Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Nobuyuki Yuasa et al., eds. Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Michio Kawai (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1993), pp. 45-52.
Discusses Chaucer's exploitation of the potential for ambiguity in such devices as cohesion, coherence, deixis, background assumptions, conversational implication, speech acts, and the narrative functions of speech.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 41 (1994): 19-43.
Charts use of "pite" in Chaucer's works and argues that, as applied to and by Criseyde in TC, it signals transitions in her affections and enables the audience to view her both critically and empathetically.
The phrase "as he/she that," a calque from French "com cil/cele qui," developed polysemic use in Chaucer's day. The article includes a chart of occurrences of the English phrase from ca. 1000 to Caxton, indicating Chaucer's uses by work and…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Hisao Tsuru, ed. Fiction and Truth: Essays on Fourteenth-Century English Literature (Tokyo: Kirihara Shoten, 2000), pp. 133-44.
Assessing the punctuation in editions by Baugh, Donaldson, Fisher, Howard, Pollard, Robinson, Root, Skeat, and Windeatt, Nakao suggests that editorial punctuation of TC obscures another voice of Crisyede.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Toshio Saito, Junsaku Nakamura, and Shunji Yamazaki, eds. English Corpus Linguistics in Japan. Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics, no. 38 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 235-47.
Explores the "quantifiability" of the elements that condition the semantics of moot/moste and shal/sholde modals. Although conditions deriving from proposition and clause structure are quantifiable and machine-readable, pragmatic conditions require…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002), pp. 73-94.
Nakao tabulates the frequency of epistemic "trewely" in Chaucer's major works and compares its semantic frequency in Chaucer with that in several contemporary poetic texts. Investigates the significance of the modal adverb "trewely" in TC,…
Nakao assesses the use of "as she that" as it is applied to Criseyde, identifying the unusually high frequency of the phrase in TC, its various functions and semantic range, and the way that Chaucer exploits this variety "to hold in balance his…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Masahiko Kanno and others, eds. Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1997), pp. 441-54.
Discusses the fusion of the root and epistemic senses of modal auxiliaries such as "mot" / "moste," "may" / "myghte," "shal" / "sholde," and "wol" / "wolde" in TC.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
English and English Teaching: A Festschrift in Honour of Prof. Hisashi Takahashi and Prof. Jiro Igarashi (Hiroshima: Department of English, Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1993), pp. 177-85.
Discusses "slydynge" and related words (such as "kynde" and "pite") with regard to Criseyde's characterization. Examines also the syntactic structures containing those words.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yoshiyuki Nakao and Akiyuki Jimura, eds. Originality and Adventure: Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Masahiko Kanno (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2001), pp. 225-59.
Discusses how and why ambiguity is likely in TC, focusing on the relations between verbal elements such as contiguous structure.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Masahiko Kanno, Gregory K. Jember, and Yoshiyuki Nakao, eds. A Love of Words: English Philological Studies in Honour of Akira Wada (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1998), pp. 79-102.
Explores the "ambiguity of causality as a measure of the moral status" of the narrator and characters of TC, particularly Criseyde. Nakao tabulates and examines causal phrases beginning with "because," "since," and "for" in light of their contexts…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Masahiko Kanno, Masahiko Agari, and Gregory K. Jember, eds. Essays on English Literature and Language in Honour of Shun'ichi Noguchi. Tokyo: Eihosha, 1997, pp. 17-34.
Discusses Chaucer's uses of moot / moste, focusing on the fusion of social objective factors and the speaker's subjective implications.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
English and English Teaching, Vol. 2: A Festschrift in Honour of Kiichiro Nakatani. Hiroshima: Department of English Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1997, pp. 23-42.
Discusses the semantic unity of shal / sholde in TC, focusing on degrees of subjectivity on the part of the speaker.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yukio Oba et al., eds. Currents in Linguistic Research: A Festschrift for Professor Kazuyuki Yamamoto on the Occasion of His Retirement from Yamaguchi University. Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1999, pp. 231-46.
Discusses external causals, one of the pragmatic features in the use of Chaucer's moot / moste. Clarifies the fusion of fate, divine intervention, and the speaker's subjective factors.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
ERA [English Research Association of Hiroshima] 6.1: 14-49, 1988.
Discusses Chaucer's ambiguous use of words such as "sely," "gentil," and "pite" in LGW, clarifying the gap between efforts to define "good women" and their human weaknesses.
