The third topic promised in the overview article is the word order of compounds. At the opening of his paper “Gokon-ron no danpen” (1931), Orikuchi Shinobu argues that ancient Japanese may have had types of compound-making different from today’s.
The modern type: modifier first
When modern Japanese combines two words into one, the ordinary order is: the modifying part first, the modified part after.
- takai (high) + yama (mountain) → kōzan (“high mountain”)
- akai (red) + hana (flower) → akai hana (“red flower”)
- atarashii (new) + ie (house) → shinkyo (“new home”)
The modifier explains the main word behind it, from the front. This type feels natural to our sense of language.
The reverse type Orikuchi pointed out
Orikuchi, however, points out that in the language of ancient times there are many examples in which the modifying word is placed after the main part. He even says that this may have been the older form — that it may have been, if anything, the proper one.
Example 1: hashidate (a ladder)
A ladder was anciently called hashidate. Orikuchi cites the Harima Fudoki. When people piled up rice bales to make a ladder to climb to heaven, it says, the ladder was written “立橋.”
What is interesting here is the meaning of the word hashi. According to Orikuchi, when we hear hashi we think only of a bridge laid level. But in old times, anything connecting two places, from here to there, was a hashi. Something standing vertically — that is, a ladder — was also called a hashi.
That ladder was called hashi + date (“standing”). Our sense of modern language would say “a standing bridge,” tatehashi (竪橋), but in fact hashi comes first and date after. Orikuchi presses the point that it must not be taken as “a thing in which a bridge stands.”
Example 2: kataoka (傍丘)
Another example is the word kataoka (傍丘, also 片岡), which also appears in place names. To today’s feeling it can be read as something like “the hill that lies beside the flatland beside the hill.”
Orikuchi says, though, it should be read like this. Kataoka means “the side of a hill,” and is less the name of a hill than a word for the land beside a hill. That is, kata (“side”) is the main part, and oka (“hill”) modifies it. To us today, though, “okakata” would feel more natural.
Example 3: shitaūzu and shitasudare
Orikuchi points out that the same type is also in the courtly language of the Heian period. Shitaūzu is what is worn beneath the shoe (kutsu), something like socks. Shitasudare refers to the lower part of the blind (sudare) hung at the front of a carriage. In both, shita (“below”) comes first, but the meaning is “beneath the shoe” and “beneath the blind.”
Orikuchi thinks that in these words the old type was still surviving in the Heian period.
Not only a story about Japanese
Orikuchi ties this view to the language of Okinawa too. In Okinawan, he says, a type stands out in which a word adding the sense of “small, endearing” follows a noun to make a compound (as in hashi-gwaa, ushi-gwaa). In Japanese too, in the Tōhoku and Kantō regions, there is a way of speaking that adds ko to the end of words. Orikuchi thought such types might be keeping an old type of Japanese in far-off places.
What is certain here, and what isn’t
The theory introduced in this article — that “ancient compounds had a type in which the main part comes first” — is Orikuchi’s view. Orikuchi himself, in the latter half of this paper, says “once word research is pushed beyond a certain point, it inevitably becomes conjecture,” marking the limits of conjecture. The observation that hashi once also meant vertical things, and the way of reading kataoka, are the content of Orikuchi’s argument and are not necessarily widely accepted among researchers today. We sort that out in the verdict article. Orikuchi’s own text we read in Close reading 2.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Modern type | The modifier first, the modified main part after (kōzan, etc.) |
| Orikuchi’s point | Argues that in ancient times there was a type with the main part first and the modifier after |
| Examples | hashidate (ladder), kataoka, shitaūzu, shitasudare |
| Meaning of hashi | Once anything connecting two places, including a vertical ladder |
| Caution | Orikuchi’s view; not necessarily widely accepted |
In a nutshell — in words like hashidate, kataoka, and shitaūzu, Orikuchi Shinobu saw traces of an old compound type in which the modifier comes after. But that is Orikuchi’s view, not established fact.