2016 Volume 12 Issue 4 Pages 52-68
This paper aims to describe the historical change of aspectual form V-teari which expressed the resultative of change and action in Old Japanese. The resultative of change by V-teari in Ancient Japanese literature has two sentence patterns: one is the sentence whose subject is followed by intransitive verb+ teari, another is the sentence whose object is followed by transitive verb+teari. The resultative of change by V-tari also has the same sentence patterns as those by V-teari.
This paper shows that V-tari sentences of intransitive verb mean the result of change by spontaneity, volitional action and causal relation, whereas V-teari sentences of the verb mean only the result of change by spontaneity and volitional action, lacking the result of change by causal relation.
It is asserted that, on the decline of V-tari(ru)'s usage through the Late Middle Ages, the aspectual meanings of V-tari(ru) shifted to V-tearu and V-teiru, and that, at the beginning of the early modern period, in Kamigata/Keihan documents, V-tearu sentences and V-teiru sentences were used with the selectional restrictions of existence verb aru and iru by animacy as to their subjects, in contrast, in Kanto/Edo documents, V-tearu sentences and V-teiru sentences were used without the restrictions.
It seems that the different usage of V-tearu and V-teiru between Kamigata district and Kanto district is related with how V-tearu and V-teiru are used in Modern Japanese.
