動詞固有の意味とアスペクト的意味 : 或いは現代日本語の「変化動詞」のアスペクト的意味の正しい取り扱い方

Abstract

It has long been considered that aspectual meanings are an essential part of verb meanings, and that the classification of verbs is the best way of understanding and revealing both the syntactic and semantic properties of verbs. With careful observation, however, a verb form often represents several aspectual meanings and a naive classification theory cannot explain this. In Japanese, the situation is the same. To explain this fact, some insist that most verbs inherently belong to several aspectual classes. Others insist that co-occurring elements or words change the aspectual meanings of verbs. However, I believe neither explanation is sufficient. Refer to the Japanese example given below. (1) a. Hazime no 3 punkan wa kasokudoteki ni ondo ga agarimasu (The temperature rises at an accelerated rate during the first 3 mins.) b. Tatta no 3 punkan de ondo wa 80 do ni agarimasu (The temperature rises to 80 degrees in only 3 mins.) c. Hazime no 3 punkan wa ondo wa 80 do ni agarimasu node gotyuui kudasai (Take care as the temperature will rise to 80 degrees (instantly) and remain at that temperature for 3 mins.) 1a) represents a situation where a "temperature-rising" process is now proceeding; 1b) represents a situation where a transition to the "temperature-has-risen" state is now achieved; 1c) represents a situation where the "temperature-has-risen" state is maintained for some time. How can the above theories explain this? This paper aims to show that aspectual meanings should be distinguished from meanings that verbs have inherently in the lexicon and will insist that these aspectual meanings will be assigned in another component of language. Thus I will endeavour to free verbs from aspectual meanings, which don't belong to verbs.