerns the accentuation of ‑ⁿzi < nusi ‘master, owner’ in the compounds listed above. The MJ accent of nusi ‘master, owner’ itself is 2.4 (LH). Consequently, we would expect -ⁿzi to have a HIGH pitch. And indeed, this high pitch is regularly reflected in MJ muraⁿzi HHH ‘kabane title’ < *mura‑nusi ‘village master’ and MJ aruⁿzi XXH ‘master’.[10] The possible explanation accounting for the minor accentual discrepancy between MJ fuⁿzi LL vs. the expected *fuⁿzi LH is that WOJ puⁿzi and MJ fuⁿzi must be loanwords from EOJ puⁿzi due to their EOJ peculiar phonetic shape with ‑u‑ rather than with ‑ô‑: we would expect WOJ *pôⁿzi and MJ *foⁿzi, if they were really cognates. Under this scenario, a minor accentual discrepancy that affects locus but not register is not totally unexpected, as such discrepancies occur even within the same language, cf. WOJ isô (MJ accent HH) ‘rock, rocky shore’ and WOJ isi (MJ accent HL) ‘rock, stone’.
Abbreviations
Grammatical Terms
ACC Accusative
ATTR Attributive
CONC Concessive
DIM Diminutive
EV Evidential
EXCL Exclamative
INF Infinitive
LOC Locative
NML Nominalizer
PT Particle
SUB Subordinative
TOP Topic
Languages
EOJ Eastern Old Japanese
MdJ Modern Japanese
MJ Middle Japanese
OJ Old Japanese
pA proto-Ainu
pJ proto-Japonic
pJN proto-Japanese
WOJ Western Old Japanese
Primary Sources
GK Gengo kokka (言語國訛), mid Edo (1601–1868 AD) period
CMJF Chikamatsu Jōruri fubon (近松浄塯璃譜本), late 17th c.
HF Hitati Fudoki (常陸風土記), 713 AD
HKMB Heike mabushi (平家正節), 1776 AD
KKWKS Kokin waka shū (古今和歌集), 921 AD
MYS Man’yōshū (萬葉集), between 759 and 771 AD
NSK Nihonshoki (日本書紀), 720 AD
SCS Shūchūshō (袖中抄), 1185–1190 AD
SFIB Suruga Fudoki Ibun (駿河風土記異聞), 12th c.?
SIWKS Jōben-bon (浄弁本) of Shūi waka shū (拾遺和歌集), 1185–1333 AD
TM Taketori monogatari (竹取物語), late ninth or early tenth century AD
WTS Waji taikan shō (和字大観抄), first part of 18th c.
Secondary Sources
Akimoto, Kichirō (ed.) 1958. Fudoki [Gazetteers]. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei [Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 2. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Akinaga, Kazue; Ueno, Kazuaki; Sakamoto, Kiyoe; Satō, Eisaku; Suzuki, Yutaka 1997. Nihongo akusento shi sōgō shiryō. Sakuin hen [The comprehensive materials on the history of accentual history of the Japanese language. An index]. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō.
Aoki, Kazuo; Inaoka, Kōji; Sasayama, Haruo; Shirafuji, Noriyuki (eds.) 1998. Shoku Nihongi [Continued Annals of Japan]. Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei [New Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 12–16. Tokyo: Iwanami.
Batchelor, John 1928. ‘Helps to the Study of Ancient Place-Names in Japan’. Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1928, pp. 52–102. Reprinted in: Refsing, Kirsten (ed.). Early European Writings on the Ainu Language, vol. 9. London: Routledge Curzon, 1996.
Batchelor, John 1938. An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary. 4th edition. Tokyo: Iwanami.
Kuroita, Katsumi & Matsuyama, Jirō (ed.) 1965–1966. Nihonshoki [Annals of Japan]. Shintei zōho kokushi taikei [The newly corrected and enlarged series on Japanese history], vols. 1a and 1b. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan.
Pellard, Thomas 2011. ‘Ryukyuan perspectives on the Proto-Japonic vowel system.’ Proceedings of the 20th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. Stanford: SSLI, pp. 1–15.
Sakakura, Atsuyoshi (ed.) 1957. Taketori monogatari. In: Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 9, pp. 3–78. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Vovin, Alexander 1993. A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu. Leiden & New York: Brill.
Vovin, Alexander 2011. ‘On one more source of Old Japanese i₂.’ Journal of East Asian Linguistics 20, pp. 219–228.
Vovin, Alexander 2013. Man’yōshū. Book 20. A New English Translation Containing the Original Text, Kana Transliteration, Romanization, Glossing, and Commentary. Folkestone/Leiden: Global Oriental/Brill.