Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/82418

In Japanese, the particle NI is generally appended to a noun indicating the time of occurrence of an action. But some time expressions do not occur with NI. In this article we propose two types of temporal expressions, deictic and contextual, in order to explain co-occurrence with NI Deictic time expressions are nouns like the following: 1) KYOO (today), KINOO (yesterday), ASHITA (tomorrow), RAIGETSU (next month) etc. Contextual time expressions are nouns like the following which require reference points: 2) 6-JI (6 o'clock), 3-GATSU (March), 2020-NEN (2020) etc. The following expressions are included as contextual time expressions because they suggest reference points: 3) GETSUYOOBI (Monday), TANJOOBI (birthday), HARU (Spring) etc. We argue that only contextual time expressions can be followed by NI, and that deictic time expressions are also considered as contextual in contrastive environments: 4) ASHITA-NI-WA , ASHITA-NI-MO (even tomorrow). Deictic time expressions can also be considered as contextual when they are placed in a schedule: 5) RAIGETSU-NI (in the next month). Finally we compare time expressions in Japanese and Portuguese to support the distinction of these two types of expressions.