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Paper short abstract

In Early Middle Japanese, predicates lacking tense-aspect suffixes are tenseless: time reference is inferred from boundedness (presence/absence of a temporal boundary). Bounded clauses are perfective and refer to specific past episodes; unbounded clauses report regularities concerning the present.

Paper long abstract

Narrative prose predominantly reports past events. Yet ninth–eleventh-century Classical Japanese prose contains remarkably few instances of the past tense suffixes -ki and -keri (e.g. ariki-ki, ariki-keri ‘walked’) relative to the number of past-time situations in the texts. Instead, past-time reference is typically associated with the perfective suffixes -tsu and -nu, or left without overt tense–aspect marking (i.e. zero-marked).

Many predicates referring to past events therefore lack tense–aspect morphology (e.g. ariku ‘walked’). Although zero-marked predicates may refer to past or present time, the grammatical principles determining their temporal construal—and their aspectual profile more generally—have remained largely unexplained.


In this paper, I argue that zero-marked predicates instantiate one of two aspectual profiles: one correlates with present-time reference, the other with past-time reference. In a wider study of 700 Classical Japanese examples, I show that, in the absence of overt tense–aspect marking, temporal construal is inferred pragmatically from boundedness—that is, the presence or absence of implicit or explicit reference to a temporal boundary within the clause. I identify boundedness on the basis of boundary cues (e.g., temporal adverbials of position, or overt specification of a preceding or following event).


Bounded clauses yield episodic perfective construal and are understood as referring to specific past events; unbounded clauses yield imperfective habitual/generic construal and are understood as reporting regularities concerning the present.

The two aspectual profiles are exemplified below. In the first example, the predicate 過ぐ sugu denotes a bounded situation and is understood as referring to a past episode:


またの日、山の端に日のかかるほど、住吉の浦を過ぐ。


“On the following day, just as the sun was setting behind the mountain ridge, we passed by Sumiyoshi Bay.”
 (Sarashina Nikki)


In the second, the predicate 食ふ kuu denotes an unbounded situation and is construed as a habit (imperfectively) related to the narrative present.


こと物は食はで、ただ仏の御おろしをのみ食ふか。


“Do you refrain from eating ordinary food and eat only altar offerings?”
(Makura no Sōshi, §83)

Collectively, these patterns indicate that zero-marked predicates in Early Middle Japanese are genuinely tenseless, with past or present time reference emerging from a systematic interaction between aspectual profile and pragmatic interpretation. These findings support an analysis of Early Middle Japanese as a tenseless language.