Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds by Timothy J. Vance

Author:Timothy J. Vance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2022-04-06T17:48:07.995000+00:00

3[a]

These examples are from the first paragraph of Lyman’s section 3. He did not provide a sub-section label, so I have added “[a]” to make references to this set of examples easier. Lyman described the words listed here as “given by Hepburn as compound verbs.” It is clear from the examples that Lyman intended “compound verbs” to mean verbs based on two verb elements (i.e., V+V=V compounds). The great majority of such compound verbs do not have rendaku, and Lyman cited only examples that do have it.

Hepburn used the adverbial form (ren’yōkei 連用形) of a verb as its citation form. This same form is sometimes called the infinitive (Bloch 1946:6) or the continuative (Kuno 1973:195) in English. In addition to this citation form, the H2 entry for a verb provides the ending for the conclusive form (shūshikei 終止形), that is, the plain nonpast affirmative, which modern dictionaries use as the citation form. The H2 entry also provides the ending for the plain past affirmative, katakana for the conclusive form, and a transitivity notation (i.v. for an intransitive verb, t.v. for a transitive verb). For example, in the case of ike-doru (modern Tōkyō /ike+dor–u/ 生け捕る ‘to capture alive’), the entry in H2 begins: “IKEDORI, –ru, –tta, イケドル, 生捕, t.v.”

Segmentally, the adverbial form (ren’yōkei) is also the form that a verb takes when it is used as (or converted into) a noun, although there is a difference in accent in some cases (Martin 1975:883–885). Since Lyman used this form to cite both verbs and deverbal nouns, many of his examples are ambiguous, as we see especially in his sub-section 4(a) below. Even here in Lyman’s sub-section 3[a], the word that matches his example is in some cases listed in H2 only a noun, not as a verb. I have noted these problematic examples individually. Otherwise, I have just substituted the modern citation form (the conclusive form) without comment.

Normally, the form that the first element takes in a V+V=V compound is also segmentally identical to the adverbial form (ren’yōkei). For example, the first element in /cure+dac–u/ 連れ立つ ‘to go together’ is /cure/, which is identical both to the adverbial form of the verb /cure–ru/ 連れる ‘to accompany’ and to the deverbal noun /cure/ 連れ ‘companion’. In some cases, however, including a few of Lyman’s examples in this sub-section, the first element appears in a contracted form, as in fun-baru (modern Tōkyō /fuN+bar–u/ 踏ん張る ‘to stand firmly’). The adverbial form of the verb /fum–u/ 踏む ‘to step on’ is /fum–i/ 踏み. I mentioned in the Preface that I use a hyphen to mark what is commonly treated as the boundary between a stem and an inflectional ending, but for verbs in one of the two major traditional conjugation classes, there is no inflectional ending for the adverbial.4 Using the examples already cited in this paragraph to illustrate, the adverbial form of /fum–u/ is /fum–i/, but the adverbial form of /cure–ru/ is /cure/, which is identical to the root. This problem comes up in §7.4.2,

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