Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/peko

Problematic

As I noted in an edit summary at ひこ:

"/* Japanese */ 1. Basing a reconstruction off one author is premature. 2) Some of Bentley's work has exhibited shortcomings. 3) Toponyms as honorifics in common nouns seems unlikely. 4) JPX-PRO /i/ also yields JA and RYU /i/, no need to reconstruct JPX-PRO /e/ here."

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:33, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Given also the apparent lack of any Ryukyuan cognates for JA hiko, it seems more likely that JA yamabiko was borrowed some time after the JA↔RYU split. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

4: I reconstructed /e/ based off the Ryukyuan descendants; Okinawan does not trigger palatization after /e/, also Pre-Old-Japanese (Yamatai; Bentley 2008) not vowel raising yet.

See User:Mellohi!/Reconstructions/Proto-Japonic.

For your additional comment: First, are you trying to say the Ryukyuan descendants were borrowed after the split? And now, possibly. Indeed there are no Ryukyuan cognates for PJ *peko. PR *yamabeko also has a limited distribution; there are no Kikai, Miyako, etc. cognates, In Southern Ryukyuan only Yaeyama Hatoma dialect cognate. Does the /o/ raising to /u/ might be an innovation from within those dialects? Hatoma Yaeyama dialect yamabiki from *yamabeku? Again, thus might be borrowing. On the contrary, there's PJ *nanoka (“seven days”), amply attested around Ryukyuan and in Old Japanese (at least once). Chuterix (talk) 20:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@Eirikr: P.S. that also means it was coined in Old Japanese as a compound? Or the compound had existed in the Proto-Japonic stage, as PJ *piko? Chuterix (talk) 20:42, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chuterix: If this were a Proto-Japonic term, I'd expect to see more evidence of it in the Ryukyuan languages. Given the paucity of Ryukyuan evidence, I suspect this was a compound created in Old Japanese, likely not too long before we see the first textual evidence in the early 700s -- at any rate, a coinage in Japanese some time after the Japanese ↔ Ryukyuan split. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:13, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The (Pre?-)OJ term was attested in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, long before any Old Japanese text was introduced, as a chief's name. See the main hiko entry. Chuterix (talk) 22:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Link / reference, please.

The main ひこ entry says nothing about w:Records of the Three Kingdoms, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Also, the w:Records of the Three Kingdoms was written in the late 200s, which would again be after the Japanese ↔ Ryukyuan split. This does nothing to rule out the hypothesis that Ryukyuan versions of this term are all borrowings from mainland Japanese.

Setting all that aside, your phonology is wrong.

• Japanese yamabiko is from Old Japanese 山 (yama) + 彦 (pi₁ko₁). The component pi₁ko in turn is from 日 (pi₁) + 子 (ko₁).
• Per w:Proto-Japonic#Vowels, Old Japanese ⟨i₁⟩ derives from Proto-Japonic /i/ in any position, or from /e/ in word-medial position.
• In ⟨pi₁ko₁⟩, the ⟨i₁⟩ is in word-medial position -- so it might be from Proto-Japonic /e/. However, we also know that ⟨pi₁ko₁⟩ is a compound, and in ⟨pi₁⟩ as an attested standalone noun, we know that the ⟨i₁⟩ cannot be from Proto-Japonic /e/, since raising did not happen in word-final positions: any Proto-Japonic term pe would be reflected in OJP as pe₁, not as pi₁.

Ergo, there can be no Proto-Japonic peko -- this reconstruction is mistaken. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:44, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@Eirikr: I have to agree that the earliest transliteration of piko must have been inaccurate. In Vovin (2024)'s chapter of Handbook of Historical Japanese Linguistics:

"The first of these words is ‘the sun’, found in 卑彌呼 ✶pie-mie-hɔ and 卑狗 ✶pie-

koʔ, which probably mean ‘sun child’ and ‘sun priestess’ respectively.18 Both Miyake

(2003: 115) and Bentley (2008: 17) correctly point out that internal Japonic evidence

based on the pR ✶pi ‘sun’ indicates that this word should be reconstructed with high

front vowel ✶i rather than with mid front vowel ✶e. I am inclined to agree with Miyake

(2003: 115) that the possible reasons for the WZ transcription of ✶i as ✶ie might have to

do something either with mishearing, or with a deliberate choice of a character with

a pejorative meaning, rather than with Bentley’s (2008: 18) proposal that ✶pe is a loan

from Paekche ✶pe ‘west’. There is no historical evidence for contact between Wa and

Paekche in the early third century AD, because most likely Paekche as a state did not

yet exist at this time. There is, however, yet another possibility: as far as I can tell, in

LHC there was no syllable ✶pi, but only ✶piʔ. The absence of /pi/ constitutes a gap in the

syllabic system, and it is quite possible that Chinese transcribers sacrificed accuracy in

vocalism due to this gap." - Vovin (2024, 22)

Thus, the Ryukyuan terms yamabiku etc. obviously borrowed from Japanese, and accounts for the lack of palatalization. Also, you cannot just compare Japanese and Okinawa, since they have simple vowel systems and they both raised /e/ and /o/ to /i/ and /u/ (for Japanese, in word medial position). I have to agree this is a derivation of 'sun child', and we can safely delete this entry. Chuterix (talk) 17:59, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Mistaken descendant?

@Chuterix:

Northern Amami-Oshima has yamanbo, which looks like 山 + contracted genitive の + 坊.

Are you aware of any phonological process that could turn -biko into -bo? Or is this in fact a distinct derivation, separate from 山 + 彦? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The Northern Amami-Oshima (NAO) term for 坊 is boo (bō), so I don't know.

This contraction is mysterious, because a better contraction would from *-biko and the -k- loss is unexplainable. *yamabeko is the only Ryukyuan word I can find with cognates belonging to Japanese 彦 (hiko, “boy”) My NAO words are from Amami Hogen Bunrui Jiten, via Google Books snippet search (also used for Kunigami (Nakijin) and Yoron words). This is when I have to find the expected PR=J cognate and put it there. I'm not aware of any shift from Proto-Ryukyuan (PR) *-beko to -nbo, let alone another PR word with *-beko(-) in it.

Perhaps a more reasonable explanation is 穂 (ho, “ear of grain”, Amami either hu (fu) or ho; see here), from the way a boy is young (hiko means young man); see similarity of 子 (ko, “child”). But *yamabeko might've only meant "echo" in Ryukyuan, not including "mountain god". So in reference to a drop reverberating. That's all I have to say for now. ありがとうございました。 Chuterix (talk) 23:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Change title

If *peko was a compound word of *pi and the Proto-Japonic word for child is reconstructed as *kua, change the reconstructed word to *pekua, *pikua, or *pEkua. Thank you! 115.84.95.16 06:11, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Ya, this reconstruction as peko is a mistake on two levels -- Old Japanese ⟨pi₁⟩ cannot come from Proto-Japonic /pe/ in this particular term, and the Old Japanese term 彦 (pi₁ko₁) seems to be a coinage within the mainland Japanese branch from some time after the Japanese ↔ Ryukyuan split. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:48, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

For that matter, word-final ⟨o₁⟩ in OJP, as we have in 子 (ko₁), would derive from Proto-Japonic /o/. Even if we reconstruct a Proto-Japonic ancestor for OJP ⟨pi₁ko₁⟩, it would be piko, not peko nor pekua. Relatedly, @115, I have just rolled back your addition of *kua to the 子 entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:36, 5 September 2023 (UTC)