Revisiting Old Japanese Auxiliary ki
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Date
2023-01
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Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
There is broad scholarly agreement that Old Japanese (OJ) auxiliary ki, operating over a non-finite form of another verb, e.g. omopi-ki (‘thinking’-ki) ‘(I) thought (it)’, indicated that the situation represented transpired prior to speech time. Ki is widely considered the basic past tense auxiliary of OJ and Early Middle Japanese (EMJ). But there are differences in opinion as to what kind of past ki expressed, especially in relation to other auxiliaries associated with past tense, such as kyeri. Martin (1987), for example, labels ki a perfect, but does not explain. This paper reviews OJ ki in its grammatical and discourse-pragmatic contexts, with an eye to features compatible and/or strongly associated with perfects cross-linguistically. It identifies several factors that, when present, prompt a perfect interpretation for conclusive ki, while contexts lacking such features indicate a past meaning. We suggest that after past ki emerged from an earlier perfect, both remained viable.
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Keywords
Auxiliary ki, Old Japanese, tense, aspect, modality, perfect
Citation
Quinn, Jr., Charles J. "Revisiting Old Japanese Auxiliary ki." Buckeye East Asian Linguistics, vol. 6 (January 2023), p. 79-97.