ASPECT MORPHEMES IN THE BRAZILIAN VARIETY OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE

Abstract

Japanese immigration to Brazil gave rise to a variety of Japanese language distinct from that spoken in the Japanese archipelago. One of the characteristics of the speech of the Japanese immigrants and their descendants in the Federal District is the presence of the aspect morphemes –yor and –tor, which are seen in verb constructions such as mi-yor-u, mi-tor-u ‘look-asp.npsd’. The presence of these morphemes in the Japanese language spoken in Brazil is confirmed by preliminary surveys of what is called, in this research, the Brazilian Variety of the Japanese Language (BVJL), such as Takano (2013) and Ferreira (2009). The present paper has as its aim the description of the use and distribution of these aspect morphemes in BVJL. The source of the analysis was collected through the solicitation to collaborators for comment on the video “Pear Stories”. 34 Japanese Brazilians, made up of immigrants, children and grandchildren of immigrants residing in the Federal District, took part in this research. The occurrences of the -yor morpheme gave verbs a progressive aspect reading, whereas the -tor morpheme oscillated between a progressive and a resultative reading according to the transitivity of the verb to which it’s affixed, with exceptions in a few verbs.