英語の同等比較級と日本語の限定表現 : 「範囲」と「限界」

A Comarison of Limitative Expressions in Japanese and English: "As··· as" Constructions in English and suru-kagiri and suru-dake in Japanese

Ueno Takafumi

Shimouchi Mitsuru

大阪女子短期大学紀要

Osaka Women's Junior College bulletin

It is observed in English composition classes that Japanese students often use idiomatic expressions like "as ... as one can/possible", "as long as" or "as far as" to translate Japanese limitative phrases suru-dake or suru-kagiri. But some of the English sentences which are produced using these English expressions are inappropriate.
We compare the English sentences using "as ... as one can/possible" and "as ... as one want /like" with the Japanese adverbial clauses which have -dake, and discuss a parallelism seen in the English structure with the comparative of equality and the Japanese clause with -dake. We also tried to analyze the English sentences with "unless" and "as far/long as" to know the proper equivalents which correspond to the Japanese adverbial with -kagiri, considering such factors as 'scope', 'limit' and 'duration' given by the English verbs employed in the structures.

VERB -kagiri　　　→　 IF S + V
　　　　　　　　　　　AS FAR AS S + V
　　　　　　　　　　　AS LONG AS S + V
　　　　　　　　　　　OTHERS

VERB NOT -kagiri　→　IF S + V NOT
　　　　　　　　　　　UNLESS S + V
　　　　　　　　　　　AS LONG AS S + V NOT
　　　　　　　　　　　OTHERS

English [ 830 ]

Japanese [ 810 ]

jpn

大阪女子短期大学

[ISSN] 0385-4310

[NCID] AN00029269