Re: Weekly Vocab 8

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Do we know what particle Japanese used to mark the subject before ga became
> the norm? Or was Japanese so different at that time that it didn't have
> such a particle?
There was no nominative particle in Old Japanese.  There was also no
simple accusative particle, (w)o being an interjectional particle with a
number of uses, which apparently included (optional) accusative
marking.  It's fairly complex, but an interesting snip from The
Languages of Japan: "In the reading of materials written in imitation of
Chinese syntax, word order was inverted so that the actual reading would
follow Japanese syntax, and in the process, relation-indicating
particles were supplied so as to make the material easier to
comprehend.  In this Sinico-Japanese reading tradition, o was regularly
employed to mark the direct object.  Indeed, it is quite reasonable to
assume that this use of o in fact had by far the strongest effect in the
spread of the object-marking o".

It also noted that the gramaticalization of ga and no as nominative
particles may have also helped the spread of o.

Incidentally, in earlier periods, _no_ could also be used to mark the
subject of an independent clause, with a semantic difference, _no_
generally showing greater respect towards the marked noun than _ga_.
But, eventually, ga finally displaced no as the sole nominative marker
for independent clauses in the standard dialect.  Incidentally, there
are some dialects in Kyuushuu that still use both _ga_ and _no_ as
nominative particles, with the difference of respect, and some that have
come to use _no_ as the sole nominative marker (for independent clauses)
with _ga_ as the attributive/genetive particle (i.e., the same as _no_
in the standard dialect!)

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