Japanese modality: A study of modal auxiliaries, conditionals, and aspectual categories.

摘要

This thesis opens a new inquiry into Japanese linguistics by demonstrating a new approach to the study of Japanese modality. Because of a historically broad definition of modality as "a speaker's psychological attitude," the study of modality has been at best unfocused and at worst chaotic. This thesis proposes an approach to Japanese modality studies which relies more centrally on concepts developed in English language studies of modality.; There are many practical and theoretical similarities between English modal auxiliaries and Japanese modal auxiliaries. By adopting a definition of modality as that which expresses either an epistemic or deontic mood involving notions of necessity and possibility, this thesis examines auxiliaries concerned with a speaker's assumptions or assessment of possibilities, and auxiliaries that indicate a speaker's judgment and degree of confidence that the expressed proposition is true or realized.; Modality is seen as being present in inverse proposition to the degree of actuality associated with a proposition. It can in turn be approached from possible/non-actual world situations, which also correlate with the notions of indeterminability and hypotheticality. Based on this approach, modality can be seen as present not only in syntactically modal forms, but also in propositional content, as exemplified by conditional sentences. It is also worth noting that the aspectual affix te-iru (which expresses progressive and resultative meaning) and the negative suffix nai are deeply related to modality, in so far as they express stativity. They can play a significant role in helping to increase the degree of hypotheticality in conditional sentences, although the behavior of nai is also subject to the aspectual character of the predicated to which it is attached. Thus the relationship between stativity and modality is also established.