Reconciling Comparative and Internal Reconstruction: The Case of Old Japanese /ti, ri, ni/
J. Marshall Unger · Language · 2000
Some Korean-Japanese comparisons involving Japanese coronals complicate the internal reconstruction of pre-Old Japanese. Post-OJ verb forms that end uniformly in, for example, ki have distinct OJ final syllables ( ki ≠ kwi ) according to the form or paradigm of the verb. This is not true for OJ syllables like ti , but scholars have assumed that pre-OJ * ti ≠ * twi , etc., were distributed in corresponding verb forms in the same way as OJ ki ≠ kwi , etc. Whitman, however, has introduced K-J etymologies requiring that pre-OJ * ti > si , * ri and * ni > i , and hence that all OJ ti < * twi , etc. These conflicting results can be resolved if other pre-OJ sound changes supported by Korean etymologies are properly integrated into the internal reconstruction of Japanese verb paradigms.