But I guess now is the time to look up a bit more of this very interesting lenition stuff I initially saw in a post on reddit: Why do /k/ and /g/ go to /i/ in Japanese? For example, /kak + ta/ (stem write + past) -> kaita. What is the motivation for turning a velar into a vowel?
According to Wiki lenition is "a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin lenis = weak)." So it's similar to what happens in American English, with all those ɾ's getting up in the t's circumference without regard to lexicography.
I remember thinking up something kind of like this (and by that I mean not really anything like this at all) when I learned passive conjugations. I didn't think about one kind of verb taking られる and the others taking あれる; I just stuck あれる on the end of any "plain" verb and imagined the う in between eroding away. So たべる＋あれる＝たべるあれる⇒たべられる and かく＋あれる＝かくあれる⇒かかれる. Actually now that I write that out it seems a lot more complicated than just remembering る⇒られる、う⇒あれる.
Anyway, the top comment by limetom is very enlightening, so now I'm looking through the preview of the book they cited ("A History of the Japanese Language" by Bjarke Frellesvig) on Google. Yeah! Making can't-sleep-time into learn-something-time is the greaɾest!
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