The book of The NIHONSHOKI was completed in AD.720 years. This book is regarded as the first written history book of Japan form the origin tale to the Jito Tenno emperor. Because it is a history book, there are presented various kinds of people and ma...
The book of The NIHONSHOKI was completed in AD.720 years. This book is regarded as the first written history book of Japan form the origin tale to the Jito Tenno emperor. Because it is a history book, there are presented various kinds of people and many contents to describe speech act of the characters of the people in the book. To deal with the characters’ speech act there are used of many kinds of Kanji notations such as “曰․言․云․謂”. Even though they is letter to express the meaning of “say”, the writer would have chosen the kanji according to certain criteria. In this article, we firstly outlined the use of situation of “言”, and then focusing on the examples used for utterance quotations considered three angles of the usage of “言” which are the form of utterance citation, the subject who spoke and the vertical relationship between the spoken subject and the object. We also examined how the usage of “言” differs from ‘曰’ which is already discussed. “言” are used as verbs and nouns, when “言” used as verbs can be further categorized into quotations and epics. However there is not found as noun and epic in the usage of “曰”. “言”. For Conversation quotation “言” is not used in quoting the emperor's utterance, but “曰” has no such restriction. “言” is used for quoting conversation to a superior person. but “曰” is used for quoting conversation to Same level and inferior person.