Talk:考える

Pronunciation shift

@Eirikr Sorry to ping you repeatedly by now, but I trust you as a good authority to ask on this :') Is this diff legit? It appears to align with my understanding that は行 turned into being pronounced as わ行 word-medially, so /kangaferu/ should indeed become /kangeweru/, but it's confusing whether the original entry was just wrong or whether this edit is mistaken. I cannot quite tell for certain. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 23:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Heya, no worries! 😄

Two good sources for late-1500s, early-1600s Japanese pronunciation are the 日葡辞書 (Nippo Jisho, “Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam”, 1603; literally the "Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary") and the 羅葡日対訳辞書 (Ra-Po-Nichi Taiyaku Jisho, “Dictionarivm Latino Lvsitanicvm, ac Iaponicvm”, 1595; literally the "Latin-Portuguese-Japanese Corresponding-Translation Dictionary"). Happily, both are accessible via Google Books (at least, at time of this writing).

You'll need to know some Portuguese for the first one, and some Latin and/or Portuguese for the second. 😄 I find that being able to read Spanish means I can read Portuguese, for the most part.

Checking the Nippo just now, we can find the relevant entry on page 36 (per the book's own numbering) on the left-hand side, about 2/3rds of the way down, here. Copying:

• Cangaye, uru, eta. Conſiderar, I, côputar. ("To consider, and/or, to compute/evaluate/reckon.")

I'm guessing that the "I" in the middle is a printer's error, possibly for Portuguese e (“and”). Alternatively, it might be a lower-case "L", in which case it might be a printer's error for Portuguese ou (“or”).

At any rate, this dictionary's convention for verbs is to list the continuative / infinitive first, then the adnominal, and then the past tense. So here, we can see that the /e/ phoneme was realized more as [je].

This is in keeping with what we know about how /e/ was pronounced through Japanese history. See also w:ja:え, where they talk about え as part of the あ行, the わ行, and the や行 -- "e" as [e], "e" as [we], and "e" as [je].

From the w:ja:え#発音の歴史 section:

現在の五十音図で、あ行・や行・わ行のえ段にはいずれも「え」が置かれているが、古くは「e」「ye」「we」が区別されており、万葉仮名や初期の平仮名・片仮名では区別されていた。また「あめつちの歌」に「え」が2回登場するのも「e」と「ye」を区別していた可能性がある。

10世紀中頃に「e」と「ye」の区別が消滅し、ともに「ye」と発音した。また、10世紀末には語中の「へ」がわ行の「ゑ」に変化した（ハ行転呼音）。11世紀以降「え」と「ゑ」の区別も失われていき、13世紀以降に完全に区別がなくなり、同じく「ye」と発音した。

It's highly likely that this verb never had a spoken realization as kangaweru -- once fe lenited, the "e" sound was probably realized as [je] rather than [we].

HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:47, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Eirikr Thanks! Thanks for your really detailed answer, that's great and explains it perfectly. Unfortunately, I have not the most perfect grasp of Spanish or Portuguese, and only a small bit of Latin, but I can definitely read their romanisations just fine. I also managed that definition of "Cangaye" just fine :) at any rate, thanks for your thoroughness and your time, Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:10, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

No worries, happy to help! 😄 ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:10, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, re-reading the excerpt above and thinking through timelines, it is possible that there might have been a short period in the 1000s-1200s when this could have been kangaweru: after the ハ行転呼 (ha-gyō tenko) (lention of medial /f/ to /w/), but before collapse of /we/ into /ye/. On reconsideration, it might be best to re-add that, albeit with an asterisk to indicate that this is unattested.

... Okay, I've just done so, and added some parenthetical comments for further explanation. I hope that makes sense? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:27, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

The order of changes seems incorrect...

Frellesvig (2010, pages 227-229):

「8.1.2 Conjugation classes and basic paradigms

In the first half of EMJ, the so-called shimo ichidan (lower monograde, abbreviated as 'LM') conjugation class appeared, morphophonologically patterning with UM, but with a different stem vowel. (...)

Through EMJ and part of LMJ the LM verb class only had a single member, namely 'to kick'. It is thought that this verb had the base shape /kwe/, rather than just /ke/. The evidence is not incontrovertible and this is in that case the only native word with /kwe/. EMJ kwe- reflects the OJ LB verb kuwe-. This change could be seen as an early beginning of the sweeping change of all bigrade verbs to monograde conjugation which in the main took place in NJ (15.1.2.1), but it is intriguing that this singular verb, which was not particularly frequent or otherwise prominent, changed in this way and maintained its separate conjugation for a relatively long period. It may be its unique stem shape which contributed to the stability of the conjugation. Another early beginning of the change of bigrade to monograde verbs is the migration of one-mora UB verbs to UM, which was under way in OJ and was completed in EMJ (cf. 3.4.3.1). Combined with the merger of Ci and Cwi (7.3.2.1) this resulted in a clear-cut distribution of -i- base verbs between UM and UB such that all one-mora -i base verbs were UM and all -i base of more than two moras verbs were UB. Despite the emergence of the LM class, a similar length-based distribution did not arise for the -e base verbs, as all other one-mora -e base verbs than kwe- (e.g. e- 'get', pe- 'pass') remained LB.」

Frellesvig (2010, pages 391-392):

「15.1.2.1 Levelling of vowel base verb conjugations; merger of monograde and bigrade verbs

(...) In EMJ short (one-mora) UB verbs shifted to monograde conjugation, so that short i-stem verbs belonged to UM, and stems of more than two moras belonged to UB (8.1.2), but other than that the difference between bigrade and monograde vowel stem conjugation remained through LMJ. However, in the course of the first half of NJ, bigrade conjugation was lost in most dialects (and is today retained only in a very small number of dialects) and all LB verbs became LM, and UB verbs became UM.

(...) The change of the LB verbs to LM took place first with short verbs and at the end of LMJ a few short -e base verbs were in the process of shifting and had variant nonpast forms, e.g. fe- 'pass': furu ~ feru.」

I do not know if there is evidence that /kamu-/ changed to /kan-/ so early. If it is correct, then development of 終止形 should have been rather:

*/kamukapu/ → /kamuɡapu/ → /kanɡafu/ → /kanɡau/ → /kanɡajeru/ → /kanɡaeru/

/w/ could have been observed in some period (maybe 1000s-1200s mentioned above) in 連用形, 未然形, 命令形 etc., but not in 終止形, 連体形, 已然形. Arfrever (talk) 07:09, 12 August 2023 (UTC)