アイヌ語沙流方言の助動詞「a」の用法について : 中国語の「過」から見たタクシス機能

Ainu language a

北海道大学大学院文学研究院北方研究教育センター

北方人文研究

In terms of the auxiliary verb a in the Saru dialect of Ainu language, previous studies have made achievements at the sentence level, but few studies have focused on the text level. Based on previous studies, this study compares the Ainu word a with the Chinese guo from the perspective of Chinese and examines the function of a at the text level. Firstly, the results show that when a appears immediately after the predicate verb, it represents ‘sequentiality’ (successive temporal relationship) of the taxis function, which is similar to the Chinese guo. The a which represents ‘sequentiality’ has the characteristic of seeking the next event, so it cannot appear in the last event of the sentence. Secondly, in the modifying phrase, a still represents the ‘sequentiality’ while Chinese guo means the ‘anteriority’ (earlier in time). Lastly, the results reveal that a also represents ‘sequentiality’ when co-occurring with the continuous form wa an. Based on these results, this study argues that a represents ‘sequentiality’ at the text level. Besides, this study shows that a may not represent the function of ‘direct evidentiality’ when it appears in the modifying phrase, although the examples are not so many. Furthermore, this study indicates that the continuous form wa an shows ‘anteriority’ at the text level.