This paper discusses how the potential verb came into being. There are three theories that discuss its origin: the theory on the origins of “reru” of “eru” and the theory analyzing shimo-ni (ichi) dan, an intransitive verb like “kiruru>kireru”. As the result of this investigation, “yomuru” in the Late Middle Period narrates the general potential attribute with objects without agents. This aspect was confirmed to relate with the potential verb in the Early Modern Period from lexical, semantic, and syntactic perspectives.

On the other hand, the forms “reru” and “eru” are completely different from potential verbs like “yomeru”. Furthermore, this paper uses this premise to reason that the relationship between shimo-ni (ichi)dan, an intransitive verb conjugation, and yodan, a transitive verb conjugation that predicates the attributes, is similar to the correspondence to potential verbs and yodan, a transitive verb conjugation.

Hence, It concludes that the potential verb was established with an analogical inference to shimo-ni(ichi)dan, an intransitive verb conjugation, which predicates the attributes.

Chotto class adverb representing “smallness of degree and amount” has two attributive representations: chotto-no type and chotto-shita type. This paper reveals the history of their semantic relationship.

Regarding the chotto-no type in medieval Japanese, chitto-no and sotto-no are similar as they both represent “smallness of degree” and “smallness of amount.” In addition, sotto-no may also represent “a small amount of time,” unlike chitto-no. This sotto was originally derived from an adverb representing “quickness.”

On the other hand, chotto-shita type has represented only the “smallness of degree” throughout history. Consequently, regarding sotto in Medieval Japanese, sotto-no represents the “smallness of amount” and “small amount of time.” Sotto-shita represents the “smallness of degree.” The function is divided. Moreover, this division can be understood as historical one. This is because the division depends not only on the particular difference between sotto-no/sotto-shita but also on chotto-no/chotto-shita type in the early modern era. This shows that the division did not disappear despite the decline of sotto. The functional division is, therefore, a form-dependent rather than lexicon-dependent.

The general understanding of tote function in the Heian period is that of quotation. However, there exists the irregular type of tote ; following the conclusive form of a verb expressing the action of the subject of the main clause.

The conclusive form of a verb expressing the action of the subject of the main clause cannot appear at the end of a quotative clause, such as -to iite, and special tote often follows a honorific verb. These facts indicate that special tote does not have a quotative function. The special tote clause has a simple construction consisting of a verb and one or two constituents, and the content of the special tote clause is completed immediately after the main clause event. Considering that the subject of the sentence is animate and the majority of the examples of verbs in special tote clauses are volitional verbs, it is concluded that special tote clauses roughly express the thing that the subject is going to do, and the main clause expresses what the subject does while he or she is about to do the special tote clause action.

This paper is a study of the recently discovered manuscript Gogaku-zatsuzu (語学雑図) by KUROKAWA Mayori (黒川真頼). His work contains conjugation tables and teniwoha (particles, auxiliary verbs, suffixes, and so on). It gives an insight into the development of his study of Japanese grammar: his treatment of the conjugation system in conjunction with his organization of teniwoha.

This study supports the presumption that it was written before 1871, based on the use of the technical term shūshi-gen (終止言) and the position of the r-irregular verbs in tables. Consequently, this study suggests that Mayori's grammatical theory played a very important part in the compilation of Goi-bekki (語彙別記) and Goi-katsugo-shishō (語彙活語指掌) by Monbushō Henshūryō (文部省編輯寮).