The relationship between the sound changes of Japanese and the nativization process of Sino-Japanese.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The main target of this research is to investigate into the relationship between the sound changes of Japanese and the nativization process of Chinese loanwords.We deal primarily with the vowel coalescences in Vu sequences. We notice the differences between au, on and iu, eu. The latter sequences have changed into ju :, jo :, respectively.The previous studies quite often say that the Japanese CjV sequences such as sya, gyu, tyo emerged as a result of borrowing the Chinese words that have strikingly complicated syllable structures compared to the simple CV syllables of Old Japanese. However the CjV sequences were brought even by the changes iu>ju : and eu>jo : which took place in native words. These phenomena suggest that CjV phonotactics established under the more complicated historical context than was assumed before. In this research, we focus on the mutual relation of the indigenous system and the nativization of loanwords.Paying attention to the relationship between sound changes and the Sino-Japanese is equally significant when we detect factors of sound changes by interpreting historical written documents. The same viewpoint also plays an important role when we examine the history of rendaku in loanwords.