Re: phonological markedness [was Re: Happy New Year (to some)]

Axiem wrote:
> It is now. Historically, however, it wasn't. Japanese is slowly losing the
> /w/ sound. They used to have "wu" and "we"
Actually, /wu/ has never existed, at least, not during written history.
/wi/ *did* exist, however.  And kana for /wi/ and /we/ were still used
(altho pronounced /i/ and /e/) until the 1946 orthographic reform, as
well as a much wider use of _wo_ (e.g., _otome_ was written as _wotome_)

I've heard /wo/ for the particle, but I suspect that's pedantic.

And, I think Japanese has stopped losing /w/.  /wi/-/i/ and /we/-/e/
merged quite early on, as did /wo/ and /o/, yet /wa/ has survivedd.

Quoting from _The Languages of Japan_

"The early Heian period [794-1185] saw ... [the] merger of e and je, and
o and wo ... this was followed by the merger of i and wi and e and we
during the Kamakura period [1185-1331].  Entering the Edo period
[1603-1868] zi merged with di and zu merged with du, resulting in the
present-day number of sixty-two native syllables."

So, the loss of wi, we, and wo were only a few centuries apart, while
/wa/ has held its ground.  And, in fact, recent loans have reintroduced
new /w/ syllables, written with katakana u and a little vowel.  Plus,
I've heard things like [anewe:] for [aneue] (Elder sister), as well as
[wi:] for [ui] (can't remember a specific example at the moment.  So, I
rather suspect that Japanese is, in fact, *re*gaining /w/.

> "kau"->"kawanai". "kau" was originally "kawu".
Underlyingly, I would say it *is* /kawu/, which is simply realize as
[kau].  For what its worth, as far as I know, it's never *actually* been
[kawu] (altho its other stems were [kawi] and [kawe] - *[kawo] never
existed as the fifth stem evolved fairly recently, during the Edo
period, I believe.

Historically, the -u verbs are derived from -pu, via the sound change
/p/ -> /P/, which then, word-medially, frequently became /w/, and
elsewhere /h/, except before /u/ where it kept the /P/ pronunciation
(hence the use of _ha_ for the particle /wa/, and _he_ for /e/ (once
/we/).

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