著者

菊田 千春

出版者

同志社大学

雑誌

同志社大学英語英文学研究 (ISSN:02861291)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, pp.61-104, 2006-03

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格助詞ガが、明確に主格表示として用いられるようになるのは室町期とされ、それは、日本語が古典語から近代語への転換を示す変化の一つと考えられている。生成文法では、格助詞の種類は統語構造上の生起位置を表すと考えられることが多く、主格ガの確立も構造上の変化を映すとされる。 本稿では、格助詞を句構造のみからは論じられないという立場に立ち、主格ガの確立を、格助詞ガの性質の変化と、日本語の文法システムの変化の両面から捉えることを目指す。LFG、HPSGらの制約に基づく句構造文法の語彙主義の主張にしたがい、主語はそれを統語的に選択する主要部の述語により認可され(=主格という抽象格が付与され)、それについては古典語も近代語も変わりはないと想定する。主格の格助詞ガの確立は、その抽象格がいくつかの表現形で表されていたのが、次第に、助詞ガという形態格に固定化していくことと解釈し、その過程を捉える方法を提案する。具体的には、Kikuta (2003)で提案した、上代日本語の助詞のプロファイルや助詞選択にかかわる制約を拡充し、上代から近代語にかけての変化を、そのプロファイルと制約の優先順位の変化という観点から分析する。主格ガの成立は一見複雑に見えるが、本稿では、卓立性や名詞性などの素性とその制約の順序という視点から分析することで、単純で漸進的な一方向的変化が複合的に起こった結果ととらえられることを示す。The establishment of the particle ga as a nominative case marker in the Muromachi-period is supposed to mark the beginning of Modern Japanese. A theoretical question is whether this directly reflects a drastic change in the syntactic make-up of the language. Researchers in Japanese philology (Kokugo-gaku) have implicitly answered this in the negative for a long time, while generative syntacticians explicitly claim the opposite. Although the generative approach claims to be scientific, and therefore close to the truth, it is still doubtful whether the change in behavior of particle ga directly pertains to structural change. In Old Japanese (OJ), ga is only one of the possible nominative markers; the subject argument can be realized in such forms as ga, no, zero, wa (or mo and other kakari-zyosi), and their distribution is syntactically overlapping. If case markers only indicate the structural position where they occur, as generally assumed by generative syntacticians, all the markers (including zero) in OJ should be syntactically distinguished. However, there appears to be a considerable amount of overlap and optionality in the choice of subject markers. The problem, I believe, is that while ga is a case marker, it is not just a label of a syntactic node, but a morpheme with its own content. Along the lines of Kikuta (2003, 2005), this paper proposes to separate abstract case marking as a type of argument licensing on the one hand, and morphological case marking as a choice of the most adequate phonological/morphological realization of the abstract case on the other. Following the ideas of the lexicalist frameworks HPSG and LFG, I assume that the abstract case marking is done lexically by a head predicate selecting (subcategorizing for) the argument. The abstract case, such as the nominative and accusative, will be realized in some appropriate phonological form. The choice of the appropriate form depends on two major factors: the syntactic-functional profile of each marker and the interaction of constraints affecting the choice. The diachronic change leading to the establishment of ga as nominative marker also results from the interaction of the two factors, both of which have changed over time. The case marker ga becomes by far the best choice to mark the subject argument in Muromachi, when (1) ga becomes compatible with verbal arguments while no retains the nominal character and (2) it becomes more important in Japanese for case to be explicitly marked by appropriate morphological case markers. The proposed analysis has a significant implication in that the apparently complex diachronic change in case marking can be seen as a consequence of interactions of separate, gradual, unidirectional changes in the weight of constraints and slight changes in the profile of case markers. This implication is preferable for the obvious reason that language change within a monolingual community ought to be gradual, and lends support to the approach taken in this paper.