Katsumata Takashi

With so adnominal form constructions in Ancient Japanese, arguments, such as the case marker wo, seldom come between the postpositional word so and the predicate. However, ga and no, and the emphatic particle ha are exceptions to this and do often come between so and the predicate. But in the case of ya and ka which are similar constructions to so, ha seldom comes between ya(ka) and the predicate. This study examined this phenomenon as follows. First, the prominence from using so constitutes part of the predicate through its proximity to the predicate. It is primarily characterized by its inclusion of the predicate as a focus. When the argument is out of the focus, case markers do not come just before so or between so and the predicate. Second, so often attaches to the argument. Consequently, it can be deduced that arguments come between so and the predicate infrequently.

In Ancient Japanese, the kakarimusubi construction of a constituent marked with the particle so agreeing with a predicate in the adnominal form (hereafter 'so adnominal form construction') was rarely used with sentence-final auxiliaries indicating conjecture (i.e., mu, ramu, kemu, mashi, beshi, and rashi). On the other hand, in Heian-period Japanese, the construction could take these auxiliaries except for rashi. The aim of this paper is to discuss why such a difference is observed between these two eras, and its relationship with their syntactic structures. This paper points out the following four observations: 1) The so adnominal form construction was used when the speaker regarded information for the grounds of the utterance as a fact; 2) The construction tended to end with stative predicates; 3) Until the late seventh century (the Hakuho period), adjectival predicates in main clauses were followed by conjecture auxiliaries under the same condition as the so adnominal form construction; 4) Until the late seventh century, adjectival sentences were chiefly used under the same condition as the so adnominal form construction: i.e., in utterances based on the recognition of certain information as fact. Based on these observations, the paper asserts the following two points: 1) The so adnominal form construction had common features with adjectival sentences with respect to their functional as well as their syntactic features. 2) There is a possibility that the change of the so adnominal form constructions was influenced by the change of the adjectival sentences.