Incoerenze nella descrizione delle particelle plurifunzionali in giapponese di Yamada Yoshio

This paper reviews the traditional classification of Japanese particles, which was first introduced in 1908 , in Yamada Yoshio’s Nihon Bunpō-ron, and addresses the criteria used to determine the value of each of their occurrence. The absence of formal and morpho-syntactic criteria, and the importance Yamada assigns to the relation expressed by each particle, seem to have influenced the contemporary scholarship, as it is not uncommon to find different interpretations of the same occurrence. This approach is also noticeable in Yamada’s analysis, as the syntactic contexts allowed by polyfunctional particles such as ya, ka, and wo, in several cases overlap, and Yamada seems to use a semantic criterion to classify their occurrences within one of his functional classes. The focus is set on Yamada’s description of wo, as in one case Yamada himself gives two different interpretations of an occurrence of this particle (in Kokinshū 5.276), thus confirming the importance of the semantic parameter.