The perfective imperative in Japanese A further analysis Axel Svahn
[email protected] Master Thesis Lund University Japanese Centre for Languages and Literature, Japanese Studies Fall Term 2009 Supervisor: Lars Larm ABSTRACT The present thesis is concerned with a descriptive analysis of a phenomenon in the Japanese language, the use as an imperative of two suffixes of tense and aspect, -ta and -tari. The use of the past tense form (or ta-form) as an imperative in modern Japanese has been touched upon by various scholars, but a detailed account of the construction, its diachrony, and its place in a cross-linguistic context has not previously been performed. These aspects of the constructions are described in detail, and a contrastive analysis determines how imperative -ta differs from other imperatives in modern Japanese. The relation between aspect and imperative utterances manifested in imperative -ta is discussed, focusing on the connection between imperative -ta and perfective aspect. The discussion also focuses on the occurrence of past tense and perfective imperatives cross-linguistically. These phenomena are connected through the concept of deictic projection (Lyons 1977, Tavangar and Amouzadeh 2006). Keywords: Aspect, deictic projection, imperative, Japanese, past tense, perfective aspect, -ta, -tari ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper could not have been written without the help of a number of people. Without the information and ideas provided by them, the task of expanding a sketch of a peripheral phenomenon in Japanese into a larger paper surveying a variety of languages would have been impossible. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Ehsan Bouhendi, Östen Dahl, Bjarke Frellesvig, Thomas Gross, Szymon Grzelak, Lars-Åke Henningsson, Arthur Holmer, Lars Larm, Marita Ljungqvist, Sawako Murao, Johan Muskala, Mattias Nowak, Sven Osterkamp, Rumiko Shinzato, Kazuyo Suzumura-Lundström, Axel Theorin, Dorota Tubielewicz Mattsson, Janick Wrona, and Xiaoyan Zhang, to whom the thesis is dedicated.