This paper examines the negative predicate co-occurring with mada "yet" and investigates the semantic difference between mada ~te-i-nai and mada ~nai in Japanese. It builds upon grammaticalization in regard to the behavior of unaccusatives, unergatives, and accusatives in response to a moo ~mashi-ta ka question by applying the diagrammatic method for tense logic proposed by McCawley (1981).
Based on examination of the behavior of three verb categories (unaccusatives, unergatives, and accusatives proposed by Purlmutter [1986]), Johnson (2001) postulated that unaccusatives have no restriction in the manner in which mada ~masen and mada ~te-i-masen are used in response to moo ~mashi-ta ka, whereas unergatives and accusatives make the mada ~masen response inappropriate. Hence, the use of mada in negative sentences is not solely based on the syntactic features of transitivity or intransitivity; rather, it is based on the lexical concept associated with the protagonist's controllability over the event (proposed by McLendon [1978]) with clear notions of inherent incipiency and terminus. However, the appropriateness of both mada mitsukari-masen and mada mitsukatte-i-masen in response to moo ~mitsukarimashi-ta ka, for example, remains unclear. In order to clarify the distinction, we utilize McCawley's diagrams of tense logic, originally proposed by Reichenbach (1947! ).
From these investigations, it was discovered that mada mitsukara-nai " can indicate the present status of an event due to its morphology of having been converted from an affirmative to a negative predicate, and the speaker's expectation strongly lies toward the event's realization. On the other hand, mada mitsukatte-i-nai clearly exhibits the present perfect structure wherein the time of reference indicates a non-occurrence of the event in the past and up to the time of speech.