「とか」の機能の変化 :並立機能から副助詞・引用機能へ

Abstract

This Study aims to investigate the function shift of a lexical item, ‘toka’ from a Coordinator to an Adverbial Particle, along with its additional usage change as a Quotation Marker. The Coordinator ‘toka’ has long been perceived as a combination of quotative ‘to’ and adverbial particle ‘ka’ since the lexical item established itself as a particle since the Muromachi era. In those period, ‘toka’ is certainly a Coordinator, although it seems easy to see the influence of ‘to’ as a quotation marker and ‘ka’ as a adverbial particle that shows uncertainty. During the Meiji era, ‘toka’ further reached the status of Coordinating conjunction on its own, being the host of another suffixal particle. Furthermore, in the later years of Edo, there are some cases in which ‘toka’ implies implicit items in the conjunct. This usage gives rise to ‘toka’ as an adverbial particle, which is productively used in Contemporary Japanese. It is worthwhile to notice 　that ‘toka’ is used as a Coordinator when it concords with a verb like ‘iu’, whereas ‘toka’ function more frequently as a quotation marker. The current research, in short, shows that the dual functions of Adverbial Particle and Quotation Marker in the usage of ‘toka’ did originate from its coordinating function.