Talk:やなぎ

Proto-Japonic & Etymology

If it's derived from 木 (ki, “tree”), then why does Okinawan trigger palatalization as yanaji (< PR *yanagi < PJ *yanankOy; *O implies *u or *o), but doesn't in kii tree (PR *ke < PJ *kəy)? Unlikely internal compound etymology? Reanalysis? Borrowing? Chuterix (talk) 17:26, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chuterix, looking through https://www.jlect.com/search.php?r=%E6%9C%A8&l=ryukyu&group=words, I see a couple terms where 木 as an element in the Okinawan terms seems to undergo affrication, such as Japanese 黒木 (kuroki) ↔ Okinawan 黒木 (kuruci), or Japanese 木遣り (kiyari) ↔ Okinawan cijai (presumably /t͡ɕijai/?).

As such, I don't think the reading of Okinawan 柳 as /janaʑi/ requires a reconstruction of any proto form that deviates from the derivation given in JA sources, where the final -gi in JA is treated as 木 (ki, “tree”). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:58, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

(looking back...) @Eirikr I believe these are borrowings from Japanese into Okinawan, or at least a time where Ko/Otsu-rui distinction was lost. Compare also 果物 (kudamono, “fruit”), possibly from pre-Japanese *kO(y [Deleted!])-n(V?)ta-mənə. Chuterix (talk) 12:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Also @Eirikr I believe 露出形・被覆形 arised from older nidan/unknown verb forms. Hence this irregularity. 真似 (mane, “real thing”), 学ぶ (manabu, “to learn”, literally “to acquire real thing”), from 真似る (maneru, “be real”).

Perhaps 木 (ki, ko, ku-, “tree”) must derive from 来る (kuru < ku, “to come”), from the way trees must grow fully, therefore must come up to the top. Compare 出来る (dekiru, “to be able to...”), from older ideku; c.f. Okinawan 出来ゆん (dikiyun, “to be able to...”, borrowing? otherwise from *deke). Therefore, must derive from the ren'yokei. We also see this in PJ *əku (“to get up; to rise”) and *ətu (“to fall”). See also Wiktionary_talk:About_Proto-Japonic#The_#Standalone_forms_and_combining_forms_section. Chuterix (talk) 12:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

• Deriving 被服・露出 from verb conjugation paradigms means that you have to derive all such nouns manifesting 被服・露出 forms from verbs -- and this simply isn't possible.

I do think that these are probably related phenomena, but I don't think we can sensibly say that the 被服・露出 vowel shift we see in nouns means that these are all deverbals that reflect underlying conjugation patterns.

• 学ぶ appears first as manebu from the early 800s. The manabu form doesn't appear until the late 900s. Moveover, manebu was apparently more common in woman-oriented literature, while manabu was more prevalent in man-oriented kanbun contexts. It appears that manebu fell out of use as maneru gained prevalence, with manabu remaining.

More in the NKD notes, as seen here at Sakura Paris and here at Kotobank.

• 真似 has no realizations anywhere I can find as mana, only as mane. This derives from verb manu, which was conjugated using the shimo nidan paradigm, which has no stem forms ending in -a.

This makes the manabu verb form itself a bit mysterious. One possibility is that the -bu auxiliary may have been considered by learned speakers at that time as analogous to the -mu auxiliary, which some modern linguists reconstruct as -amu. The shift from older and colloquial manebu to newer and (originally) formal manabu thus might have been a kind of hypercorrection. This supposition is purely my own speculation, however.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Chuterix (talk) 00:17, 13 July 2023 (UTC)