This paper illustrates the features of the "alphabetical Goju-onzu" in Rangaku historical materials, and examines the reason of Rangaku-sha (Students of Rangaku) intentionally showing it in the materials, focusing on the sound analyses by Rangaku-sha on the basis of the Onzu. The Onzu in the Rangaku materials has been recognized only as the alphabetical letters of Japanese sounds so far. This paper argues that the Onzu played an important role in order for Rangaku-sha to understand the concept of "syllable" using the sound diagram in Rangaku-learning. This paper also compares the description of the sound analyses of Kokugaku-sha (Students of Kokugaku) with that of the sound analyses of a Rangaku-sha, NAKANO Ryuho. Kokugaku-sha recognized wa-gyo sounds as "a-gyo sounds + a-gyo sounds" and "guttural", while Rytaho recognized them as "consonant + vowel" and "labial" by the Dutch sounds and Onzu.

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This paper analyzes the usage of toyuka focusing on its contracted forms teka and tsuka, based on the data of everyday conversation by young people living in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The data comprises about 53.5 hours of conversations carried out by a total of 130 university students. The analysis reveals the following: a. Two types of usage of toyuka are identified: namely Prior Utterance Revision and Topic Management. Prior Utterance Revision usage has three functions, as follows: Tentatively Expressing, Replacing, and Concessionally Complementing. Meanwhile, Topic Management usage has the following two functions: Topic Introducing and Topic Continuing; b. Among all forms of toyuka, teka is the most frequently used contraction and exhibits the greatest number of users; and c. The word toyuka consists of three morphemes, as follows: the quotational particle to, the verb yu 'say', and the interrogative particle ka. The forms of toyuka can be divided into the four following groups in accordance with forms of the quotational particle to: TO-group, TE-group, CHU-group, and TSU-group. Among all forms of the TE-group of toyuka, teka is uttered more frequently in relation to Topic Management usage than Prior Utterance Revision usage. Among all forms of the TSU-group, tsuka is more frequently used for Topic Management than for Prior Utterance Revision. In conclusion, the findings indicate that the usage of the contracted forms teka and tsuka shows a tendency of simplification. Moreover, from the perspective of grammaticalization in a broader sense, toyuka can be recognized as a case of grammaticalization.

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This paper examines two types of nominalization (zero type and no-type henceforth) found in the Kamigata variety of Classical Japanese, with an exclusive focus on argument positions. It aims to give an account of the historical development of the no-type nominalization based on the following two facts. First, the nominalizer no started to be employed as a regular means to nominalize (i.e. head a noun phrase carrying) the adnominal clause two hundred years or so after it first began to attach to adnominal clauses in the Middle Japanese. During this period, the nominalization construction was used both for the referential and event uses with no statistically significant difference in frequency. Second, the no-type nominalization started to replace the zero type first in the referential use (during the Meiwa-An'ei era to the Kansei-Bunka era) then in the event use (during the Bunsei-Tenpo era to Taisho era). These facts indicate that there is no reason to believe that no was originally a pronoun designating a person or thing. Rather, it is reasonable to assume that the morpheme was a cognate of the genitive no, which does not have any specific referent. Furthermore, it is argued that the development of the no-type nominalization over the zero type is more naturally explained by addressing the structural reanalysis that occurred in the referential use of nominalization than the loss of the distinction between the conclusive and adnominal forms as often argued in the literature. This hypothesis is supported by the data from other dialects.

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[in Japanese]

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