What is the origin of けれど, ければ, けど, etc? In Classical Japanese (correct me if I'm wrong; all my CJ was from Wikipedia and linguistic papers), the could attach a lot of things: , , , etc. So I would be able to say rather than ? Anyways, where does the `ker-` part come from in all these supplanted forms of the ? Is there once some helping verb ? If so, what would it mean?

They are conjugational endings from (sh)i-Adjectives:

We can derive verbs from adjectives by adding :

> -> ->

And conjugate them further:

*
* ()
* (negation)
* ...



This conjugational suffix got reanalyzed as a word on its own, yielding , which was shortened to , , and .

Even by itself was used in the meaning of by the same process.



> _ __ _=