Abstract
This study examines the actual conditions of the emphatic or illustrative particle "bashi" in Kyogen Daihon. Bashi was used as a colloquial expression during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. This research deals with the change in the use of bashi during the Edo period. The following facts were clarified. 1) Nouns account for more than half of the preceding words. Among these nouns, the objective case is observed to have been used throughout the Edo period, whereas a nominative case is also used and the mid Edo period. From this period, the auxiliary verb de-nite is also used. 2) The majority of the co-occurring phrase-final expressions are interrogatives. Prohibition expressions are limited to definitive forms like utai, and the newer bashi co-occurs with the polite interrogatives gozaruka and oryaruka. Based on the aforementioned facts, we can draw the following conclusions regarding changes in the use of the particle bashi. The expression bashi originally functioned to emphasize preceding words, but was reanalyzed as functioning to show members of a set similar to the preceding noun, in the sense of "for example, these kinds of things". Furthermore, scripts from the mid Edo period show that it came to be seen as indicating other imaginary members of a set containing the preceding word, and hence functioned as an "elegant" interrogative.
