V-na(sa)-soo da: A survey-based study of evidential 'variants' in Japanese
Tetsuya Miyaguchi · ERA: Education and Research Archive (University of Alberta) · 2017
In the Japanese language, it is known that when the evidential -soo da ‘looks like’ connects to a negative predicate, an additional element sa occasionally appears between the negative marker and -soo da, giving rise to two different forms, -na-soo da and -nasa-soo da. An example is shown below: ame ga fura-na(sa)-soo da rain NOM fall NEG(sa) it-looks-like ‘It looks like it is not going to rain.’ While previous studies consider that -na-soo da and -nasa-soo da do not differ in meaning or use, regarding them simply as ‘variants,’ these two forms actually seem to give somewhat different impressions; in the case of -nasa-soo da, it sounds as if the speaker is speaking with some form of certainty, while on the other hand -na-soo da sounds as if the speaker is speaking based on their intuition. This study looks into the possibility that the so-called ‘variants’ -na-soo da and -nasa-soo da actually differ in meaning and use. With my hypothesis that ‘visual evidence’ and ‘length of time to process information’ play some roles in the speaker’s choice between the two forms, I will use a questionnaire survey to look at how speakers choose between the two forms. Based on the results, I will show how the use of -na-soo da and -nasa-soo da may vary according to these factors.