Japanese Language Lesson: The History of Te Form

[@tonythesopranos5310]

Apologies, from 10:35-10:45 the screen briefly goes black, that was an editing mistake - my bad!

[@Transcription-do1pc]

6:18 - Reference Grammar of Japanese - Section 9.1.4 (p. 417) Verbal infinitive + -tutu - Samuel Elmo Martin (1975) The suffix ~tutu comes from a reduplication of the old auxiliary which was attached to the infinitive to form a perfect as in hana ga sak-i tu[ru koto] '[the fact that] flowers have bloomed' (§9.5); that auxiliary is the source of the gerund V-(i-)te and, ultimately, of the modern perfect V-(i-)ta.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@Transcription-do1pc Thank you! 'The suffix ~tutu comes from a reduplication of the old auxiliary'. Does 'old auxiliary' here refer to つ？

[@Transcription-do1pc]

@@tonythesopranos5310 Yes, that book explains all of the grammar points using romaji and custom diacritics so it's a bit hard to follow. The useage of つ becoming ている by process of reduplication is mentioned earlier in that chapter as: A literary (or pseudo-literary) equivalent of the verbal concurrent is made by attaching the infinitive to -tutu: Hon o yomi-tutu aru = Hon o yomi-nagara 'While reading the book'. When this expression is followed by the auxiliary aru, it becomes a literary equivalent for V-te iru in the meaning 'is doing': Hon o yomi-tutu aru = Hon o yonde iru 'I am reading the book'; Kenkyuu si-tutu aru 'I am doing research'. Since V-te iru can be interpreted in more than one way, V-i-tutu aru is a useful paraphrase to make the continuative or progressive meaning unambiguous. Perhaps this is why it has been observed that V-i-tutu is "lately increasing in use for the progressive" (Kogo-bumpo no mondai-ten 225). In section 9.2 The Gerund (p. 477): Originally the gerund was itself the infinitive form of an auxiliary verb which underlies the literary perfect forms turu (attributive) and tu (predicative) as in saki-turu hana 'the flowers in bloom, the flowers which have bloomed' (= saita hana or saite iru hana) and hana saki-tu 'the flowers are in bloom, the flowers have bloomed' (= hana ga saita or hana ga saite iru). With つ ー> ている and つつ ー> ている you get a link between つ and つつ. The Gerund (て - section) is over 100 pages just by itself so any explanation in the comments is challenging. This book is easily found on Libgen and is a great reference.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@Transcription-do1pc That's absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for taking the time out to explain that.

[@Transcription-do1pc]

A much more detailed explanation can be found in "A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese - Vovin (2020) p.844" Word non-final bound Auxiliaries. Vovin takes a different approach by breaking verb forms into converbs, but it is exceptionally thorough in listing possible combinations, when they can and cannot apply, and listing all known historical examples where possible. It will also give insights about て being bound by Kolpachi's constraint with the perfective て only being found with verbs that have an animate subject in Western Old Japanese. p. 857 - "It is necessary to note that there are no cases of a violation of Kolpakchi’s constraint for the perfective auxiliary て in Western Old Japanese: it always appears with an animate subject, unlike Middle (Classical) Japanese, where examples of て with an inanimate subject can be occasionally found (Vovin 2003: 314). It is necessary to note that て occurs much more frequently with transitive verbs rather than with intransitives, but the main distinction still appears to be its relationship to animacy. In "Azuma Old Japanese - A Comparative Grammar and Reconstruction - Kupchik (2023)" p.384 - The coordinative gerund -tutu indicates the meaning of ‘while (doing something)’. There are two additional Eastern Old Japanese topolect variants attested: -tusi and -tötö. In Western Old Japanese (8th century CE, Nara region) and Töpo-Suruga Old Japanese (8th century CE, western Azuma region) we only find -tutu. Japanese etymology is more of a warren than a single rabbit-hole, the hardest part is remembering where you read that thing you're looking for in the hundreds of textbooks you've collected.

[@GustafUNL]

I LOVE ETYMOLOGY.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@GustafUNL etymology gang rise up 🌞

[@freakyjim2131]

Thank you always for your videos. They provide a much more serious take on the Japanese language compared to other language study materials.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@freakyjim2131 yeah, it's a shame textbooks like genki don't explain concepts like this, because it'd make understanding the grammar rules much easier!

[@tedkz6155]

Man, I really like this topic, it was my first step in japanese etymology as the て-form at first didn't seem to fit in the godan model until you see the sound changes in the renyoukei.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@tedkz6155 yeah, once you realise they're just slightly different versions of the standard masu for sounds, it feels way less random

[@duarugasu]

I actually noticed this about the -te form when I was looking into the national anthem. さざれ石の 巖と*なりて* 苔のむすまで Also of note is that we can see that の and が were interchangeable, that is also why the title is 君が代 (The Lord's Reign) rather than 君の代.

[@GustafUNL]

Cool.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@duarugasu that is very cool! Thanks for pointing that out. I'd like to do a video on なり in the future. なる seems to have been used far more as a verb in the past than it is today.

[@duarugasu]

​@@tonythesopranos5310 That is actually a video I would very much like to see. I have heard that なり is related to words like な なる に にて/で and they all retain a copular element, but I don't understand their exact relationship. I'd also like to know why it was mostly replaced by である and its variants in modern Japanese.

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

@@duarugasu that's nice topic for a video

[@Afterlord2]

This channel is actually so good. Thanks for making these videos!

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@Afterlord2 that's very kind, thanks!

[@DanielMemeSmith]

This is quite a unique way of teaching japanese - talking about how the modern words came about from the classical words, along with the funny anachronistic message bubbles from people in old japanese paintings. Please keep it up!

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@DanielMemeSmith thank you!

[@Fleurieux]

Videos like these help me so much with understanding the language better and remembering it.

[@trafo60]

Basically the intermediate 'i' got dropped in these forms. These sorts of simplifications happen a lot in languages in frequently used, grammatical structures, compare English 'I am going to' > 'I'ma'. The problem is that this produced a lot of consonant clusters, which is something the Japanese language doesn't really like, so these were all resolved somehow. kt > it, so kakite > kaite. This may seem strange but a similar sound change has happened in Romance languages, see Latin factum > fait. t is voiced to d after voiced stops and nasals, which is very common. Hence shinte > shinde, oyogite > oyogde > oyoide (similarly to kt > it), nomite > nomde > nonde (with the nasal assimilating, which is also very common) Verbs ending in b require an extra step. They have the voicing assimilation, but then the b assimilates in place to the d, so asobite > asobde > asodde. However, long voiced stops are also not allowed, so the first d changes to an easy nasal: asonde. Again, this may be surprising, but a similar thing happens in Greek. r just assimilates to t: kaerite > kaerte > kaette. Personally I think the u verbs like kau are the most fascinating. Why katte? Well, a very long time ago, these ended in p, so it was something like kapu, kapite. The latter we can easily see evolving to kapte and then katte. However, elsewhere the p changed to f, then later to h at the start of words, but w in the middle of words. This is why the pa-kana are derived from the ha-kana, why は is pronounced wa, and the reason for alternations like ippon, nihon, sambon. Later, w was lost everywhere except before a. Hence why we end up with seemingly random alternations like kau, katte, kawanai. Oh, and I believe itte comes from a dialect where 'kt' became 'tt' instead of 'it'

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@trafo60 that was very well written and explained. Really interesting thank you.

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

Let's goooo Btw I don't remember if I said it already, but I bought "A History of the Japanese Language" and can't wait to read it :)

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@giuseppeagresta1425 thank you for all your comments 😅, it's a great book! A lot of it goes over my head though, as it's for linguists. But the bits I have understood are really great.

[@dragonapop]

I always wondered why the connecting syllable seemed so random. Nice to see the logic for how verbs endings changed as a byproduct of speaking quickly. I think it's a much better approach to teach historical linguistics along with language learning, so thing seem less random. Helps me understand the logic of everything. Side question, do you have any book or media recommendations for a "beginner"? I understand most grammatical aspects about Japanese, and I can read Chinese characters. It's really cursed, because I understand the meaning of sentences but I read the every character with a Mandarin reading.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

Thank you for the kind words. Sorry, by 'book' or 'media' recommendations, do you mean for learning Japanese itself? Or learning about the history/etymology of Japanese?

[@dragonapop]

@@tonythesopranos5310 Learning Japanese itself. You seem to be more interested in historical elements of Japanese, rather than anime & general pop culture. Which is a point of view I relate to (though I enjoy the other too). While it's easy to find material in Japanese about the second, popular cultural things, it's more difficult to find things that are more "normal". Maybe ''normal" is not the right word, "ordinary" might be a better word.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@dragonapop Ah I see what you mean. Why don't you try this show, 'myanimelist.net/anime/49738/Heike_Monogatari'. I really liked it due to its historical authenticity. It also doesn't play into a lot of anime tropes. My best recommendation for finding content to watch is this site: animelon.com/. It has Japanese subtitles available for a whole load of shows. Maybe you could find one you like on there?

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

@@dragonapop If you're looking for logically explained grammar I really suggest Cure Dolly's channel, she's the best :) Animelon is a good source for watching subtitled anime too; in case you need a vocabulary I'd recommend Takoboto (is a pretty god Japanese-English one, and it's starting to have Japanese-Japanese entries too)

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

@@dragonapop aside from Cure Dolly (which has an incredibly well-crafted structure course), Takoboto and Animelon, I'd also recommend later on to give a chance to "小説家になろう" (shousetsuka ni narou), which has (for free!) many many works uploaded by their users; so yes, this means there's going to be many amateurish works, but: 1) you don't necessarily have to care to find the best works imaginable to improve in the language, as long as you're having fun; 2) many accomplished light-novelists started off here, and I think you can find their first works still there for free Also, there's 青空文庫 (Aozora bunko) which has a variety of copy-right-free classical Japanese literature (even tho this might be a little to hard to read if you're new to the language)

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

This episode was really quite mind-blowing I had imagined that the modern, seemingly-unrelated て form of verbs were the result of a sound change in the pronunciation of a 連用形 + て structure, but I didn't know anything about the つ auxiliary verb! It's so beautiful to see all the pieces coming together; thank you for this episode :)

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@giuseppeagresta1425 a pleasure as always

[@user-vt2dn7qc9g]

your videos are really really really interesting!!! can you please include some further reading on the linguistic history of the language? Like book reccomendations and the like

[@tonythesopranos5310]

Thank you :) Sure, here are some of the books I have used: (Handbooks of Japanese Language and Linguistics [HJLL]_ 1) Bjarke Frellesvig (editor), Satoshi Kinsui (editor) - Handbook of Historical Japanese Linguistics-Walter de Gruyter (2024) A History of the Japanese Language -- Bjarke Frellesvig -- 2010 -- Cambridge University Press Haruhiko Kindaichi, Umeyo Hirano, Mineharu Nakayama - The Japanese Language-Tuttle Publishing (2010) Yoko Hasegawa - Japanese_ A Linguistic Introduction-Cambridge University Press (2014) Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters By Lawrence J. Howel

[@user-vt2dn7qc9g]

@@tonythesopranos5310 thank you so much!!!

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@user-vt2dn7qc9g No worries!

[@bricc1927]

Thank you for covering this form! I was hoping you'd make a video on it as it's usage can get pretty confusing sometimes and learning the history can make a huuuge difference.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@bricc1927 no worries, thank you!

[@esoes835]

Really great videos, comment for algorithm gods because it deserves more recognition!

[@Cabesandia]

really funny how these really useful and informative videos are made by some guy called tony the sopranos

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@Cabesandia I was a fan of the show, so I changed my KZbin name to it as a joke a few years back. I am thinking of changing it to something more relevant, but I don't have any ideas as of yet 🤔

[@TheoEvian]

Oh, and coming think of it the つ auxiliary completely dominated everything - it replaced the ki/keri past, created the alternative tari-tari, te-form to a great extend replaced renyokei constructions, etc. and it basically caused all the onbinka sound changes in verbs! What a success story :D Oh and you can still say things like 行きつ戻りつ (read yukitsu!) in modern japanese, it just sounds very pretentious (but you need to know it for N1!)

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@TheoEvian all hail the つ！

[@matzekatze7500]

Your videos are really good but I have to say that the audio quality and the Japanese pronounciation could be better

[@scurly0792]

Was thinking this, especially pronouncing 文語 like English bung-go

[@matzekatze7500]

@@scurly0792 yeah that was a bit off😅

[@joshyam4026]

連用形→connecting to 用言＝conjugating words＝動詞&形容詞。 連体形→connecting to 体言＝名詞 substance/nouns。

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@joshyam4026 I'm not sure what you're pointing out sorry?

[@dokudenpa7368]

We do not definitively know whether -tsutsu is related to the perfective -tsu, and some people have certainly suggested that, but I do not believe that makes much sense. -tsu (or rather OJ -tu) was generally only used for some verbs, while others instead used -nu for the perfective. This distinction, which probably mostly about event type and agentivity, got lost after the classical period. Meanwhile, -tsutsu (or rather OJ -tutu, because we already find this suffix in the Kojiki) was always also suffixed to verbs that only took -nu for the perfective. Besides, they are only kind of related semantically and there is no other instance of just reduplicating the final form of a verbal suffix in all of Japanese language history. There are not that many phonemes in Old Japanese. Two morphemes sounding somewhat similar can just be a coincidence.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@dokudenpa7368 very interesting, thank you

[@tonythesopranos5310]

Where did you get this information BTW? I'd be interested to read myself :)

[@danielblumowski34]

Why did in the case of て and た the 連用形 changed to 音便形 but not in the case of ます, たい and so on?

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@danielblumowski34 I'm sorry, but I have no idea actually! If I figure that out I'll let you know.

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

4:29 as for the "Hime" part; 日女 maybe meant "daughter of the Sun"? 👀

[@GustafUNL]

日女 appears to be one way to write one of the names for Amaterasu (The Japanese Sun Goddess). "Hirume" in this case. Hime just means princess in the context you're referencing in the video. But I did learn something new by investigating your comment.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@giuseppeagresta1425 spot on! /hime/ From Old Japanese. Originally a compound of 日 (hi, “sun”, a prefix or appellation used in reference to the imperial family) +‎ 女 (me, “female person: girl, woman”). There is also a male version which is 彦 (Hiko) which comes from 日 + 子! A Japanese friend told me this recently, I never made the connection in my head lol

[@Jumpoable]

Your grammatical & historical linguistic analysis & your image selection - spot on, well done, ding dong! But your pronunciation can use a bit of improvement. え is like è in French, NOT a diphthong like ey/ ay. て is tè, NOT tay, & please don’t aspirate the t that much as they tend to do in British English. No breathy sound please! GanbatTE.

[@spoddie]

Mate, you pronounce て correctly in sentences but you call it the "tay form", not even close. Si is the nihon-shiki or Kunrei-shiki method of writing shi.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@spoddie I get quite a few comments about my pronunciation. Firstly, I'm swapping between my English script and Japanese, so i struggle to keep the pronunciation as consistent. Secondly, I'm a learner, my pronunciation is not perfect. I don't know what people want to get out of pointing out my pronunciation not being perfect? Like yes. I know it isn't. You're very welcome to spend the time and research making your own videos if my pronunciation bothers you so much. 'Si is the nihon-shiki or Kunrei-shiki method of writing shi.' Yes I know this. But Old Japanese had the sound 'si' which later morphed into 'shi'. It's impossible to 100% know all the sounds of Old Japanese and it is debated. If you are going correct someone you should at least get it right. kzbin.info/www/bejne/r360qKdpppKDjLMsi=MeMzZiol398YCG5n&t=107, listen it's not quite 'shi'.

[@spoddie]

@@tonythesopranos5310 Being so thin skinned you'd last 5 minutes in academia. It appears you are quoting from "A History of the Japanese Language" Bjarke Frellesvig, 2010. Page 27 makes it clear that he is using Nihon-shiki transliteration.

[@tonythesopranos5310]

@@spoddie you sound absolutely miserable man