Riyuu‘Reason’ fornai desuand other semi-polite forms
Riyuu‘Reason’ fornai desuand other semi-polite forms
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Riyuu‘Reason’ fornai desu 和其他半礼貌形式
DOI:
10.1075/pbns.180.00riy
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发表时间:
2008
期刊:
影响因子:
2.1
通讯作者:
M. E. Hudson
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
M. E. Hudson
All Japanese predicates (copulas, adjectives and verbs) display the affirmative-negative distinction and may appear in the ‘plain’-da/-ru or ‘polite’-desu/-masu style. Located in between these two is yet another style, whose forms are basically derived by adding the polite marker-des-u to the plain counterparts. 1 Let us call this third style ‘semipolite.’See Table 1 for the inflectional endings of Japanese predicates in polite, semipolite, and plain styles. 2 e present study examines the ‘semi-polite’style in Japanese, with a particular focus on verbal negatives; that is, verb+ nai desu (nonpast) and verb+ nakatta desu (past). 3 e use of such forms is reported to be on the rise in contemporary Japanese, but has not hitherto received much attention in the literature. An investigation of nai desu and other semi-polite style forms is important as it bears on a broader aspect of the language, namely, keigo ‘honorifics,’as will be shown in subsequent sections. Hereafter,‘nai desu form’and ‘masen form’will be used as cover terms referring to both their nonpast and past tense variants, along with the terms ‘semi-polite’and ‘polite’* My sincere appreciation goes to the organizers of the 2002 Japanese Speech Style Shift Symposium, K. Jones, T. Ono, and T. Vance, and to the participants, especially S. Okamoto, whose comments benefited me greatly. I am also grateful to T. Tanomura, S. Uehara and E. Fukushima for their assistance. Any error that may be contained herein is of course my own.