earticle

영어

This paper focuses on the features and tendencies that can be seen in the change from the adverbial usage to the interjectional usage, by taking the examples of “ikanimo”, “nakanaka”, and “makotoni” used in affirmative response utterances. As a result, the first common feature found in all three words is that the interjectional usage was used in the Middle and Early Modern Japanese, even though the initial examples of the adverbial usage represented different meanings from each other. Second, the response utterances by these three words do not have only the function corresponding to the counterparts such as “hai” and “ee” in the response- only format, it expresses the content that it is right and also has the function of showing consent and agreement about what the other person says. Third, the interjectional usage of three words was the response utterances to YES-NO Interrogative Sentences (only one example of WH Interrogative Sentences). Fourth, examples of modifying a noun predicate that does not have relative degree was used in the process of changes from the adverbial usage to the interjectional usage.