This paper aims to describe the usages and changes seen in the case of the sentence-final particle =sen based upon data elicited through interviews with speakers of dialects of North-West Kagoshima. It can be traced back to zyarasen (zyar-asen), a negative interrogative form of the copula verb zyar, which underwent morphophonemic changes and now has three variants: zyaRsen, zyaQsen and zyasen. These three forms are understood to be a combination of the copula verb (zyaR, zyaQ, zya) + sen. As a result, =sen can be extracted through reanalysis and attached to verbs and adjectives. The sentence-final particle =sen is no longer used for negation and instead its basic usage is now agreement-seeking. Furthermore, while all speakers of the dialects use it for agreement-seeking, young speakers also use it now for confirmation-seeking. This change resulted from an expansion of the usage of agreement-seeking which is seen in speakers of all ages.

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In Russian materials that reflect the early 18th century Kagoshima dialect, there are expressions consisting of te + existential verbs (tearu and teoru). Based on the study of those materials, specifically books featuring parallel translation in the Kagoshima dialect and Russian, this paper analyzes the use and meaning of these verb forms by examining the bilingual texts. It emerges that tearu functions as an existential verb in the passive voice and that teoru functions more like a resultative verb. Furthermore, this paper reveals that teoru can take both animate and inanimate nouns as its subject. This linguistic behavior differs from the Kamigata dialect. The difference originates in the system of existential verbs common among western Japanese dialects (which include the Kagoshima dialect) displaying only two existential verbs, aru and oru.

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The auxiliary verb beshi was originally conjugated with ku. However, during the Muromachi period, one begins to see examples of shiku conjugation appearing as well. In this paper we focus on the fact that in shiku conjugations, this change only occurs in the example of tsubei (originally tsu+beshi). We investigate the reasons for this by considering the dual meanings of beshi, as well as the historical change of its system of modality. The meaning of beshi is broadly divided into the two functions of (1) expressing the state or nature of something (an expression of state-of-affairs) and (2) expressing the operation of the speaker's judgment (an expression of epistemic modality). Tsubeshi and nubeshi have existed as exclusive forms of the 'state-of-affairs' meaning of beshi since the Heian period, whereas tsubeshi expressed 'possibility (dynamic possibility)', and complimentarily, nubeshi expressed 'probability (existential possibility)'. During the Muromachi period, from tsubei, tsubeshii developed, which was used to express a state in an evaluative manner. This can be interpreted as one phenomenon within the process of shiku-conjugated adjectives coming to be derived from ku-conjugated adjectives, a change that occurred during this period. Also, uzu assumed the 'epistemic' meaning of beshi, and it was beshi that was incorporated into the literary language. Tsubei, which expresses the 'state- of-affairs' meaning of beshi, remained in the spoken language longer than beshi. It is thought that tsubei remained in existence until the development and progression of expressions such as sona (written as sauna).

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In the following paper, the author clarifies the process of the development of degree and evaluative meaning in the Sino-Japanese adverb zuibun, and demonstrates the pattern of semantic change for Sino-Japanese adverbs. Originally, zuibun was not used to express degree; however, through its usage as a quantitative adverb expressing concrete quantity, it developed an abstract meaning expressing degree. Moreover, after this initial development, in addition to expressing physical degree, zuibun developed into an evaluative adverb expressing situations of considerably high degree. The author clarifies that "degree meaning,""quantitative meaning," and "evaluative meaning" are semantically related, and at the same time, represent a diachronical pattern for change. The case of zuibun demonstrates a pattern of formation for degree adverbs and semantic change in degree meaning.

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Whereas the general definition of man'yogana includes the recognition that the writing system functions by detaching the meanings from the Chinese characters used for the kana, kungana (a type of man'yogana based on native kun'yomi readings of Chinese characters) in the poetry anthology Man'yoshu often takes advantage of the meaning of the characters. This paper revisits the use of kungana in the Man'yoshu and points out that, in addition to the often- sited variants of kana characters which took advantage of the meanings of the Chinese characters, this paper demonstrates the existence of variants of kana characters which were chosen to desensitize readers to the logogrammatic meanings of Chinese characters. In these cases, Chinese characters with expressive import that could make readers conscious of the writer's view to express some sense were avoided. This tendency in the use of man'yogana is contrasted with the way of using the variants of kana that originated from kungana in the Heian period, and the same quality of the variants of kana in the Man'yoshu and kana in the Heian period is pointed out and the relationship between this result and hiragana as phonogram is discussed.

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[in Japanese]

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