Talk:初

OJP, RYU

@Poketalker, re: はつ, see also Reconstruction_talk:Proto-Japonic/patu -- I suspect that there never was any such Proto term, and there isn't any evidence I can find for any such OJP term either. Given the phonetics and semantics, I suspect this is a respelling of Chinese-derived 発 (hatsu, “initial, starting off”). Also, the expected OJP root form /pat-/ cannot align with the root /paz-/ of verb はじむ (hajimu), nor with root /pas-/ of noun 端 (hashi).

Re: うい, I do see over on Kotobank that this can be cited to the 古今和歌集 (Kokin Wakashū) of the early 900s. While not OJP itself, it's early enough to suggest that the term may have been extant during the OJP stage.

Re: うぶ, the first cite I see is around 1012. Gogen Allguide's entry nonsensically suggests a shift from 産む (umu, “to bear, to give birth to”); while a relation might be possible, うぶ is a noun, and Japanese verbs just don't noun-ify that way. However, they also mention 生む日 as a possibility, albeit with the similarly nonsensical うむひ rendering. This derivation becomes more feasible once we recognize the ancient apophonic form ふ for 日: /umu pu/ → /umpu/ → /ubu/. Only speculative, mind you, but it seems a promising line of inquiry.

HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:50, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: はつ from Chinese does not make sense, as there is already a derivative 初春 (hatsuharu, “early spring”) in the last poem of the Man'yoshu in the phonetic 波都波流. For the last two, they might share an up- stem, possibly əp-; which may share cognacy with the definitions of “big” or “many”. What do you think? ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 12:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Poketalker:

• Re: patu --

Hmm, hmm. There's very little kango in the Man'yōshū, so that's a useful finding there. I wonder if this patu might be cognate with pata, as in "edge; side, off to the side; a loom (perhaps from the way a shuttle comes out the side of the weaving?); a flag (perhaps from extending off the side of a pole?)"? The latter two are much more speculative and might ultimately derive from separate roots: for example, I considered pata "field", but I couldn't think of a way it might relate to "side; edge".

I'm now curious to see if the OJP uses of patu are all attributive -- perhaps the -u ending suggests that this might be originally a yodan verb? Or perhaps this is the possessive / genitive つ (tsu), and the root term is pa? There's the final -ta morpheme in words like あなた (anata), parsed as "side" or "direction", which might have combined with pa to produce the pata terms above. I wonder too then if pasi might be this same pa + the final -si morpheme in words like 東 (pi-muka-si), similarly relating to "side; direction".

• Re: up- --

I'm uneasy about our current proto reconstructions for certain vowel values, particularly for o. Going quickly through the MYS for all instances of おほ, finding those where it was clearly for 大・多, and identifying those few cases where this is spelled phonetically, I found two man'yōgana spellings: 意保, and 於保. The Middle Chinese values for the initial characters are a bit confusing: 意 (MC 'iH) and 於 (MC 'jo|'u). The latter at least has /ʔuo/, which would suggest /o₁/ → /wo, o/, apparently ruling out the /ə/ currently in our proto entry at Reconstruction:Proto-Japonic/əpə. That said, the back-vowel (or rather back-er vowel) /o₁/ is phonetically closer to the /u/ seen in ubu, upi.

I wonder too whether ubu / upi might have any relation with 上 (upe₂, upay)? "Upper" and "upstream" are considered to be "earlier", semantically speaking.

Food for thought! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)