is the old perfective suffix り connecting to 命令形 because there were 2 types of e?


As i have heard, there were 2 types of e's, one got creating through
connecting "a" + "i" (which i think is the e for 已然形) and one through "i + a"
(which i think is the e for 命令形),

And since the suffix り apparently developed through fusion of auxiliary verb
あり + 四段 in 連用形 (like 書き + あり = 書けり), that means it should be "i (as in ka
**ki** ) + "a" (as in **a** ri), which means its a fusion of 命令形 right? am i
correct on this?




It is safe to say that the suffix り is connecting to 命令形 and not to 已然形
because of two types of e.

Until the beginning of the last century, there are many variants of hiragana
(including current ones) and people pretty randomly choiced among them to
express each mora. Also in 万葉仮名 scripts, people used variety of chinese
characters for the same pronunciation. However, scholars found in ancient
documents there were two groups of characters not interchangeable (referred as
甲類 and 乙類) representing the same vowel (i, e and o).

Because of this discovery, nowadays it is widely accepted that there were two
e's pronounced differently but there are, as far as I know, no established
theory what are their actual pronunciation or origin. (a+i and i+a is one of
the leading hypothesis, though.)

Therefore, the evident part of the statement is that the suffix り comes after
e甲, which is the same as 命令形（e甲） and different from 已然形（e乙）.

