From a manner adverb to a discourse particle: The case of yahari, yappari and yappa

Abstract

Numerous studies have been done in various theoretical frameworks on the Japanese adverb yahari, but very few considered its morphophonologcal variants, yappari, and yappa as objects of serious investigation both synchronically and diachronically. Through the analyses of corpora, this study delineates semantic and functional changes of these variants. Yahari was first attested as a clause-internal manner adverb, meaning ‘being still’, then developed a sentential modal adverbial usage, ‘as expected, after all, at any rate’. Yappari was also a manner adverbial first, and through a sentential modal, it also developed discourse particle functions. Yappa was attested much later for more subjective and pragmatic functions. The developmental order of these three as yahari > yappari > yappa has bearing on issues in grammaticalization. First, the paper argues that the yahari case lends support to Traugott’s (1995) proposal that the adverbial cline, “Clause-internal Adverbial > Sentence Adverbial > Discourse Particle” should be added to the inventory of grammaticalization because of its similar developmental path. Second, this study also shows that the yahari case is an instantiation of intersubjectification (Traugott 2003). Third, it demonstrates that the yahari case counters the generally held parameter of “syntactic scope decrease” (Givon 1971, Lehmann 1995 [1982]), and instead exhibits “syntactic scope increase”.