This paper deals with the aspectual form V-tearu in Kyogen script called Toraakirabon which is famous as a useful colloquial material of the Middle Ages. V-tearu originally expressed the resultative of change and action. In the script Toraakirabon, lots of V-tearu sentences, however, mean completive aspect, which narrated past events like past tense by using V-tari in Old Japanese. The diachrony of aspectual forms has been much studied in recent decades, yet the appearance of the completive V-tearu in the Middle Ages has not been well described. It is asserted that the appearance of completive V-tearu correlates with the -tari's transformation from aspect expression -taru to past tense expression -ta, and that the V-ta replaced the completive V-tearu after the Middle Ages and the replacement caused the completive V-tearu to disappear from Modern Japanese. This paper further argues that the replacement of V-tearu with V-ta can explain the decrease of animate subjects in V-tearu sentences.

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This paper describes the historical development of the Japanese adverb dozo, including the influence of doka, which is a synonym of dozo. From the Edo period to the Meiji period, dozo first changed to an adverb that was used in directive expressions and subsequently came to be used to mark an utterance as request, which is a directive that benefits the speaker. After the Meiji period, doka began to be used to mark an utterance as request too. As a result, dozo began to be used to mark an utterance as advice, which is a directive that benefits the hearer. Dozo, however, is also used to mark an utterance as request in some situations and styles, for example in greetings and letters. According to the present view, two factors are responsible for the development of dozo. First, introductory expressions, such as sumimasenga (excuse me, but) and yoroshikattara (if you want) in present-day Japanese, also developed in the course of the history of politeness in Japanese. Second, the marking of beneficiary became important in the usage of directive expressions after the Meiji period. This investigation indicates that a study focusing on adverbs can effectively describe the history of politeness such as the history of directive expressions.

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Degree adverbs used in the texts contained in the corpora of two journals, Taiyo (published from 1895 to 1928) and Meiroku-Zassi (published from 1874 to 1875), are classified into two types: colloquial type (e.g. zuibun, yohodo, daibu 'pretty', taihen, hidoku, taiso 'very') and literary type (e.g. oini, hanahada, sukoburu 'very'). The stylistic value of a sentence is generally defined by the sentence final form, but in Taiyo and Meiroku-Zassi, many adverbs of the literary type were used in the sentences which are defined as colloquial by the sentence final forms. This implies that degree adverbs also should be regarded as indices of stylistic value. Based on this view, this paper illustrates the change that colloquial degree adverbs of the colloquial type, especially those which were less restrictive in use such as hijoni and taihen, became to be more used and degree adverbs of the literal type were gradually less used.

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It is said that new vocabulary items in contemporary Japanese are more likely to be loanwords (especially from English) rather than Sino-Japanese words. While this is true if attention is limited to Sino-Japanese words written with two characters, Sino-Japanese words written with three or four characters are still created quite productively. Such longer words are commonly used but have not attracted as much attention as two-character words, in part because many of these longer words are not listed in dictionaries. This study investigates the formation patterns of four-character Sino-Japanese words and the diachronic changes in those patterns during the Edo, Meiji, and contemporary periods.

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For this study, I analyzed two words, kakudai (expansion) and enjo (aid) among modern new Sino-Japanese words. Inferring from their frequency of appearance in magazine corpora of the Meiji and Taisho eras, they clearly came to be included in basic vocabulary. This study describes the process of the two words' inclusion into basic vocabulary and investigates what type of relationships were established between them and existing basic words. Regarding kakudai, results indicates that the word was included into basic vocabulary as new semantics were added. In conjunction with kakudai being included into basic vocabulary due to the existing words hirogaru and hirogeru becoming inclusion into basic vocabulary on account of the Genbun-itchi Movement, its similarities with these words increased, and the semantic and stylistic relationships between them were strengthened. Regarding enjo, I came to understand that the word was included into basic vocabulary as the nature of how words took a subject and object changed, the similarities of enjo with the existing word tasukeru increased, and that the stylistic relationships between them were strengthened.

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In this paper, focusing mainly on the transitivity of Sino-Japanese verbs, we compared early-modern Japanese and modern Japanese based on the data of two corpora. We chose the Meiroku Zasshi Corpus (Meiroku) to represent early-modern Japanese and the Yomiuri Shimbun Corpus (Yomiuri) to represent modern Japanese. First, we classified Sino-Japanese verbs that appear in Meiroku into two groups: those that also appear in Yomiuri and those that do not. Next, we investigated changes from early-modern to modern Japanese by way of comparison with the Taiyo Corpus (Taiyo), which covers the middle and later years of early-modern Japanese, using it as an intermediate stage between Meiroku and Yomiuri. Among other findings, we found that the transitivity of a verb was less likely to change from early-modern to modern Japanese if the verb was transitive in Meiroku than if it was intransitive.

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The Survey of Grammar and Phonology (SGP) was conducted in 1903 and 1908 by the National Language Research Committee. The data collected in the first survey in 1903 were published in the official reports and they have been used as important materials for the study of Japanese dialects. The data collected in the second survey in 1908, on the other hand, were not published and have been considered to be lost in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. This paper reports that a variety of documents concerning the second SGP (e.g., manuscripts, survey notes and articles in the educational magazines) were made in each survey area and they provides us with linguistic data collected in the SGP. As an example of the study using the data of the SGP, this paper makes comparisons among the data collected in three surveys, i.e., the SGP, the survey conducted during 1938-1941 by KOBAYASHI Yoshiharu and that conducted during 1979-1982 by Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyuzyo (National Institute for Japanese Language), and demonstrates the changes of the dialects in Iwate prefecture. The study implies that the examination of the purposes and backgrounds of the survey is very important for the proper use of the documents made in the past surveys.

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Setsuyohu is a simple dictionary which was used popularly from the 15th century to the early 20th century. Many variants and editions of the Setsuyoshu were published and they are important materials for the historical study of the Japanese language and the Japanese dictionary. This paper overviews the previous studies on the Setsuyoshu and discusses the current problems and future prospects of research on it from the perspective of historical lexicography, focusing on the following topics: (i) comprehensive collection of information on the extant variants and editions of the Setsuyoshu, including the search for unknown ones, (ii) careful comparison among the variants and editions of the Setsuyoshu and investigation of the editing process of each variant or edition, (iii) methodology for the historical study of the social role of the Setsuyoshu, (iv) importance of using the knowledge of other related research fields.

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[in Japanese]

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