# Verbs ending in vowel -u or -wu



## mr_anderson

In Chamberlains, Grammar of Colloquial Japanese I read that the verbs ending on vowel -u originally ended in -fu but furthermore it just says the f dropped and w popped up in the case of -fa => -wa but fi=>i. But on the Website of Takasugi Shinji it's stated that f not dropped but rather changed into w so there would be even wu to think of. So what's more correct or is anyway correct?


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## Starfrown

I'll do my best.

Let's consider the classical yodan verb 言ふ.


言は-
言ひ-
言ふ
言へ-

The modern equivalent godan verb is:

言わ-
言い-
言う
言え-
言おう

I don't think scholars are entirely certain as to how closely the classical Kana usage reflected the pronunciation of the time.

All I can say is that classical "ha" column verbs become modern "wa" column verbs, and that they had been pronounced as the latter long before they were written as such.

Even in classical times, as far as I know, there was no written representation for "wu." The "wa" column was:

わ
ゐ
う
ゑ
を

I can't remember whether there were classical verbs ending in "u" and thus conjugated along this column.

I hope I have, at least in part, answered your question.


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## mr_anderson

Thank you, it helped me a little bit, but also led me to new questions.
First, since not every syllable appears at the end of an Verb there's the question whether the w-column did or did not appear and if so there would be two ways modern verbs ending -u would have occured if chamberlain isn't wrong. Are there any representative examples of such conjugation from the time where the modern grammar was established but the orthographic reform hadn't took place for instance as in writings like: Hoffmann "A Japanes Grammar" from 1876 (I wasn't able to find an  example in this book)?
Secondly in your example ending on fu the other endings are ha, hi and he they are considered fa, fi and fe in classical Japanese or was the description in chamberlains book unclear/wrong due to lack of information at his time?


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## Starfrown

Give me a little time to get back to you on your first question.  I'll have to do some research.



mr_anderson said:


> Secondly in your example ending on fu the other endings are ha, hi and he they are considered fa, fi and fe in classical Japanese or was the description in chamberlains book unclear/wrong due to lack of information at his time?


 
I don't think that Chamberlain was wrong; I *think* he simply used fa,fi,fu,fe,fo in his romanization of はひふへほ, instead of ha,hi,fu(or hu),he,ho, which most use today; _both systems represent the same Japanese characters_.


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## mr_anderson

Chamberlain used in his book from 1898 the Hepburn-romanization (but something familiar to what you assumed happened in Hoffmann', there  va, vi, vu, ... was used instead of ha, hi, ...) and states the dropping of the f in his explanation why there's a wa, and says this were just an anomaly, but as a fact he uses only romaji for the pronunciation with no we or wi unlike Hoffmann who used very often Katakana where the w-gyo is still used (what makes this book very interesting in my opinion).
The romanization in Hoffmann seems to attend to what you said so there's just the other question about the w left. Either there are Verbs ending in ゐ,ゑorを, or it could be stated that Shinji isn't correct in his thesis, that there's a hidden w.
Both books should be free to access online, if you'd like to consider them. (I'm sorry I can't provide you with links but I just have them as pdf myself)
Thanks in advance for your effort.


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## Flaminius

mr_anderson said:


> In Chamberlains, Grammar of Colloquial Japanese I read that the verbs ending on vowel -u originally ended in -fu but furthermore it just says the f dropped and w popped up in the case of -fa => -wa but fi=>i. But on the Website of Takasugi Shinji it's stated that f not dropped but rather changed into w so there would be even wu to think of. So what's more correct or is anyway correct?


Hello *mr_anderson*,

First, welcome to the WordReference.com Language Forums.  May language fun be always with you.  

Second, I'd like to know if Chamberlain thought f and w are totally irrelevant.  The portion you quoted ("the f dropped and w popped up in the case of -fa => -wa") does not really preclude that the latter is the product of phonological change that the former has undergone.

The development fi=>i also needs closer examination.  It is possible that /fi/ first changed into /wi/ and then into /i/.  It is again possible that the stage of /wi/ is not attested by <wi>, or ゐ, because it was way after all the phonological processes were completed that we started using kana scripts more phonologically.  For what I know, all は-column sounds changed into わ-column sounds in medial and word-final positions about 700 years ago (/ɸV/ → /wV/).  Later, /w/ disappeared except for /wa/.

Edit:
The exact date for the obituary of /wu/ is very difficult to establish as no special kana was ever assigned to this phonetic value.  I am not able to locate the relevant portion but Takasugi may be arguing that this has not died yet.


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## mr_anderson

Here's the whole quote of what Chamberlain wrote about this: 
"The insertion of a w in the negative base of verbs ending in
vowel stems (shimawa, iwa, omowa, nuwa) has its origin in
a curious phonetic change which took place many centuries
ago. Originally the stem of all such verbs ended in an f,
thus :
PRESENT. INDEF. FORM. CONDIT. BASE. NEG. BASE.
shimahi     shimafi           shimafe          shimafa.

But according to a rule which permeates the whole
vocabulary of the modern language, the f has been dropped
before u, i, and e, and has been converted into a w before a,
thus giving shimau, shimai, shimae, shimawa."   p. 164-165


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## Flaminius

> [T]he f has been dropped before u, i, and e, and has been converted into a w before a, thus giving shimau, shimai, shimae, shimawa.


If Modern Japanese is directly compared with Classical Japanese, yes, this explanation is correct.  There is, however, little consideration of what process brought about this change.  I have accounted for it with the phonological development of *p in Prehistoric Japanese:
*p → Old Japanese ɸ → Middle Japanese w → Modern Japanese Ø


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## mr_anderson

Which phonetical value would Ø have, I'm sorry but I got no clue since I just now it would be pronounced like the german ö, is that right? And in which modern syllables would/does this phoneme occur?


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## Flaminius

Oops, Ø is the zero symbol in linguistics.  I could have written "w disappeared."


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## RomanticBoy

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree, and if so I would welcome any corrections, but here is a few points that are maybe relevant to consider.

1. My (probably faulty) memory is that f changed to h sometime in the Edo period. The evidence for this was various Portuguese writings, which note alternative pronunciations of various words with f or h. Also, there was a riddle which demonstrated the use of f in the word fafa (mother) in this period. If it is the case that f changed directly to h, then there is no reason for w to be relevant in this context.

2. Rather than analysing verbs as 4/5 dan and 1 dan in the style of traditional Japanese linguistics, would it not be more useful to analyse them as verbs with stems ending in a consonant (e.g. nom-u drink) or a vowel (e.g. tabe-ru eat). To consider taberu or nomu as representing the verb, as above when we are talking about verbs ending in u, is possibly misleading since this is just one form of the verb (the conclusive/attributive form).

If we analyse verbs in this way, then verbs ending in u can be viewed as verb stems ending in w (e.g. omow, the stem of the verb think) and the w is dropped altogether in certain forms (e.g. omou) and replaced by a lengthening of the following consonant in other forms (e.g. omotte) through a morphophonological rule.

I know that this doesn't really provide any full answers to the questions posed, but it may jog some more insights by other people and improve my understanding of what is going on.


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## mr_anderson

If it's true that f changed to h which I wouldn't doubt from looking at the first example in the thread and by the example of fafa as pronunciation for mother it can be concluded that f went through a similar evolution as *p (in the post of Flaminius). But as prove we have only the appearance of w in wa and the analogy to p*, in my opinion this indicates strongly that there has to be a w but it's not firm enough.
I think it's lacking the final proof that there (1) isn't any other way the w could be derived from or (2) is/are representative example(s) which show verbs ending in we or wi. 
@ romantic the thing I opened this thread was because I wanted to know if verbs like kau (to buy) can are "real" consonantic verbs, so you're totally right with your ideas.


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## Flaminius

Hi,

The development of *p I explained in post #8 _supra_ occurred in medial and word-final positions.  The phoneme in word-initial positions took a different course.

1. *p →  ɸ (This is the same as above; this is the same phoneme that Chamberlain and others note as f. )
2. ɸ → h (Around Edo Period; excepting for /ɸu/.)
3. h → ç (Only for /hi/; This is the furthest end of the long long development of *p so far.)


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## RomanticBoy

Thanks for your clarification, Flaminius. I missed this point.

I have one question. Did any of these consonants occur in word final positions in Japanese? I thought that (apart from N) Japanese has always had vowels at the end of words.


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## Flaminius

Hello Roman,

I seem to be correcting myself all the time, but please consider word as in "word-final" as including morphemes.  Thus the root of the verb "to buy" was long time ago *_kap_, which is now, according to your post #11 _supra_, _kaw_.

(Slightly tangential but...) Last year I made a PHP program for deriving verb conjugations from a set of morphophonological rules applied to verbal roots and derivational suffixes.  I defined those rules to accept verb roots ending with <w>.


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## mr_anderson

I want to thank you all for your work. It helped much.
@Flaminius is your prog anywhere available on the internet?


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## RomanticBoy

I haven't thought about this stuff for many a moon and it has been fun to read the discussion. Thank you to both of you.  고마워요 (and I know that Flaminius understands this since he told me what it means!)


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## Starfrown

Starfrown said:


> I don't think that Chamberlain was wrong; I *think* he simply used fa,fi,fu,fe,fo in his romanization of はひふへほ, instead of ha,hi,fu(or hu),he,ho, which most use today; _both systems represent the same Japanese characters_.


 
I see my mistake now. I did not realize that the Hepburn system had already been well established by that time.

From the posts above and my own research, it is clear that Chamberlain's fa,fi,fu,fe,fo reflect the pronunciation of the characters はひふへほ as bilabial fricatives in classical times.



mr_anderson said:


> ...there would be two ways modern verbs ending -u would have occured if chamberlain isn't wrong.


 
It was surprisingly difficult for me to find a definitive answer to this.  In the end, I had to simply pore over classical verb charts.  I feel fairly confident now that the information I'm presenting below is accurate, but since I have not yet seen my statements made explicitly elsewhere, _caveat lector_.

It appears that all modern godan verbs, and therefore all modern Japanese verbs, ending in う indeed come from classical yodan verbs ending in ふ.

There are classical shimo-nidan verbs that end in う (both a- and wa-column) and ふ, and kami-nidan verbs that end in ふ, but all these now have shuushikei forms ending in vowel+ru (as far as I know).


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## Ajura

Flaminius said:


> Hi,
> 
> The development of *p I explained in post #8 _supra_ occurred in medial and word-final positions.  The phoneme in word-initial positions took a different course.
> 
> 1. *p →  ɸ (This is the same as above; this is the same phoneme that Chamberlain and others note as f. )
> 2. ɸ → h (Around Edo Period; excepting for /ɸu/.)
> 3. h → ç (Only for /hi/; This is the furthest end of the long long development of *p so far.)


Here is the description of Middle Japanese of Diego Collado.


> The letter f is pronounced in various regions of Japan as it is in Latin. In others it is pronounced as if it were an imperfect h. For both pronunciations the lips and the mouth should be nearly, but not completely, closed.
> 
> When there are two tt, xx, zz, qq, cq, ij, or pp[47] it is important to persist in order to obtain perfect pronunciation and the exact value of the word; for mizu means 'honey' and mizzu means 'water.' Therefore, if the words are said with the same strength or the same gentleness they can mean either 'water' or 'honey.'


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21197/21197-h/21197-h.htm


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## mikun

_Hi,_
_I'm not reading the all Post, and afraid my post will miss the key issue....  This is my suggestion._
_The usage of words change also　in japan as they change in other countries.  20 years ago usage will sometimes not fit to present conversation._
_Japanese verb is constructed by kanji+hiragana as you know, and this hiragana usage changes constantly. Media people and government people are instructing young people how to write correct articles by issuing new guidebooks every several years, you may have good information of present usage from these guidebooks.  for exsample,    _ 

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