TOKI with Embedded Sentence as Noun Phrase Indicating Time and Verb Form Alternation -TEIRU/-TEITA as Non-deictic Temporal Relation Maker

Japanese verb form alternation - (R) U/-TA is analyzed and well known as the tense marker. However, despite such analysis by many grammarians both of these two forms may fail to mark location in time as expected. The phenomenon on which the present study focuses is one of those cases; when the forms are used with the affixes -TE-I- (continuous) at the predicate in embedded sentences modifying TOKI (the Japanese word for 'time'), the alternation seems often not to make any differences in sentence meaning. Examining this so-called exceptional case, the study discovers that it disproves that well-known analysis and that the analysis itself is inappropriate for the explanation of linguistic facts in Japanese. Thus the study presents the other generalization that the forms are not mutually exclusive and that while - (R) U is neutral in terms of time, -TA marks the speaker's consideration of events as being located prior to his/her reference point on the time axis. And the study proves that this alternative explains properly the research target and other phenomena.