Variations of the Japanese Deontic Expressions and Tendencies in Their Appearance as Revealed through the Results of a Study of Their Actual Use

Abstract

In recent years, the need for grammatical descriptions suited for communication activities and the demand for research into the actual use of the Japanese language are growing. From the above point of view, this paper chooses the deontic expressions, such as nakereba naranai 'have to', and formulates a grammatical description. Furthermore, it investigates the tendencies in the appearance of variations of these expressions within a corpus. In addition, it demonstrates the vagueness of the terms "spoken language" (hanashi-kotoba) and "written language" (kaki-kotoba). In order to avoid their vagueness, it categorizes data from the corpus used in the study by the following three extralinguistic factors: Medium, Situation, Interaction with the Listener, and analyzes the frequency of appearance of each variation of the deontic expressions.

The results of the research can be summarized as follows:

(1) nakya ikenai appears with high probability in the spoken medium.

(2) nakereba naranai is used as an almost fixed expression in the written medium.

(3) In the spoken medium, the frequency of nai to is higher than that of nakute wa ikenai which is included in the list of expressions tested in the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test.