宋音 및 唐音에 걸친 鼻音聲母의 反映 = The Reflection of Nasal Initial Across So’on and To’on

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study extracted and analyzed the kana notations corresponding to the four nasal initial categories from Japanese So’on and To’on. The results of this analysis are summarized as follows.
The Ming (明) initial is reconstructed as /m/ in Middle Chinese and largely retains this form through Early Modern and Modern Chinese. This reflects the internal phonological process in Chinese where the nasal quality of the Ming initial weakened or disappeared.
The Wei (微) initial, originally separated from the Ming initial, is typically reconstructed as /ɱ/. It was preserved in Early and Middle Mandarin but shifted to /v/ during the late Tang and early Song periods. This /v/ persisted until the 17th century, after which it further evolved into a zero initial (零聲母).
The Ni (泥) and Niang (娘) initials were nasal initials /n/ in Middle Chinese and have undergone little change into Early Modern and Modern Chinese. In So’on and To’on, these initials also appear in the ナ row /n/.
The Ri (日) initial appears mostly in the サ and ザ rows in So’on and To’on, but some instances also show ナ and ラ rows.
As for the Yi (疑) initial, it mostly appears in the ガ row in So’on data, suggesting that the dialectal basis of Kamakura–period So’on preserved the nasal /ŋ/ sound regardless of the vowel openness. The presence of zero initials alongside nasal readings implies that some dialects were already undergoing denasalization.