「現代日本語における接辞『めく』の意味・用法」
The Meaning and Usages of the Current Japanese Suffix -meku
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning and usages of the current Japanese suffix -meku.
It has been said that the nouns preceding -meku are conventionally limited, and that the suffix is not very productive in current Japanese. However, at present we can find many new cases in which -meku follows Chinese nouns composed of four or more Chinese characters, as well as nouns written in katakana.
Moreover, little attention has been given to the speaker's motive for and subjective attitude towards situations in which -meku is used.
In this paper, I describe the meaning of "X ga N-meku" in the following way:
(1) "X ga N-meku" is used to describe non-analytically the appearance of the core features of N which appear in X as a result of some change in the situation of X itself. The speaker recognizes that N's appearance is not an expected or natural result in the present situation.
This paper also discusses new usages of -meku by speakers to show modesty in expressing self-pride or intelligence. Such usage is consistent with -meku's characteristic implication of vagueness.