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Does modern Japanese have a copula?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

F. J. Daniels
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Extract

The question primarily at issue is whether da and desu in modern, chiefly conversational, Japanese, together with other forms commonly held to belong to paradigms of da+ and desu+ viewed as inflected items, should be called copulative forms; whether, that is to say, they perform the grammatical function of linking a subject with a predicate. The question also concerns combinations consisting of de followed by one of the forms of aru+, arimasu+, or gozaimasu+. In general, these combinations have when positive the same uses and senses as forms of da+ and desu+ and are when negative the only available negative counterparts of those forms. Some attention will be given to what has been said about the verb nari+ (< ni ari+) and the combination nite ari+ of the now obsolete Classical Literary style, though no attempt will be made to reach conclusions about them.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 261 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1973

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References

1 For convenience, aru +, arimasu +, and gozaimasu + are being spoken of as three separate verbs. But, strictly, arimasu + is not independent, being derived from aru + by the addition to its General base of the Polite-level suffix -masu +, a process applicable in general to any verb. Gozaimasu +, though also in origin a derived verb (< gozarimasu + < gozaru + and -masu +, gozaru + having itself developed from a combination of goza and ari +), has to be accorded independent status in the present-day language, of which gozaru + is no longer a part. I am treating aru + as having a composite paradigm, including forms often held to belong to nai + as a separate word.

2 My use of ‘particle’ is admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic. A summary account of what I mean by the term and a list of the forms covered by it are given in my contribution to the ‘Word classes’ double issue of Lingua, XVII, 1–2, 1966, 69Google Scholar. (I would now add zutu to that list.) But, though the forms being considered here have not been called ‘particles’ by most writers in English, the phonological facts about them are not, I think, in dispute.

3 This fact is no doubt connected with the development of uses of da, desu, and de as the first element in combinations used as sentence-initial conjunctions (or conjunctive adverbs), e.g. Da/Desu kara ‘Therefore’, Da/Desu ga/keredo ‘However’, De mo ‘(But) still’. These uses will not be gone into here. Under my definitions, Da, Desu, and De in these uses are words, not particles.

4 The equivalent sentences at the Deferential level have a special form of the I adjective followed by gozaimasu or its ‘past’ form gozaimasita; e.g. siroo gozaimasu, ‘is/are white’, siroo gozaimasita, ‘was/were white, has/have/had been white’.

5 Aston, W. G., A grammar of the Japanese written language, second ed., London and Yokohama, 1877, 180Google Scholar.

6 Sansom, G. B., An historical grammar of Japanese, Oxford, 1928, 208Google Scholar.

7 He says on p. 259: ‘There is in Japanese a copulative verb, nari, corresponding in a sense to the English verb “to be”’; whereas, on the following page he says: ‘nari is not a copulative verb, but is composed of ni and the verb ari, which means “to exist”’. The former sentence is followed by: ‘But its use does not preclude the use of wa’.

8 idem, 259–60. The view that wa and nari co-operate to fulfil the function of the ‘philosophical’ copula is found in Yamada-Yosio , Nihon bunpoo-ron , Tokyo, 1908, 648Google Scholar. Yamada criticizes some other Japanese grammarians for saying that nari alone is equivalent to English ‘is’ or German ‘ist’ and claims that in asserting the linking role oiwa he is following Motoori-Norinaga (1730–1801), who called it a kakarikotoba ‘relating(?) word’. For an exposition of Motoori's theory of kakari-musubi, see Yanada, S., ‘Motoori-Norinaga's contribution to a scheme of Japanese grammar’, BSOAS, XIII, 2, 1950, 474–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 idem, 209.

10 Bloch, B., ‘Studies in colloquial Japanese: I. Inflection’, JAOS, LXVI, 2, 1946, 97–109Google Scholar; ‘Studies in colloquial Japanese: II. Syntax’, Language, XXII, 3, 1946, 200–48Google Scholar; both reprinted in R. A. Miller, Bernard Bloch on Japanese, New Haven and London, 1970.

11 Bernard Bloch on Japanese, 21.

12 Extracts 1–6 from Mondoo-yuuyoo, Musei taidan-syuu , (Asahi Sinbunsya, Tokyo), VIII, 1957, 247, 287, 317Google Scholar; x, 1958, 73, 213, 253, respectively. Extracts 7–10 from Hanasikotoba no bunkei (1): taiwa-siryoo ni yoru kenkyuu [English title, ‘A research for making sentence patterns in colloquial Japanese (1): on materials in conversation’], NLRI, Tokyo, 1960, 46, 47, 48, 50, respectivelyGoogle Scholar. In choosing extracts 1–6, only interviews with persons born in Tokyo were used, but all the extracts themselves, including 7–10, were picked virtually at random, being the first sentence or exchange in a randomly selected block of material to contain a form of da + or desu +. Only one such sentence was rejected, this because its meaning was in some doubt.

13 nan' < na no, na being obligatory variant of da before no/n'.

14 sakan ni ‘as at a peak of activity, profusely’, etc.; mite'ta < mite ita. Past tense in ‘kept’ is justified by extra-sentence context. The fortune-teller's two named clients were prominent politicians.

15 ke'do < keredo; dasit'yaa < dasite wa; ten' de < to yuu no de. syoozyuu-syootai ; haizoku ; seiretu ; bangoo . It hardly seems possible to give an English equivalent for wake in this construction. It is only by faintly suggesting that the process accorded with reason or expectation, was natural or usual, that h. sareta wake desu differs from h. saremasita. The contraction ten' de is characteristic of down-town Tokyo speech, and it is the speaker's general style which seems to justify the renderings ‘say’ and ‘don't’ rather than ‘said’ and ‘didn't’; the fact that the corresponding Japanese forms are ‘present’ (or ‘neutral’) cannot be decisive.

16 taihen na ‘momentous, serious’. There is no ‘past’ form in the Japanese.

17 itt'yattan' desu < itte simatta no desu.

18 yooku < yoku, the lengthening of the vowel suggesting ‘in a very high degree’.

19 d'ya < de wa. Note pause before desu ka.

20 tuukin ‘going-to-and-fro employment’; kiboo .

21 Misima-kun'ti < Misima-kun no uti.

22 So that the name NO (N') DESU for the construction is not altogether happy, but a better awaits invention. The typical men's use of no ka at the Indifferent level is itself a use of the construction without using da.

23 As is done by Dunn, C. J. and Yanada, S. in Teach yourself Japanese, London, 1958, 84–6Google Scholar. These authors also (pp. 65–7) explain the construction as having, sometimes at least, more specific uses than, as is often said, adding emphasis. From a syntactic point of view, this and other somewhat similar constructions have been discussed in Japanese chiefly by Sakuma-Kanae , in various writings from his Gendai-nihongo no hyoogen to gohoo ‘Expression and usage in present-day Japanese’ of 1936 onwards. The National Language Research Institute's Gendaigo no zyosi · zyodoosi—yoohoo to ziturei [English title, ‘Bound forms (“zyosi” and “zyodoosi”) in modern Japanese—uses and examples’], Tokyo, 1951, gives a summary account of the implications of the construction (p. 172)Google Scholar; to be compared with its separate treatment of no/n' de (p. 174). Makino, Seiichi, Some aspects of Japanese nominalization, Tokyo, 1969Google Scholar, after a survey of the views of Japanese grammarians, tries to discover a ‘deep structure’ for this and other similar constructions.

24 Tamaru-Takuroo, , Rooma-zi-bun no kenkyuu ‘A study of roman-letter writing’, Tokyo, 1920, 130, and entries under da, etc., in glossaryGoogle Scholar; Tamaru-Takuroo, (for Nippon-no-Rômazi-Sya), Pocket handbook of colloquial Japanese, third ed., Tokyo, 1936, 60 (first ed., 1920)Google Scholar.

25 Tuzimura-Tosiki, , Keigo no siteki kenkyuu ‘A historical study of respect language’, Tokyo, 1968, 52Google Scholar. The Japanese, romanized, reads: Tumari, ‘hana de aru’ wa ‘hana to site sonzai suru’ no ki-moti o nao motu mono to kangaeru wake desu. Tadasi, sonzai no imi wa usnku natte imasu kara, ‘aru’ wa hozyo-doosi to site mitai to omoimasu ga, soko ni wa, sonzai-gainen kara kootei-handan e to yuu, si kara zi e no ikoo-katei ga miraremasu. The usage of the terms si and zi here is that of Tokieda-Motoki . By no means all grammarians agree with him about this usage.

26 The suggestion of ‘positing’ for sotei, a fairly recondite word, comes from the dictionary Koozien , where it also seems to be implied that the word is a loan-translation based on German setzen or Setzung.

27 It is not the case that women, typically, never use da. Before a final wa women do use it, and do this after all uninflected words, not only after those nouns where wa might be confused with its ‘topic marker’ homonym (e.g. iya da wa, as compared with iya yo).

28 Makino, , Some aspects of Japanese nominalization, 70Google Scholar.

29 Bernard Bloch on Japanese, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxi.

30 Excepting only the naraba alternant of nara.

31 See p. 267, n. 24.