The Use of Wo Tooshite/Tsuujite and Ni Watatte as Time Markers in Japanese Sentence: An Overview of Grammatical Meaning

Abstract

This study aims to determine the similarities and differences in the use of ~ wo tooshite/tsuujite and ~ ni watatte based on its’ grammatical meaning as time markers. However, eventhough both functioned as time markers, in terms of grammatical meaning, both have subtle differences. This study is a qualitative descriptive study with data taken taken from Twitter.com as the data source. After 25 data of each time markers collected, the data then analyzed based on the grammatical meaning and structures, including the word classes which come before (noun) and after (the predicate) ~ wo tooshite/tsuujite and ~ ni watatte. The results showed that the similarities of ~wo tooshite/tsuujite and ~ni watatte in terms of grammatical meaning were decided by the context of the sentence, which represent the period of the activity and the phenomena of the situation occured. On the other hand, the difference between ~wo tooshite/tsuujite and ~ni watatte is that ~wo tooshite/tsuujite is used when mentioning natural phenomena that occur repeatedly and continuously, while ~ni watatte emphasizes the duration of the activity. Moreover, ~ni watatte is used to express a negative state because of the nuance that the time is very long, while to express a continuing state of hope such as ‘can enjoy all year round’, both time markers can be used.