Historical Development of the Epistemic Modal Particle ‘wakeda’

Abstract

This study investigates the diachronic development of the Japanese sentence-final particle “wakeda” a compound expression used to convey the speaker's epistemic modality. The noun “wake” derived from the verb “wakeru,” to sort out first appeared in the Corpus of Historical Japanese during the Muromachi period, but its use as a sentence-final particle emerged in the Edo period. Three primary usage types are identified: type a, seguentially placing a reason and a resulting situation; type b, providing an explanation or rationale for a situation; and type c, expressing a paraphrase. Types a and c are hypothesized to have evolved from type b through grammaticalization. By analyzing the Corpus of Historical Japanese, the evolution of “wakeda” from the Edo to Meiji periods is traced, demonstrating how this particle, initially prevalent in spoken language, gradually became incorporated into written discourse.