Tense and Aspect in Modern Colloquial Japanese

This book provides a clear definition and distinction of tense and aspect in modern colloquial Japanese, with particular attention to the so-called tense markers '-ru' and '-ta.' Demonstrating that several earlier analyses of Japanese tense and aspect are inadequate, Soga shows that these systems are far richer semantically than previously suggested.

Going beyond what has been previously written on tense and aspect in general and concerning Japanese in particular, this work lays the foundation for a systematization of aspectual categories on the basis of realized versus unrealized rather than completive and incompletive categories. Such a systematization can explain why in Japanese a progressive sentence is often felt to express the same kind of phenomenon as a resultative sentence.

Clearly presented and substantially documented, the material in this book makes a significant and original contribution to the study of Japanese linguistics. It will be of value not only to those interested in Japanese but also to those concerned with the general theory of tense and aspect.