Reconstruction:Proto-Japonic/-nka

According to one theory, possibly from *ka (“emphatic particle”), with the nasal from compounding with the genitive forms of pronouns such as *wana ka (“my”) > *wanka, which was resegmented as *wa-nka. (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

*-nka

1. genitive marker (in pronouns)

This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. Proto-Japonic *-nka might have originally applied only to genitive forms of pronouns. Elsewhere, *nə may have been used. The daughter languages (especially Japanese) extended the use of the pronoun as a nominative case marker (Proto-Japonic could have simply used the bare noun for the nominative).

In Ryukyuan, *-nka came to be used for humans in general.[1]

• Old Japanese: が (ga)
  • Japanese: が (ga, nominative marker), Japanese: が / ヶ (ga, obsolete possessive marker)
• Proto-Ryukyuan: *ga
  • Northern Ryukyuan:
    • Kikai: が (ga)
    • Kunigami: が (ga)
    • Northern Amami-Oshima: が (ga)
    • Okinawan: が (ga)
    • Oki-No-Erabu: が (ga)
    • Southern Amami-Oshima: が (ga)
    • Toku-No-Shima: が (ga)
    • Yoron: が (ga)
  • Southern Ryukyuan
    • Miyako: が (ga)
    • Yaeyama: が (ga)
    • Yonaguni: か゚ (nga)

• *nə