On Semantic Changes(Ⅰ) of the Repetitive Onomatopée with the alternation of hara and horo - With a Focus on Morphological and Semantic Changes of it Uses in the Ancient through Middle Japanese

Abstract

This diachronically deals with semantic changes of the repetitive onomatopée with the alternation of hara and horo in the Ancient through Middle Japanese. In the Ancient Japanese, the adjectival base hara was productively derivational as shown in the alternation of hara and horo. Since the late 8th century, morphologically and semantically diverse forms have been derived from hara, whose core meaning was assumed to be san (to scatter). During its derivational process, its auditory sense became a fossilized form in the Middle Japanese.BR hara originally depicted ‘a situation in which some things are scattered’, which was semantically extended to ‘a motion of something falling off or apart’ and further to ‘a motion of a lump breaking into pieces’, which was again extended to ‘an image of something not controlled’ in the Middle Japanese. And in the Middle Japanese, the alternation of voiceless and voiced consonants shows their respective distinctive characteristics in the auditory aspect, but not yet in the visional aspect. Unlike the derivational meanings of hara, the suffix –ri suggests a different image of ‘people behaving frivolously.’