外国資料からみた中世・近世初期日本語における主題主語の有助詞化

概要

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In this paper I intend to make clear the distinction between topic and nominative subjects in Middle Japanese on the basis of focus construction of a sentence, and I will examine the principles governing the use of the topic particle after subjects in the early stage of Modern Japanese. Subjects in Japanese are classifiled into topic and nominative. In Modern Japanese, topic subjects are accompanied by the particle ha, and nominative ones are accompanied by the particle ga. Therefore, there is no difficulty in distinguishing topic subjects from nominative ones in the representation of particles. In contrast to Modern Japanese, Middle and Old Japanese have subjects without particles in addition to those with particles, so it is not clear whether subjects without particles in pre-Modern Japanese are topical or nominative from the point of view of morphology. It is also not clear how the practise of using particles after subjects has developed. We observe "an odd use of ga" in Middle Japanese and in the early stage of Modern Japanese in materials translated into foreign languages for learning Japanese. I argue that this reflects a stage of transition from topic subjects without particles to ones with the particle ha.
2004-09-30