Through his study-of the chinese caracters, by which the. Japanese denoted in the 8th century the Japanese syllables, Prof, Hashimoto found that in the written records, not five as in modern Japanese, but eight vowels were strictly discerned, : a, u, e
1, e
2 i
1, i
2, O
1, and O
2. He assumed i
2 to have been a diphthong like [li] and Prof. Hattori maintains e
2 to have been also a diphthong like [ai]. According to Dr. Arisaka O
2 was a central o-like vowel. And he denotes it with ö. I an of the opinion that there was no diphthong in old Japanese. Roughly speaking e
1, e
2, i
1 and i
2 seem to have represented the following vowels.
e
1……æ or ε
e
2……e
i
1……i
i
2……I
With reference to o2 Dr. Arisaka's opinion may be right. He found that O
2 (=ö) could not coexist in a word with guttural o′, and that it seldom coexisted with guttural vowels a or u. From the view-point of the palatal-attraction, the vowels of old Japanese can be classified as follows.
I) guttural: a, o (o′), u, or ε(=e′, probably a secondary vowel, which appeared as the result of “Brechung” or crasis.)
II) palatal:ö (o
2)
III) completely neutral: i (i
1)
IV) incompletely neutral: e (e
2), I (i
2)
One word could contain the foolwing vowels.
a) only. I
b) only II
c) I+III or III+I
d) II+-III or III+II
e) I+IV
The combintion IV+I was seldom, that is, e could stand after guttural vowels, but not before them. When we speak about the vowel harmony in old Japanese, we must keep in mind the exclusiveness of ö(o
2) on the one hand and the incomplete neutrality of e (e
2) on the other. The latter explains why the vowel e of the first syllable of the second component of a compositum had the tendency to be transformed into a. By this transformation (e>a) two components could, through the medium of vowel harmony, become a real compositum.
The labial-attraction could also be observed to some extent. This may be recognized by the fact that, both a and o could stand after o, but after ö stood ö in many cases.
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