紀要論文

紀要論文

text

OUCCL(Osaka University Papers in Comparative Contrastive Linguistics). 2025, 2, p. 1-15

What makes by now in Japanese differ from by now in English

Hirayama, Yuto

Department of Comparative and Contrastive Linguistics, Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University

英語

text

2025-03

The temporal use of the English preposition by is often translated into the Japanese expression madeni. Both of the two exhibit the same meaning, but by now can co-occur with a predicate that denotes the current state (e.g., be home), while the combination of madeni and ima ‘now’ cannot. This paper accounts for this contrast by focusing on what condition has to be satisfied to license madeni. There are two environments in which madeni can occur: (i) when it is clearly specified how many times the event described by the matrix predicate occurs, or (ii) when the whole sentence expresses a modality of certain kinds (e.g., schedule). From these observations, the licensing condition for madeni is derived: the sentence containing madeni must sufficiently affect the temporal duration provided by madeni-phrase, rather than affecting a particular time interval. It is also illustrated that the same condition is applicable to ima-madeni. That is, the difference between by now and ima-madeni is the absence/presence of the licensing condition.

10.18910/103055

103055

What makes by now in Japanese differ from by now in English

Hirayama, Yuto

Department of Comparative and Contrastive Linguistics, Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University

英語

2025-03

OUCCL(Osaka University Papers in Comparative Contrastive Linguistics)

2

1

15

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/103055

10.18910/103055

https://doi.org/10.18910/103055