compounds). EOJ pu ‘fire’ is a hapax legomenon attested only in MYS 20.4419, a sakîmôri poem:^[8]

(1) 伊波呂尔波 (2) 安之布多氣騰母 (3) 須美与氣乎 (4) 都久之尔伊多里弖 (5) 古布志氣毛波母

(1) ipa-rö-ni pa (2) asi pu tak-ë-ⁿdömö (3) sum-î yö-kë-wo (4) Tukusi-ni itar-i-te (5) kôpusi-kë-mô pa mö

(1) house-DIM-LOC top (2) reed fire burn-EV-CONC (3) live-NML good-ATTR-ACC (4) Tukusi-LOC reach-INF-SUB (5) be.longing-ATTR-EXCL TOP PT

(2) Although [we] make a fire out of reeds (1) at [my] house, (3) the living [there] is good, so (5) [I] will be longing for it (4) when I reach Tukusi!

Note that pJ *poy ‘fire’ belongs to 1.3 (L) accentual class. The well-known rule of thumb for accentuation of Japanese nominal compounds is that the first element defines HIGH or LOW register, while the second element defines locus, if there is any. The LOW initial register of puⁿzi and its actual accentual class further confirm the possibility that the first syllable can be explained as EOJ pu ‘fire’. Thus, EOJ puⁿzi < pJN *po-nusi ‘fire master,’ is quite a fitting name for an active volcano. For the usage of nusi ‘master’ in volcano deities names, cf. the OJ name of the deity Opo-ana-nusi ‘big-hole-master’, which, as J. Marshall Unger once suggested (p. c.), could be the name of a volcano deity.

In conclusion, two issues need to be addressed. First, if my solution of this etymology is correct, then EOJ pu ‘fire’ is no longer a hapax Legomenon, and we have the second independent evidence that the EOJ word for ‘fire’ was indeed pu. It is almost customary now to reconstruct the PJ form of WOJ pï as *pəy (Martin 1987: 405) rather than *poy. However, I know of no examples where pJ *ə raises to EOJ u, because only pJ *o > EOJ u. Recently, both Pellard (on the basis of the Ryūkyūan evidence) (2011: 10), and myself on the basis of the philological evidence in WOJ (pace Mabuchi 1972: 88) and EOJ phonological evidence just mentioned above (Vovin 2011: 222) argued for the reconstruction of PJ *poy rather than *pəy. Another attestation of EOJ pu ‘fire’ gives further credence to the EOJ side of argument in favor of *poy.^[9]

Second, the reconstruction of the pJN accent of *punsi as 2.3 (LL) may not really be as certain as Martin has presented it (1987: 420). In addition to the Tokyo accent pointing to 2.4 (LH) or 2.5 (LF), there is another problem which concerns the accentuation of ‑ⁿzi < nusi ‘master, owner’ in the compounds listed above. The MJ accent of nusi ‘master, owner’ itself is 2.4 (LH). Consequently, we would expect -ⁿzi to have a HIGH pitch. And indeed, this high pitch is regularly reflected in MJ muraⁿzi HHH ‘kabane title’ < *mura‑nusi ‘village master’ and MJ aruⁿzi XXH ‘master’.^[10] The possible explanation accounting for the minor accentual discrepancy between MJ fuⁿzi LL vs. the expected *fuⁿzi LH is that WOJ puⁿzi and MJ fuⁿzi must be loanwords from EOJ puⁿzi due to their EOJ peculiar phonetic shape with ‑u‑ rather than with ‑ô‑: we would expect WOJ *pôⁿzi and MJ *foⁿzi, if they were really cognates. Under this scenario, a minor accentual discrepancy that affects locus but not register is not totally unexpected, as such discrepancies occur even within the same language, cf. WOJ isô (MJ accent HH) ‘rock, rocky shore’ and WOJ isi (MJ accent HL) ‘rock, stone’.

Abbreviations

Grammatical Terms

ACC Accusative

ATTR Attributive

CONC Concessive

DIM Diminutive

EV Evidential

EXCL Exclamative

INF Infinitive

LOC Locative

NML Nominalizer

PT Particle

SUB Subordinative

TOP Topic

Languages

EOJ Eastern Old Japanese

MdJ Modern Japanese

MJ Middle Japanese

OJ Old Japanese

pA proto-Ainu

pJ proto-Japonic

pJN proto-Japanese

WOJ Western Old Japanese

Primary Sources

GK Gengo kokka (言語國訛), mid Edo (1601–1868 AD) period

CMJF Chikamatsu Jōruri fubon (近松浄塯璃譜本), late 17th c.

HF Hitati Fudoki (常陸風土記), 713 AD

HKMB Heike mabushi (平家正節), 1776 AD

KKWKS Kokin waka shū (古今和歌集), 921 AD

MYS Man’yōshū (萬葉集), between 759 and 771 AD

NSK Nihonshoki (日本書紀), 720 AD

SCS Shūchūshō (袖中抄), 1185–1190 AD

SFIB Suruga Fudoki Ibun (駿河風土記異聞), 12th c.?

SIWKS Jōben-bon (浄弁本) of Shūi waka shū (拾遺和歌集), 1185–1333 AD

TM Taketori monogatari (竹取物語), late ninth or early tenth century AD

WTS Waji taikan shō (和字大観抄), first part of 18th c.

Secondary Sources

Akimoto, Kichirō (ed.) 1958. Fudoki [Gazetteers]. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei [Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 2. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Akinaga, Kazue; Ueno, Kazuaki; Sakamoto, Kiyoe; Satō, Eisaku; Suzuki, Yutaka 1997. Nihongo akusento shi sōgō shiryō. Sakuin hen [The comprehensive materials on the history of accentual history of the Japanese language. An index]. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō.

Aoki, Kazuo; Inaoka, Kōji; Sasayama, Haruo; Shirafuji, Noriyuki (eds.) 1998. Shoku Nihongi [Continued Annals of Japan]. Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei [New Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 12–16. Tokyo: Iwanami.

Batchelor, John 1928. ‘Helps to the Study of Ancient Place-Names in Japan’. Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1928, pp. 52–102. Reprinted in: Refsing, Kirsten (ed.). Early European Writings on the Ainu Language, vol. 9. London: Routledge Curzon, 1996.

Batchelor, John 1938. An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary. 4th edition. Tokyo: Iwanami.

Kuroita, Katsumi & Matsuyama, Jirō (ed.) 1965–1966. Nihonshoki [Annals of Japan]. Shintei zōho kokushi taikei [The newly corrected and enlarged series on Japanese history], vols. 1a and 1b. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan.

Pellard, Thomas 2011. ‘Ryukyuan perspectives on the Proto-Japonic vowel system.’ Proceedings of the 20th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. Stanford: SSLI, pp. 1–15.

Sakakura, Atsuyoshi (ed.) 1957. Taketori monogatari. In: Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Series of the Japanese Classical Literature], vol. 9, pp. 3–78. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

Vovin, Alexander 1993. A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu. Leiden & New York: Brill.

Vovin, Alexander 2011. ‘On one more source of Old Japanese i₂.’ Journal of East Asian Linguistics 20, pp. 219–228.

Vovin, Alexander 2013. Man’yōshū. Book 20. A New English Translation Containing the Original Text, Kana Transliteration, Romanization, Glossing, and Commentary. Folkestone/Leiden: Global Oriental/Brill.

Notes

1

The Shoku Nihongi text is cited according to Aoki Kazuo, Inaoka Kōji, Sasayama Haruo, and Shirafuji Noriyuki’s edition (1991–1998).

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2

The Taketori monogatari text is cited according to Sakakura Atsuyoshi’s edition (1957: 3–78).

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3

In addition, pA *unti ‘fire’ is a regional word; it is attested only in Sakhalin dialects and in the Soya dialect in the extreme north of Hokkaido.

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4

The Fudoki texts are cited according to Akimoto Kichirō’s edition (1958).

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5

The Nihonshoki text is cited according to Kuroita Katsumi and Matsuyama Jirō’s edition (1965–1966).

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6

All the data in the right three columns in this table are from Akinaga, Kazue; Ueno, Kazuaki; Sakamoto, Kiyoe; Satō, Eisaku; Suzuki, Yutaka (1997: 432).

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7

Technically EOJ pu ‘fire’ is a word from Muⁿzasi province, but it is from the Tatiᵐbana district located in the west of this province, which is barely 50 km. from Mt. Fuji.

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8

The reconstruction of the original text, transcription, glossing and translation are from Vovin (2013: 188), with one minor adjustment in the transcription and additional highlighting made on purpose for this contribution.

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9

Many thanks to John Whitman, with whom I have had a long discussion about the reconstruction of pJ word for ‘fire’ about five years ago. Many of his careful arguments against *poy vs. *pəy made me revise and rethink the present argumentation about the name of Mt. Fuji as being evidence for pJ *poy rather than *pəy.

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10

The MJ accent of OJ tônzi ‘mistress of the house’ is unknown.

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