「たくさん」をめぐる一考察 – 連用用法の非典型的な用例に注目して –

Abstract

In the present article, I analyse the cases of takusan where it is used as an adverb and does not express the quantity of the referent of a noun. I collected data from corpora and classified them in accordance with Kudo’s (1995) classification of verbs. Firstly, the adverb takusan is concurrent with an external motion verb. This is indicative that the adverb takusan represents the “quantity of motional continuation” or the “frequency of a motion” depending on the lexical semantics of the co-occurring verb and noun. Secondly, takusan behaves as a degree adverb when it is concurrent with an internal state verb such as a verb of emotion and a verb of sense or it is concurrent with an adjective. The adverb takusan is used as a degree adverb in spoken language but not in written language, and this suggests that this use is not prescriptive. Still, since the use is observed in the data consulted, it is fair to say that it is permitted by the language users. The present analysis has newly revealed that what previous studies have called the “quantity of motion” use of takusan may be classified into the case of the “quantity of motional continuation” and the case of the “frequency of a motion,” depending on the types of the co-occurring verb. Also, the present study analysed the degree-adverbial use of takusan, which has been overlooked in the literature.