Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/kusori

Roots

The term 薬 (kusuri, “medicine”) is cognate with now-obsolete adjective 奇し (kusushi, “mystical, magical, wondrous”). The common root kusu also appears in older compounds, such as 薬師 (kusushi, “doctor”), 薬子 (kusuko, “a shrine maiden who test-tastes the offering sake on New Year's Day”), obsolete verb 薬す (kususu, “to treat an illness using medicine”), 薬玉 (kusudama, “a collection of branches from fragrant plants gathered into a ball, as seen above the main door of modern sake breweries”), even the camphor tree 楠 (kusu no ki), etc. The noun kusuri appears to be a compound or other kind of derivation of root form kusu. This might rule out that medial /o/ in the reconstructed form /kusori/ currently given on the entry page. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:50, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

The compounds might be from an earlier *kusor-, and kususi might be from earlier *kusorsi. Many Ryukyuan dialects front *su to shi, si, or sï, which rarely happens in this case, so we can reconstruct medial *-o-. Chuterix (talk) 13:08, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

In addition Konkō Kenshū records くそし for 医師 'doctor'. Chuterix (talk) 13:14, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

One interesting problem we have then, if 薬 (kusu) is from Proto-Japonic */kuso/, is that this becomes phonologically identical to Japanese 糞 (kuso) ← OJP ⟨kuso₁⟩ ← Proto-Japonic */kuso/.

The semantics become immediately problematic. How do we have both "mystical substance" (positive) and "shit" (negative) coming from the same root?

(Side note: adjectives are formed from [root] + [adjective suffix]. There could be no *kusorsi, as medial consonants are disallowed in Japonic phonology. Given regular Proto → OJP vowel patterns as described at w:Proto-Japonic#Vowels, kusosi would naturally shift to kususi, so there's no need to posit any *kusorsi form.) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)