tense and aspect in modern colloquial japaneseby matsuo soga

Tense and Aspect in Modern Colloquial Japanese by Matsuo SogaReview by: Naomi H. McGloinThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Nov., 1983), pp. 189-196Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489109 .

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Association of Teachers of Japanese

TENSE AND ASPECT IN MODERN COLLOQUIAL JAPANESE, by Matsuo Soga. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983. Pp. viii + 245. $35.

Reviewed by Naomi H. McGloin

The phenomena of tense and aspect are undoubtedly among the most intriguing features of Japanese language. While a number of excellent works are available on this subject, Tense and Aspect in Modern CoZloquial Japanese offers a very detailed and comprehensive treatment, and makes a welcome contribution. The book consists of five chapters and an appendix. Chapters One to Four examine the notions of tense and aspect, functions of -ru and -ta, semantic characteristics of verbs and 13 different aspectual categories. An appendix, which is essentially the same as Soga (1981), examines principles governing the occurrences of -ru and -ta in question-answer pairs and narrative discourse.

One of the major contributions of this book is Soga's careful examination and delineation of two often confused notions: tense vs. aspect. Following Reichenbach (1947), Soga defines tense as "a grammatical category that typi- cally indicates the relationships of speech time (S) to event time (E) by way of reference time (R)" (pp. 17-18). The basic tenses of past vs. non-past can be represented as follows.

(1) a. Watakusi wa soo omou. I S,R,E

Kekka wa asita wakaru. S R,E

Kekka wa kinoo wakatta. i i R,E S

If R precedes S, the tense is 'past' (-ta). Otherwise, the tense is 'non-past' (-ru). If E is detached in time from R, the tense is 'relative.' If E and R are simultaneous, the tense is 'simple.'

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The following is an example of a relative tense.

(2) Kare wa uti ni kaette iru. I1 E S,R

While tense is a matter of relative time points of when, aspect is "the way in which we view a situation with respect to its development" (p. 34)--i.e., whether an event/action is in progress, completed, beginning, etc.

Soga claims that tense and aspect are two separate viable notions in Japanese and that "an event is under- stood both tensally and aspectually. Thus, a sentence must be represented by a diagram composed of an aspectual axis and a tensal axis" (p. 35). Thus, a sentence such as (3), although tensally the same, is associated with three different diagrams because of aspectual differences.

(3) Kare wa kekkon-site iru.

(i) "He is married."

Asp.

Tns.

. . . > .. E

S,R

(ii) "He has been married for example)."

Asp. E

Tns.

(iii) "He has been married married now)."

Asp. 0 .... E

Tns.

(for two years so far,

S,R

(before, but is not

S,R

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>

....> · ® e




Soga, then, examines various usages of -ru and -ta in Chapter 2. -Ru represents (1) a present or future action or event, or a timeless fact; (2) indirect command (e.g., Tatu!) and (3) a past situation in narrative, reminiscence, and in some subordinate constructions. -Ta form is exam- ined when it refers to (1) past time; (2) present time (e.g., Aa, wakatta.; Onamae, wa nan desita ka.); and (3) future time (e.g., kono siai wa moratta). Cases where -ru refers to past tense situations as occurring for one of the following reasons: (1) "shift of viewpoint," (as in the use of -ru in otherwise past-tense narratives, where the author/speaker shifts his encoding time (S) back to story time (R) and "succeeds in creating the illusion that the events are happening at the present moment" (p. 17)); (2) semantic requirement (-ru and -ta are semantically associated with incompletive and completive aspects as in naru made, naru mae, aketa totan, aketa kiri, etc.); (3) grammatical requirement (as in samuku naru to, yuki ga hutta, where, semantically, natta is expected instead of naru.)

After subclassifying verbs in terms of features such as [+ stative], [+ durative], [+ punctual], etc. in Chap- ter 3, Soga then investigates various aspectual categories in Chapter 4. They are progressive, resultative, perfect progressive, perfect resultative, experiential, existential, sustentive (-te oku), terminative (-te simau), ingressive (-te kuru, -te iku), inceptive (-hazimeru), attenuative (-kakeru), continuative (-tuzukeru), and conclusive (-owaru). These subcategories are subsumed under larger categories of realized (pre-inceptive)/unrealized (post-inceptive) and completive/incompletive aspects. Soga contends that a realized vs. unrealized dichotomy might be "more essential than that of completion or incompletion for Japanese speakers" (p. 204), "who feel that a progressive form such

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as yonde iru, 'is reading,' indicates basically the same kind of situation as a resultative form such as kekkon- site iru, 'is married'; that is, they both indicate realized situations" (p. 204).

The book contains a large amount of very interesting factual description. It also reflects the author's extensive research and generally systematic thinking. The book, however, does have some problems.

"Shift of viewpoint" seems to be a reasonable way of accounting for the phenomenon of tense switching in Japanese narratives. It might also be appropriate in dealing with cases such as Aa, odoroita or Saa, Katta! Katta!, where the sentence final tense form is closely linked to modality. Soga, however, also applies this to explain the occurrences of -ru in subordinate clauses involving stative verbs. For example, in the following sentences,

(4) Yokohama ni a. iku toki, Tanaka-san ni atta.

b. itta

(5) Kyooto ni a. iru toki, Tanaka-san ni atta.

b. ita

while the difference between (4a) and (4b) is ascribed to incompletive/completive aspectual differences (or E's being posterior or anterior to R), the difference between (5a) and (5b) is ascribed to "the pyschological shift of the

speech time." He says that the use of the non-past tense form in the embedded sentence in (5a) "may be interpreted to indicate that the psychological speech time for the

speaker has shifted from the present to the past, which is the reference time" (p. 15).

This is a natural consequence of adopting Reichenbach's scheme,since Reichenbach's diagram would not differentiate (5a) from (5b). The non-uniform analysis of sentences such as (4) and (5), moreover, seems to be supported by Makino

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("Speaker/Listener-Orientation and Formality Marking in Japanese," Gengo kenkyu, 1983, 84:126-145). According to Makino, non-past tense forms in (4a) and (5a) are quite different: -ru in (5a) forces the speaker's orientation on the toki clause, thus making formal marking impossible (cf. *Kyooto ni imasu toki, Tanaka-san ni aimasita), while -ru in (4a) does not present any conflict with formal marking.

It seems to me, however, that there is a rather simple and very general distinction between -ru and -ta, which Miura (1974) termed 'earlier vs. non-earlier T-Rs.' If the notions of 'earlier vs. non-earlier T-Rs' are more tensally defined (i.e., independent of the notion of 'completion'), they seem to be able to explain cases involving stative verbs as well as non-stative verbs. (4a) and (5a), then, would involve 'non-earlier T-R,' while (4b) and (5b) would indicate 'earlier T-R'--earlier than the main E in (4b) and earlier than S in (5b).

Soga's position concerning these embedded tenses is actually not very clear, since, in conclusion, he seems to indicate that "a shift of viewpoint" might also be involved in a relative tense system (i.e., cases such as (4)). Clarification on these points would have been helpful. Whether sentences such as (4) and (5) are to be accorded a uniform or non-uniform tensal analysis, moreover, will merit further discussion.

Ota (1971) argues that the notion of R (reference time) is not necessary in describing the Japanese tense system. Soga gives two arguments for the necessity of R in Japanese. He states (fn. 18, p. 225) that S, E, and R are all necessary even in Japanese in order to explain a sentence such as asita no ima goro wa uti ni kaette iru and kare wa uti ni kaette ita. These sentences, however, can be explained by introducing two event times (El and E2) while E2 is the reference point. A stronger argument comes from his discussion of tense phenomena in Japanese conversations (p. 208). For example, there is something wrong with the following conversation.

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(6) Q. Ni-zi no basu wa moo demasita ka. (E - R,S)

A. *Iie, mada demasen desita. (E,R - S)

Soga explains the strangeness of this conversation by the discrepancy in the position of R between (6Q) and (6A). Indeed, the establishment of R seems to be very useful.

I have a slight problem, however, with Soga's representation of (6Q). Tensally, R,S being simultaneous should give a non-past tense form for (6Q). The fact that (6Q) has -ta, however, indicates that (6Q) is interpreted by a relative tense system only (i.e., E being anterior to R). But, then what would prevent a sentence such as Asita made ni simasu, which is represented by (S - E - R), from being interpreted by a relative tense system also and receiving -ta? Until these questions are answered, the status of R in Japanese still remains open.

Soga's discussion on experiential aspect vs. existential aspect is interesting and useful. In the following examples:

(7) a. Kono kawa de kodomo ga go-nin sinda koto ga aru. "In this river there has been an occasion in which five children died."

b. Kono kawa de kodomo ga go-nin sinde iru. "Five children have died in this river (so far)."

(7a) and (7b) represent existential and experiential aspects, respectively. While existential meaning is often concerned with personal reminiscing, the experiential has a factual, impersonal connotation (cf. K. Inoue [1975]). Existential form "is inclined to focus its attention on a single specific event; even if the events are more than one, they tend to be seen as one group" (p. 148). The experiential form, on the other hand, views events separately.

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Soga's aspectual categories 'perfect progressive' (e.g., kare wa moo gozikan mo benkyoo-site iru) and 'perfect resultative' (e.g., kare wa ni-syuukan mo okite iru), however, are not as convincing.

The verbal feature [+ permanent] is introduced to account for the interchange between -ta and -te iru, which occurs with verbs which express permanent states (cf. haha ni nita ko vs. haha ni nite iru ko). There are cases, however, where a -ta/-te iru interchange is possible even with verbs which seemingly do not express permanent states such as kimono o kita hito vs. kimono o kite iru hito. Perhaps the explanation for a -ta/-te iru interchange should be sought elsewhere.

In conclusion, while I feel there are some problems in applying Reichenbach's model to Japanese, the facts presented in this book are interesting and insightful. This book will be of great interest not only to those of us working in the area of Japanese language and linguistics, but also to linguists interested in the general theory of tense and aspect. Linguists will find the general discussion of tense and aspect interesting and challenging. Teachers and students of Japanese will find detailed descriptions of many tensal and aspectual categories extremely useful.

REFERENCES

Inoue, Kyoko (1975). "Studies in the Perfect." Unpub- lished Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Michigan.

Miura, Akira (1974). "The V-ru Form vs. the V-ta Form." In Papers in Japanese Linguistics, 3:95-133. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

Ota, Akira (1971). "Comparison of English and Japanese, with Special Reference to Tense and Aspect." In Working Papers in Linguistics 3, No. 4:121-64. University of Hawaii.

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Reichenbach, Hans (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: The Free Press.

Soga, Matsuo (1981). "Tense and Aspect in Conversations and Narratives." In Papers from the Middtebury Sym- posium on Japanese Discourse Analysis, ed. S. Makino, pp. 276-94. University of Illinois.

ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN JAPANESE, by Akira Miura. Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1979. Pp. 192. $11.50.

JAPANESE WORDS AND THEIR USES, by Akira Miura. Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1983. Pp. 240.

Reviewed by Bates L. Hoffer

These two books by Miura form an interesting comple- mentary set. The first deals with a selection of the tens of thousands of English words borrowed into Japanese and used in a variety of new and innovative ways not neces- sarily understandable to a speaker of English. The second deals with 300 Japanese words commonly misused by American students of Japanese. The pair of books read together give some of the frustrations but also some of the sense of "wonder" and mystery encountered by English speakers learning Japanese. They are, then, of interest to anyone interested in languages in general, in Japanese in par- ticular,and they provide information to the student of Japanese at a level of benefit to be discussed with the individual volumes.

English Loanwords in Japanese grew out of Miura's dissatisfaction with loanword dictionaries, whose "defini- tions and explanations are often incomplete or inadequate" (p. 11). Any dictionary which uses primarily the thesaurus or synonym approach meets with such criticism since it

Reichenbach, Hans (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: The Free Press.

Soga, Matsuo (1981). "Tense and Aspect in Conversations and Narratives." In Papers from the Middtebury Sym- posium on Japanese Discourse Analysis, ed. S. Makino, pp. 276-94. University of Illinois.

ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN JAPANESE, by Akira Miura. Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1979. Pp. 192. $11.50.

JAPANESE WORDS AND THEIR USES, by Akira Miura. Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1983. Pp. 240.

Reviewed by Bates L. Hoffer

These two books by Miura form an interesting comple- mentary set. The first deals with a selection of the tens of thousands of English words borrowed into Japanese and used in a variety of new and innovative ways not neces- sarily understandable to a speaker of English. The second deals with 300 Japanese words commonly misused by American students of Japanese. The pair of books read together give some of the frustrations but also some of the sense of "wonder" and mystery encountered by English speakers learning Japanese. They are, then, of interest to anyone interested in languages in general, in Japanese in par- ticular,and they provide information to the student of Japanese at a level of benefit to be discussed with the individual volumes.

English Loanwords in Japanese grew out of Miura's dissatisfaction with loanword dictionaries, whose "defini- tions and explanations are often incomplete or inadequate" (p. 11). Any dictionary which uses primarily the thesaurus or synonym approach meets with such criticism since it

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