Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/su

More than just a verb

It's probably also worth exploring the use of す as an honorific suffix, and as a suffix marking transitivity / causativity. The former use appears to be common with Korean infix -si-: see -시- (-si-). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr Don't some western scholars interpret the honorific as -as-?

See also subsection 3.2.3.7 in Vovin 2020's Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese (i'm sure if you're very active on wiktionary (or some other wikimedia site) then you have free access to Brill via Wikipedia.) Vovin 2020 thinks it's a borrowing from an ancient Korean honorific like the parallel in Korean, whence Middle Korean -osi- ~ -usi-.

The causative -as(e)- is attested in Ryukyuan (c.f. Yamatohama (ryn) -asuri, Shodon (ams) -āshum, Shuri (ryu) -ashun), and Vovin reconstructs a pJ form *-as(e)- (actually *-as- ~ *-ase-) for the causative marker. Chuterix (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2023 (UTC)