Paper short abstract:

The paper is going to examine to what extent the Classical Japanese poems called mono no na 物の名, i.e. 'names of things', can be used as a source of linguistic information. This will discussed by means of two examples, one lexical and one phonetic.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is going to draw Western Japanologists' attention to a rather marginal type of Classical Japanese poems called mono no na 物の名 (or, butsumei 物名), i.e. 'names of things'. These poems contain an expression (one word, several words, longer phrases) deliberately hidden in their text. Since poetry is often used while investigating the historical stages of a certain language, it will be attempted to explore the possibilities offered by mono no na and to examine to what extent they can be of service as a source of linguistic information. Two examples will be discussed, taken from the third imperial anthology of Japanese poetry "Shūi waka shū", both by mysterious Fujiwara no Sukemi 藤原輔相 (d. before 956). The first is a rare lexical item, seemingly preserved exclusively in the analysed poem and reappearing only three centuries later. Although its meaning follows directly from the text, its morphological structure is far from clear. The other example is related to the phonetics of the Classical Japanese language, more specifically to the degree to which Chinese borrowings had been assimilated to the native system: it will be examined whether mono no na can be helpful in this respect too.