Origin of Ra-Omitting Words in the Late Modern Owari Dialect

Abstract

In the Owari region, ra-omitting words appeared in the late modern period, 100 years ahead of Old Standard Japanese; however, during this period, the phenomenon occurred only in bimoraic verbs. In this paper, I consider the process by which ra-omitting words were established in the Owari region.

In the late early-modern Owari, “-rareru” was often used in honorific forms, where it was affixed to intransitive verbs, as was the “-rareru” in the potential form, with both usages often overlapping. During the same period, the potential form became established in 5-class conjugation verbs. Due to the acquisition of a form exclusively for potential use in 5-class conjugation verbs, a form exclusively for potential use was also produced in 1-class conjugation verbs, motivated by the need to achieve systematic consistency. R-stem 5-class conjugation verbs from this time served as a model for analogy. Among these, the existence verb “oru,” with its high usage rate, gave rise to a false analysis, a metanalysis, in which the honorific form had a “ra” but the potential form did not. It appears that the distinction of meaning brought about by the presence or absence of “ra” was overextended to bimoraic 1-class conjugation verbs, leading to the development of ra-omitting words.