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Questioning AllographEvidence from Old Hiragana

Kazuhiro OkadaHokkaido University

TwiFULL SLiM #

Agenda

• Reviewing a theory of grapheme–allograph structure in detail

• Examining the theory with the character structure of Old Hiragana

• Introducing grapheme class to clarify the responsibilities for grapheme and allograph

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On Some Terms (Rogers )

• An is a member of a grapheme, which is not contrastive to the other allographs

• A is a contrastive unit in a writing system

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On Some Terms (Rogers )

• A is a system for graphically representing the utterances of a language

• A is a general term for a writing system without regard for its structural nature

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What is Allograph?

• A and a are allographs of the grapheme A in that replacing them does not alter the meaning of the word, as calm and cAlm, except oddness

• Note: Studies of Chinese characters treat allograph as relation of graphemes which descend from the same origin, despite a description found in Rogers ()

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Allograph Class

• Allographs constitute classes over grapheme (Rogers, )

• CAPITAL and minuscule

• Sans-serif and serif

• Roman, Bold and Italic

• Gill Sans and Avenir and so on…

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Grapheme and Phoneme

• Grapheme, as the name suggests, is defined parallel to phoneme, and allograph to allophone

• It is also referred to morpheme/allomorph, hereafter omitted

• Note that Rogers () does not insist that writing system is completely parallel to phonology

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Grapheme and Phoneme

• Minimal pair plays a central role in determining a phoneme, but similarity is also convincing

• Conversely grapheme is solely determined by usage, not by graphical likeness

• No outsiders would understand that γ and Γ are of the same grapheme

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A HoTEL Experiment

• To a certain extent, to know a writing system is to know allograph relations

• In the brain we process a written word without regard to allograph variation

• Consequently nonetheless HoTEL and hotel are visually different we can read

both /həʊˈtɛl/ (Dehaene, )

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A HoTEL Experiment

• ‘Wait! Can we assume that both HoTEL and hotel suffer same process?’

• That both HoTEL and hotel go the same process has little implication to the structure of grapheme

• For instance it is not obvious that either H and h are unified then processed or separately processed

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A HoTEL Experiment

• No one will argue against allograph itself

• Still there is room for an argument against grapheme–allograph structure

• In other words, there is some doubt that linguistic contrast can fully capture a structure of a writing system

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Contrastiveness Criterion

• Whether instances make a contrast is not so straightforward in the case of writing system

• colour and color

• beber and vivir (Spanish, b and v are not distinguished)

• Once contrast happened, it will guarantee the other contrastiveness in writing system

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• Degree of difference made with each allograph class is not slight

• In Latin script, the case class seems the most differentiated class

• No other classes make a variation like Q and q, R and r

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• Supposed that both the case distinction and stylistic differences make up equally allograph classes, how to illustrate the speciality of the case class?

• They do, actually, make a contrast, don’t they?

• There seems a need to elaborate the criterion

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Contrastiveness in Modern Latin

• Contemporary Latin writing system, which is not authorised one, some distinguish vowel i, u from consonantal j /j/, v /w/, the others not (partial application is also found)

• Originally the writing system of Latin lacks these vowel/consonant distinction whose distributions are purely complimentary (Marotta, )

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Contrastiveness in Modern Latin

• In the older writing system we neutralise the distinction in writing and decode in reading

• Practically those subtle differences ease distinctions over i, u and j, v, and let them be one time distinct graphemes, the other time allographs

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A Question

• What’s the contrastiveness in a writing system anyway?

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Old Hiragana

• Used from around to

• Has over kanas for core morae (adopted from Sproat, )

• later fused into , but maintained ancient ‘category’ (Frellesvig, )

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Old Hiragana

• Cursivised from Kanji, which was borrowed from Chinese writing system to represent Japanese morae

• Not closed system

• Hereafter ‘Kana’ refers to ‘Old Hiragana’

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Kanji to Kana

• When Kanji (hàn zì in Chinese) was utilised to represent Japanese, there were mainly two ways:

• Borrowing its sound

• Utilising the first sound of correspondence Japanese word

• Both ways ignore what the word means

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Kanji to Kana

• Most kana borrowed the sound

• In borrowing some simplification took place as Middle Chinese syllable structure is more complex than Old Japanese

• As a result large amount of homophonous application occurred

• /ka/ in Kojiki (): 迦加可珂賀何訶

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Kanji to Kana

• In developing Kana the use by public servant give a direction

• Nearly ignored so-called seidaku distinction

• Consulted few Kanji for a core mora

• Tended to write cursively

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Contrast of Kana

• Two level contrast shall be distinguished

• Mora level contrast (kana category)

• あ, い, う, え, お…

• Sub-mora level contrast

• /ha/: は, は, は, は…

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Contrast of Kana

• Mora level contrast is no doubt contrastive

• Sub-mora level contrast is said to make no contrast

• Whether one writes かは or かは does not contribute to the representation of a word

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Contrast of Kana

• Non-contrastiveness does not immediately lead to the conclusion that they are allographs

• There is a possibility of distinction as they are mostly derived from different Kanji and also a degree of cursiveness differentiate the shape largely

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Seidaku and Grapheme

• Sub-mora level contrast is not contrastive on core morae

• However Seidaku contrast is not mentioned

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• As noted, Kana lacks distinction for seidaku

• Seidaku, which nowadays is a voiced/unvoiced contrast, was formerly contrast with prenasalisation (supposed to have changed gradually within Middle Japanese period)

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• If mora level contrast is grapheme distinction in Kana, allographs, namely, sub-mora level contrast will be used freely over Seidaku

• If sub-mora level contrast make a contrast in usage of Seidaku even slightly, it shall include grapheme distinction, or even question grapheme/allograph structure

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A Case of f/b/p Distinction

• In Late Middle Japanese (–) current

/h/ was /ɸ/

• By a convention later transcribed as f

• /ɸ/ descended from /p/ in the environment of word-initial

• /w/ was for word-medial and final

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• Dakuon for /p/ can be reconstructed as

/ᵐb/, which fused into /b/ no later than Late Middle Japanese

• After losing its place, however, [p] seemed to have remained as an allophone for the environment of such as geminate consonant and onomatopœia

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• f/b/p share characters in writing

• By moraic nature they are combined with vowel

• は, ひ, ふ, へ, and ほ correspond to /fa/,

/fi/, /fu/, /fe/ and /fo/, respectively

• Do they, in fact, make no contrast?

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Jesuit Mission Press in Japan

• Jesuit Province of Japan printed Japanese textbooks with movable type (–)

• Their publication includes in Latin script and in Japanese script

• Originally made by European hand, from they renewed their movable type on their own

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Jesuit Mission Press in Japan

• They had used metal movable type, not wooden type, in order to recast same character again and again

• It is important that in which character it is written is very clearer than hand-written materials

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f/b/p Distinction in Missionary Press

• Early Japanese script publication (EJ)

• Late Japanese script publication (LJ)

• EJ lacks a digraph for p; both have a digraph for b, but often omitted

• Examining more than two characters per a core mora

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• EJ (Okada, , modified)

• は（者, 波, 者゛, 八, 和/wa/）

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/fa/ /ba/ part. ba /pa/ /wa/ part. wa /Cw-/ Total

22 18 3 43

1 2 3

49 49 98

1 96 172 23 292

10 10


• EJ (Okada, , modified)

• へ（部, 遍, 部゛, 衣/e/, 恵/e/）

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/fe/ /be/ /pe/ /e/ part. e total

79 9 88

9 6 9 6 30

130 1 131

4 4

28 28


• LJ (Shirai, , modified)

• は（者, 八, 盤, 和/wa/, 王/wa/）

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/fa/ /ba/ part. ba /pa/ /wa/ part. wa Total

者

八

盤

和

王

13 10 60 21 8 112

26 45 137 208

1 1

17 17

1 1


• Mora level distribution does not relate simply to phoneme

• Rather each character has their own relation

• 八 goes mostly to /ba/, or /wa/

• 者 goes to /fa/, /ba/, or /pa/

• 部 to /e/, 遍 to /fe/, /be/, or /pe/

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Allograph in Missionary Press

• There was some unification before, both look alike:

• /fa/: 八 A B

• /fe/: 部 A B

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• Attestation of 部B is too scarce ( times)

• Both 八A () and 八B () relate to

/wa/ in the environment of word-medial and final

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• Attestation of 八 confirms that they did not

receive distinction

• 部 implies that the difference was so subtle

as hardly to work independently

• Allograph in Kana has such a difficulty in distinguishing them in shape and usage

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Theoretical Implication

• What we called mora level contrast so far is rather weak category regarding core morae

• The fact that some sub-mora level contrasts have unique relation to phoneme shows their independency in the writing system and may name them graphemes

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• In sub-mora level contrast, shape unlikeness is a source of distinction

• Unique sound relation in some of them shows every shape unlikeness has a potence to have it

• Therefore sub-mora level contrast is a graphemic level difference

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• Mora level contrast is more abstract than grapheme

• To generalise it can be named as grapheme class

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• Graphemes of Kana also gives a ground for dividing capital and minuscule into separate graphemes

• Introducing grapheme class makes contrastiveness criterion weaken than Rogers ()

• This alternate intends to limit allograph to stylistic one

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Conclusion

• By introducing grapheme class responsibilities for grapheme and allograph become lighter

• Old Hiragana is a good example to present a grapheme class–grapheme–allograph structure

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Conclusion

• A is a weak category which comprises similar sound graphemes

• A is a unit which has independence in identification and sound correspondence

• An is what is subjected to parent grapheme

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Thank you for [email protected]

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Literature

• Dehaene, S. (). Reading in the brain: The science and evolution of a human invention. New York: Viking

• Frellesvig, B. (). A history of the Japanese language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Marotta, G. (). The Latin syllable. Hulst, H. & Ritter, N. (eds.) The syllable: Views and facts. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter

• Okada, K. (). A development of Kana movable type by Jesuit mission press in

Japan: With special reference to On Baptism and Preparation for Death (日本イエズス会版における日本語活字の開発: 『病者を扶くる心得』の仮名活字組版から). Unpublished ms. [in Japanese]

• Rogers, H. (). Writing systems: A linguistic approach. Malden, MA: Blackwell

• Shirai, J. (). Kana glyph usage in Jesuit Mission Press (キリシタン版の仮名文字遣). Kuntengo to Kunten-shiryō [in Japanese]

• Sproat, R. (). A computational theory of writing systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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