earticle

영어

Comparing with other temporal subordinate clauses in Japanese, the verb form and temporal meaning of a 「Toki」 clause are expressed in various ways. In this paper, detailed analysis of example sentences were performed to clarify the semantic difference between a 「Toki」 clause and a main clause by the tense and the aspect. To this end, first, Japanese modern novels were randomly selected and 「Toki」 clauses were extracted. Then, according to the temporal relationship between the subordinate clause and the main clause, the examples were classified into 「simultaneity」, 「sequence」, and 「reverse sequence」. The correlations between the verb and its temporal meaning, as well as the meaning of tense and the aspect were examined. As a result, it was confirmed that not only the verb form, but also the lexical nature of the verb plays a major role in determining the temporal meaning of the 「Toki」 clause. In this study, it was also found that the logical meaning of 「causality」, 「condition」 and 「rule」 is also established in 「Toki」 clauses.