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Paper short abstract

I discuss the historical changes in the distribution of -tu and -nu, using the Corpus of Historical Japanese. In the Nara Period, -tu followed volitional verbs while -nu followed non-volitional verbs, and -tu rarely co-occurred with -keri. In the Heian Period, there existed unpredicted patterns.

Paper long abstract

From the 7th century to now, Japanese people have written various materials, some of which reflected the contemporary spoken language. In pre-modern times, the most part of Japanese people were monolingual, and the Japanese language changed chiefly by internal factors. In order to examine the historical changes over such a long span, it is effective to utilize the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ). I discuss the historical changes in distribution patterns of the perfective markers -tu and -nu from the Nara to Heian period, using the CHJ.

In the 8th century Japanese poetry collection Man'yoshu, -tu and -nu followed verbs in strictly regular ways: -tu followed volitional verbs while -nu followed verbs concerned with non-volitional or natural change. In addition, -nu often co-occurred with the past tense marker -keri and formed -nikeri while -tu rarely co-occurred with -keri. The speakers in the Nara period would intuitively grasp these differences of -tu and -nu; therefore exceptions hardly occurred.

In the Genji Monogatari of the early 11th century, the usage of -tu and -nu began to be confused. We can find the unpredicted patterns of -nu with volitional verbs and -tu with non-volitional verbs, and there existed not a few examples of -tu with -keri, which formed -tekeri.

This confusion further progressed in the Konjaku Monogatari-shu of the mid-12th century. Moreover, the previously stative marker -tari was reanalyzed as a perfective marker and took the place of both -tu and -nu. The form of -tari eventually changed to -ta, which is still used now. Concatenations such as -teiru and -teari emerged as complex aspectual elements at this age. I examined these phenomena quantitatively and qualitatively with the CHJ.