Linguistics study on the historical change of Japanese interrogatives

本研究旨在弄清日语疑问句的历史演变以及由此衍生的一些结构的发展。通过研究，我们得出结论：至少到中晚期，疑问句和是非疑问句都是通过助词和/或助词的结构来区分的。我们还得出结论，日语间接疑问句的变化构成了对“主观化”假说的反证。此外，我们还对宫古琉球语的语音和语法进行了描述，以探讨kakari-musubi结构与间接疑问句的使用之间的关系。

This research project aims to clarify the historical change of Japanese interrogative sentences and the development of some constructions derived from them. As the result of this project, we have reached to the conclusion that wh questions and yes-no questions are differentiated by particles and/or the constructions of particles at least until Late Middle Japanese. We concluded as well that the change of indirect questions in Japanese constitutes a counter evidence to the hypothesis of `subjectification.' In addition, we described the phonology and grammar of Miyako Ryukyuan to investigate the relationship between kakari-musubi constructions and the use of indirect questions.