A History of the Study of the Japanese Imperative in the Edo Period

Abstract

In the Japanese school grammar, there are six forms of conjugation patterns. However, the imperative form was rarely included in them until about 1900. This paper considers how the imperative form was dealt with by authors such as MOTOORI Norinaga (本居宣長), FUJITANI Nariakira (富士谷成章), MOTOORI Haruniwa (本居春庭), SUZUKI Akira (鈴木朖), TOJO Gimon (東条義門), TOGASHI Hirokage (富樫広蔭), SUZUKI Shigetane (鈴木重胤), and others in reference grammars of the late Edo period (18th through the early 19th centuries). In classical Japanese, there are two patterns of the imperative form: one ends with the vowel "e", and the other with "-yo". While Norinaga and Nariakira sometimes consider them as teniwoha (particles, auxiliary verbs, suffixes, and so on), Haruniwa treats the former in the conjugation system and "-yo" as teniwoha. As a result, the treatment of the imperative form was ranged between the conjugation system and teniwoha. Therefore, the imperative form was not included in grammatical tables for conjugation, and it was treated as a separate entity. This background was the reason why it took so long to settle the position of the imperative form in conjugation tables.