A Historical Study on Nouniness of Japanese Adverbial Particlesle from Historical Perspective

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02563
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: MIYACHI Asako 名古屋大学, 人文学研究科, 教授 (10335086)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 副助詞 / 名詞性 / 文法変化 / 機能語化 / 副詞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we considered the “nouniness” of Japanese by focusing on the noun-like behavior of adverbial particles and the aspect of their historical changes. This study mainly clarified the following four issues. (1) Adverbial particles show a wide distribution as nouns throughout the time, regardless of whether their origin is a noun or not. (2) The noun nature of particles is consistent with the semantic characteristics (quantity) and morphological characteristics (indeclinable) of adverbial particles. (3) Among the properties of nouns, the morphological characteristic of conjugation is the basis that supports the noun nature of particles. (4) This morphological characteristic is considered to be the characteristic that supports grammatical changes in nouns and grammatical changes in function words such as adverbial particles.

Free Research Field

日本語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

まず、副助詞の史的様相の観察から名詞性を追究するという独自の問題設定に学術的意義が認められる。名詞という一般性の高い枠組みを通じ、副助詞研究における離散的な関心を統合するのみならず、名詞研究に新たな視点を提供し、その進捗を促すことができる。名詞の文法変化という観点は、日本語文法史における名詞の機能語への体系的参与という一大課題の解明にも示唆を与えうる。近年、内外の言語学研究において言語の動態を追究する文法化研究が大きな潮流をなしている。日本語で豊富に観察される名詞の文法化について、名詞本来の性質と日本語の動態の関わりをあぶり出し、言語研究に有意な事例を提供する点で大きな意義を持つ。