Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/-a

Issues

• Frellesvig holds that the mizenkei is not an inherent verb base stem, but rather one that is derivative. See also his paper "Old Japanese Conjugation Classes". If memory serves, Frellesvig is not alone in this analysis.

• A large number of terms currently listed under Reconstruction:Proto-Japonic/-a#Derived_terms are incorrect.
  • 魔羅, for instance, is entirely a borrowing from Sanskrit (via Chinese), brought over as part of the transmission of Buddhism to Japan. In Buddhism, this referred to "the evil one" in allusion to the distractive forces that lure one away from the path to enlightenment. Among monks, this became a kind of slang reference to sexual desires and the penis.

  The only relation to 放る (maru, “to excrete”) is accidental similarity. This cannot possibly be [VERB STEM] + a (suffix forming resultative nouns), since "the result of excreting" would mean either urine or faeces, not penis.

I'll have a go at cleaning up the deriveds.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:44, 28 June 2023 (UTC)