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Given that もの has a rather similar usage as a generic modifier for turning a property into a thing with that property (as 物) or turning a property into a person with that property (as 者) -- it seems plausible that before the introduction of Kanji the word もの referred generically to people and things.

Is there any concrete evidence in favor of that theory? Any details which I have overlooked which make it implausible?

mmdanziger
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    By "concrete evidence", I assume you mean written records, but what written records existed before Kanji? There are a lot of homophones in japanese. – yadokari Dec 05 '12 at 20:54
  • @yadokari ...hiragana? Or was just made at the same time as Japanese Kanji? – dotnetN00b Dec 05 '12 at 21:24
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    @dotnetN00b, kana comes after Man'yōgana which comes after introduction of chinese writing. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Japanese – yadokari Dec 05 '12 at 21:36
  • @mmdanziger, Your main question on top does not make sense. 者 and 物 did not exist before the introduction of chinese characters. the word もの might have existed but i think there is no way to know – yadokari Dec 05 '12 at 22:01
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    Concrete evidence could include early writings that "confuse" the kanji, using them in ways that indicate that the distinction between person and thing is new/unnatural. Perhaps one character was initially used for person and thing and only later the other character was introduced. I am not an expert (otherwise I would not have asked) but I would imagine there have been studies done on cases such as this. Regarding the name of the question I couldn't think of anything more fitting that would fit on a single line. Feel free to edit if you can think of a better title. – mmdanziger Dec 05 '12 at 23:08
  • ok that line of thinking sounds interesting. you could rephrase your question to make it clearer but i understand a little more now. – yadokari Dec 05 '12 at 23:20
  • I think it sounds very plausible. Related, but different, are the words with 漢字 that are written with one 漢字 (e.g. 鶏), but clearly stem from a different idea (i.e. 庭鳥). See http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6581/kanji-for-native-japanese-concepts-kunyomi-spanning-multiple-morphemes – Earthliŋ Dec 06 '12 at 00:44
  • @user1205935: that's a great question and list (to the extent that I can follow it...) but I think my question is different : in contemporary usage the kanji have clearly different meanings but their parallel usage and homophonic kunyomi hint that the Chinese characters may have created that difference rather than reflecting two different pre-existing concepts. – mmdanziger Dec 06 '12 at 07:29
  • Which is why I said, "Related, but different"... I think that there are many instances of this type. 見る and 看る have different meanings, that by now don't overlap, but probably stem from the same verb in pre-kanji Japan. Similarly for 聞く・効く, 取る・採る, 乗る・載る, ad nauseam. Although I don't know about early writings, there must be tons of contemporary evidence in workbooks of school kids and scholars alike, who confuse one 漢字 with another for homophonic words. Is there a particular reason for your being interested in the word pair 物・者? – Earthliŋ Dec 06 '12 at 08:07
  • @user1205935 Thanks for the clarification. No particular reason, just that I came across it and was wondering. Also it offers a tantalizing look at a transition between a more "primitive" consciousness of all things being fundamentally the same to a division between things and people that could be linked to the introduction of a Chinese linguistic taxonomy. – mmdanziger Dec 06 '12 at 09:19
  • In precisely that sense, the question I linked to up there is related (but different ;). The more "primitive consciousness" thinks of 雷 as the rumbling of the gods, i.e. 神鳴り, at least Japanese primitive consciousness. The Chinese primitive consciousness is, of course, preserved in the 漢字 itself (雷=雨+田), at least up to simplification. – Earthliŋ Dec 06 '12 at 10:10

1 Answers1

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Before answering the question, I would like to clarify one thing: for most purposes, [物]{もの} and [者]{もの} are not two separate words, but a single word もの which has two kanji notations depending on its meaning. This is clearer when we consider compound words such as にせもの. When someone uses the word にせもの, it is not always clear even to the speaker whether it is 偽物 or 偽者. This is because we treat にせもの as a single word, not the common pronunciation of two distinct words.

But this is just an analysis of the modern usage of the word. Is it reasonable to consider that もの was historically a single word from the beginning? I think that it is, and the best explanation might come from Occam’s razor. Assuming that we did not have a distinction between animate and inanimate things is simpler than assuming that we had two separate words for animate and inanimate things which happened to have the same pronunciation (or which used to have distinct pronunciations but were later merged). Therefore it is reasonable to assume the former unless we have evidence for the latter possibility.

Tsuyoshi Ito
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