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Deverbalization of verbal conditional forms in modern Japanese : In case of verbal conditional form ‘-ba’ and ‘-to’ -
日本硏究
2016,
(40), pp.177-201
Publisher : The Center for Japanese Studies
Research Area : Japanese Language and Literature
Publisher : The Center for Japanese Studies
Research Area : Japanese Language and Literature
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This study describes deverbalization, which is synchronically observed in conditional forms of verbs in contemporary Japanese. Here, deverbalization refers to verbs changing to other parts of speech while losing their lexical, morphological, and syntactic characteristics as verbs. Verbs from lexically represent motion or change in a person or an object, are inflected morphologically in tense, aspect, voice, mood, and polarity, and function as a predicate in a sentence syntactically. Perusing the usage of conditional forms of verbs, however, some of them have lost the various characteristics as verbs. This deverbalization also refers to grammaticalization and lexicalization. Grammaticalization refers to the phenomenon in which in certain contexts or constructions, words that have autonomy loses their original lexical meanings and thereby transform into forms with grammatical functions ― such as clitic, adposition, and affix. In this study, I have confirmed the phenomenon in which they develop into postposition, connective particle, and connective. Meantime, lexicalization refers to a word going out of its original lexical category to transition to an element in another lexical category. In this study, I have verified that a speaker uses the form that derives from the conditional form of the verb in order to express his or her attitude with regard to the content of the sentence that he or she mentions. Specifically, there is change from a verb to a sentence adverb that indicates the speaker's attitude.
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