著者

山部 順治

出版者

熊本大学文学部言語学研究室

雑誌

ありあけ : 熊本大学言語学論集 (ISSN:21861439)

巻号頁・発行日

no.20, pp.39-72, 2021-03

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The term "negative conditional forms" shall in this article refer to verb forms in Japanese that formally contain the negative nai and one of the conditional endings: V-(a)naito, V-(a)nakereba, V-(a)nakattara, V-(a)nai nara (V: verb stem). "Negative conditional sentence" shall refer to a sentence that contains one of the negative conditional forms. Negative conditional sentences in some usage (such as ame ga hur-anaito komaru. 'It will be a bother IF it does NOT rain.') convey that the situation of the proposition (for it to rain) is desired. The present article, focusing on the V-(a)nto, the Kyushu-Chugoku-Shikoku verbal form corresponding to Standard V-(a)naito, argues that V-(a)nto, along with some other species of negative conditional forms, is ambiguous between conveying the desirability of the proposition (the speaker wants it to rain) and conveying the negation of the predicate (not raining): it can mean either, but not both at a time. Thus, negation does not "get overlaid with" desirability, but negation "alternates with" desirability. This claim is motivated by the following observations in Kyushu-Chugoku-Shikoku Japanese. The auxiliary verb ok-u 'put, keep' in one of its usages gets suffixed to a non-volitional predicate: ex. keeki ni ichigo ga nott-ok-anto sabisii kanji ni naru. 'Something feels missing IF a cake does NOT have a strawberry on it.' Ok-u in this usage only occurs in contexts conveying desirability. Contrary to this, negative polarity items such as nanimo 'anything' only occur in contexts conveying negation. Inside the V-(a)nto clause, negation and desirability are distributed complementarily: either of them can occur but both cannot co-occur. This and other similar observations lead us to conclude that the V-(a)nto clause can convey either negation or desirability in different times but not both at a time.