Homograph Distinction #

Ikeda Shoju

January 13 – February 11, 2025

Summary #

This page is an English-language summary of 同仮名異語の区別, a Japanese case study investigating the distinction between homographs (distinct words sharing the same kana spelling) in the Kanchi-in manuscript of the Ruiju Myōgishō (KRM). The full account, including the character-by-character evidence, is available only in Japanese; this page presents only the abstract.

This note uses the wakun “tsuku” (ツク) as a test case for distinguishing homographs. Whereas the earlier investigations of “ugoku” and “miru” focused mainly on verifying the hyōki column of the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, 2nd edition (Nikkoku), this note takes a different approach, using the three-volume Iroha Jiruishō (the Maeda and Kurokawa manuscripts) as a lens for examining KRM’s wakun. A survey of Nikkoku and the Kadokawa Kogo Daijiten found 14 and 10 separate headword entries for “tsuku,” and 4 and 2 for “tsugu,” respectively — evidence of substantial homography. Sorting KRM’s “tsuku” and “tsugu” attestations by the Nikkoku IDs assigned in KRM_wakun.tsv split them into several distinct word groups (e.g., “付・着・就・即・憑” and “突・衝・撞・搗・舂・築・吐”), while 60 “tsuku” instances and 1 “tsugu” instance could not yet be assigned an ID and still need sorting.

The note then tabulates the Iroha Jiruishō’s tsu (ツ) entries by meaning group — fu (付, 54 characters), tsugi (次, 51), totsu (突, 30), tsuke (漬, 1), tsugeru (告, 19), and tsuku/“pound” (舂, 8), plus zuku (ヅク, “owl,” 1) — cross-referencing each character’s location in KRM and its attestation in Nikkoku’s hyōki column against the annotations in Satō Kiyoji’s Iroha Jiruishō Ryakuchū and the Jigi Jikun Jiten. For each group, a consistent set of counts was tallied: how many characters the two reference works annotate, how many appear in the Iroha Jiruishō but not in KRM, and how many are missing from Nikkoku’s hyōki column; for the fu (付) group, for example, the two works together annotate 52 of 54 characters (96%). Characters left unannotated by both works — such as 㧢, 扔, and 戀 — were individually traced through sources including the Guxun Huizuan, the Guangyun, and the Tenrei Banshō Meigi. For zuku (ヅク, “owl”), the wakun readings of six KRM headwords, including 巧婦 and 𪃪鵒, were investigated through the Erya and the Shinsen Jikyō, and the Unicode variant forms of 兔 were also sorted out.

The investigation ranged widely and could not be brought to a tidy conclusion, so this note is left as a stopping point rather than a finished study.