| Research Abstract |
This research report consists of four parts : 1. On contrastive linguistics, 2. On the Japanese past tense marker ta, 3. The existence and lack of tense and related phenomena, and 4. The grammar of interaction.
In part 1 , Inoue discusses the role of contrastive studies in linguistics.
Part 2 deals with so-called 'perfect' and 'modal' meanings of the Japanese past tense marker ta. in this part, Inoue and Sadanobu assert that the function of ta is very limited, i.e., to mark past tense, and both so-called 'perfect' and 'modal' meanings of ta are pragmatic implications. In his argument, Sadanobu proposes a new theory based on the concept of 'access point for information'.
Part 3 collects Inoue's articles that discuss theoretical implications of the existence and lack of the grammatical category of tense. Japanese has the grammatical category of tense, while Chinese has not. Inoue asserts that the following differences between the two languages are derived from this typological difference :
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(1)the function of aspect markers in Japanese and Chinese,(2)semantic constraints concerning the use of noda construction in Japanese and shi... de construction in Chinese, (3) semantic motivations of the use of conditional conjunctives.
Chapter 4 collects Sadanobu's articles that shed light on the influences of the interaction between a human and his/her environment on grammatical system, hi his articles, Sadanobu points out that several grammatical forms are used to describe the speaker's experience rather than the speaker's knowledge. The phenomena he analyzes are : (1) adverbials of frequency in Japanese and Chinese that seemingly express spatial distribution, (2) locative marking by -de in existential sentences in Japanese,(3) Japanese past tense marker ta that seemingly expresses a modal meaning of finding, (4) semantic characteristics of bakari, one of the paradigmatic focusing particles in Japanese, (5) semantic constraints observed in main clauses following the conjunctive particle tara, (6) semantic characteristics of emotional expressions in Japanese. Less
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