Reconstruction:Proto-Japonic/nə

Etymology
Probably an apophonic form of.

Usage notes
According to, Proto-Japonic originally applied only to genitive forms of pronouns. Elsewhere, was used. In Proto-Ryukyuan, due to later animistic influence, it was semantically extended as a nominative case marker (Proto-Japonic simply used the bare noun for the nominative).

However, in Old Japanese, was used after nominatives in general, not just pronouns. Morever, when following pronouns or other nominatives indicating persons, marked other nominatives that were relatively close to the indicated person, while  was used for nominatives that were more psychologically or emotionally distant.