The copula function of the Japanese language Dantei no jodôshi

• Grant number: 19/16814-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2019
• End date: January 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal Investigator: Eliza Atsuko Tashiro
• Grantee: Rafael Sposito
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The jodôshi, as it is described in the Japanese educational system grammar, comprise a grammatical class particular to the Japanese language. Usually translated as "verbal auxiliaries" in present researches written in Portuguese language, the jodôshi are inflectional function words, which can be used only when connected to lexical units. Thus, they form a grammatical category that cannot be easily matched with those that are considered to exist in western languages. Among the jodôshi, there are words such as 'da', 'desu' and 'dearu' that belong to a subgroup which some researchers acknowledge by the name of dantei no jodôshi, which is commonly translated as "assertion verbal auxiliaries" or "judgment verbal auxiliaries" in researches written in Portuguese language. Resembling that which is known as linking verbs or copular verbs in the western grammar, the dantei no jodôshi function on creating a link between the subject and a nominal or adjectival predicate. Considering that such a copula phenomenon occurs in different ways in different languages, it is significant that the Japanese language has its own grammatical class to perform it. That being so, the goal of this project is to study the dantei no jodôshi in two different dimension: in the first place, by investigating through which processes the classical Japanese dantei no jodôshi 'nari' and 'tari' gave birth to the modern 'da', 'desu', 'dearu', among others; in second place, by performing a comparative study between the Japanese grammar theories concerning the dantei no jodôshi and western theories about the linking or copular verbs, thus explaining the particulars of the copula phenomenon as well as the role played by the dantei no jodôshi on the formation of the grammatical clause. (AU)