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Te shimau: a form to indicate a spontaneous situation

  • The Japanese Language Association of Korea
  • Abbr : JLAK
  • 2020, (63), pp.139-152
  • DOI : 10.14817/jlak.2020.63.139
  • Publisher : The Japanese Language Association Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > Japanese Language and Literature
  • Received : January 15, 2020
  • Accepted : February 19, 2020
  • Published : March 20, 2020

Heesung Kim 1

1광운대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to argue that ‘te shimau’ has a usage to express a spontaneous situation and examine its semantic and syntactic features. The spontaneous situation represented by ‘te shimau’ refers to any situation or condition where an event occurs on its own without the intention of its subject. This spontaneous situation has a semantic feature that the event occurs habitually or repeatedly. The spontaneous situations represented by ‘te shimau’ are divided into three types according to the type of verb to be connected to ‘te shimau’. The first is the type representing the unintentional behaviors, in which volitional verbs usually appear but the intention of its subject is weakened by ‘te shimau’. The second is the type representing the unintentional states, in which unvolitional verbs such as emotional verbs and sensory verbs appear. The third is the type representing the inevitable results, in which unvolitional verbs usually appear. The ‘te shimau’ construction expressing a spontaneous situation has three syntactic features. The first is that it is the productive expression that is not limited by the types of verb. The Second, the ‘ru’ form of verbs is usually used. Third, it appears mainly with certain adverbs.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.