夏目漱石‘s use of question marker かい for an open instead of closed (ie yes/no) question


Can anybody explain why かい is used in the following sentence from 第三夜 (Dream
#3 - from Natsume Sōseki's _Ten Nights of Dreams_ , 夢十夜):

> 自分が御前の眼はいつ潰れたのかいと聞くと、何昔からさと答えた。
>
> "I asked [him] when [he] had gone blind to which [his] casual reply was "Oh,
> ages back".

According to the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and the answer to a
previous question, linked below, かい is for yes/no questions, だい is for WH-
questions.

[In what situation can I use ~かい (for interrogative
question)?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2864/1478)




We spent a while talking about this on chat tonight, and I think I understand
a little better now thanks to Chocolate and Yang Muye. So I'm going to try to
write up the conclusions I came to in an answer.

* * *

## Rules for だい and かい

I think the description given in the grammar dictionaries is fairly accurate
for today's Japanese, but it may be a bit of a simplification, and is perhaps
not 100% descriptively accurate. After all, we know from 非回答者's comment and
from the fact that 夏目漱石 wrote it that かい must be possible! The only question
is how we should make sense of it.

To get started, [I read the rules on the page 非回答者 linked to and went through
the quiz at the bottom](http://www014.upp.so-net.ne.jp/nbunka/0610ga.html),
and I discovered something very interesting:

I can get 100% of the answers right with two simple rules!

##  Rule 1. If you can't use だ, you can't use だい.

##  Rule 2. If you can't use か, you can't use かい.

That is, I ignored the presence of い entirely and focused on whether だ, か, or
の was grammatically possible. In all cases I ended up with the right answers.
You'll note that the quiz never makes you decide between だい and かい when _both_
だ and か are possible.

And although these rules aren't _quite_ adequate on their own, they seem
natural enough if you think of い as a separate particle. In fact,
[dictionaries list い as a sentence-final
particle](http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/9100/m0u/%E3%81%84/). That
leads us to rule #3:

##  Rule 3. The particle い is unambiguously clause-final.

What does this mean? Compare the following examples:

> A. 会議はいつ **か**  
>  B. 会議はいつ **かい**

The first example sounds incomplete—you could complete it by adding something
to the end, like `会議はいつか、 **知ってますか？**`. But because the second example ends
with い, a sentence-final particle, it seems like a complete sentence. So this
is one place that かい is possible that か would seem strange.

So this is a slight revision to our rules #1 and #2, which otherwise serve us
quite well. Now, let's move on to the last two rules:

##  Rule 4. When there's no question word, you can't use だい.

##  Rule 5. When there _is_ a question word, you _usually_ use だい.

That is to say, だい is more common in today's Japanese than かい with a question
word. And while かい is still possible today, I think it's a less common than だい
when both are possible, and in some cases it might seem a little bit old-
fashioned sounding. [Chocolate reported in chat that it was the sort of thing
you might find in a 夏目漱石
novel](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/15702580#15702580),
and of course that's exactly what your question is about.

So I think that Makino et al. probably simplified things slightly in their
grammar dictionaries. Because it's more common to use だい than かい today, their
rules work fairly well most of the time, but they might not have 100%
descriptive adequacy.

* * *

## An explanation?

I've come up with an explanation for why this the case. It's a bit of a just-
so story, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it, but helps everything make
sense in my head, so I thought I'd include it here:

  1. I think 誰だい is possible for the same reason you can say 誰だ—the presence of the question word 誰 makes it obvious that you're asking a question, even with だ and without an overt marker like か or rising intonation. That doesn't _force_ you to use だい, but it makes it possible, and practically speaking it's more common to use だい than かい when both are possible syntactically.

  2. On the other hand, a sentence like おいしいのだい fails as a question for the same reason おいしいのだ does. Without a question word, you need another way to signal to the listener that you're asking a question, and that most likely means using rising intonation or an overt question particle. This rules out だ and therefore だい as well, as they would be taken as signals that you're _not_ asking a question.

Of course, I never use だい or かい in my own speech so these rules are somewhat
academic for me :-) But I hope either the rules or the reasoning help you
understand why it was okay that he used かい in his writing.




We spent a while talking about this on chat tonight, and I think I understand
a little better now thanks to Chocolate and Yang Muye. So I'm going to try to
write up the conclusions I came to in an answer.

* * *

## Rules for だい and かい

I think the description given in the grammar dictionaries is fairly accurate
for today's Japanese, but it may be a bit of a simplification, and is perhaps
not 100% descriptively accurate. After all, we know from 非回答者's comment and
from the fact that 夏目漱石 wrote it that かい must be possible! The only question
is how we should make sense of it.

To get started, [I read the rules on the page 非回答者 linked to and went through
the quiz at the bottom](http://www014.upp.so-net.ne.jp/nbunka/0610ga.html),
and I discovered something very interesting:

I can get 100% of the answers right with two simple rules!

##  Rule 1. If you can't use だ, you can't use だい.

##  Rule 2. If you can't use か, you can't use かい.

That is, I ignored the presence of い entirely and focused on whether だ, か, or
の was grammatically possible. In all cases I ended up with the right answers.
You'll note that the quiz never makes you decide between だい and かい when _both_
だ and か are possible.

And although these rules aren't _quite_ adequate on their own, they seem
natural enough if you think of い as a separate particle. In fact,
[dictionaries list い as a sentence-final
particle](http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/9100/m0u/%E3%81%84/). That
leads us to rule #3:

##  Rule 3. The particle い is unambiguously clause-final.

What does this mean? Compare the following examples:

> A. 会議はいつ **か**  
>  B. 会議はいつ **かい**

The first example sounds incomplete—you could complete it by adding something
to the end, like `会議はいつか、 **知ってますか？**`. But because the second example ends
with い, a sentence-final particle, it seems like a complete sentence. So this
is one place that かい is possible that か would seem strange.

So this is a slight revision to our rules #1 and #2, which otherwise serve us
quite well. Now, let's move on to the last two rules:

##  Rule 4. When there's no question word, you can't use だい.

##  Rule 5. When there _is_ a question word, you _usually_ use だい.

That is to say, だい is more common in today's Japanese than かい with a question
word. And while かい is still possible today, I think it's a less common than だい
when both are possible, and in some cases it might seem a little bit old-
fashioned sounding. [Chocolate reported in chat that it was the sort of thing
you might find in a 夏目漱石
novel](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/15702580#15702580),
and of course that's exactly what your question is about.

So I think that Makino et al. probably simplified things slightly in their
grammar dictionaries. Because it's more common to use だい than かい today, their
rules work fairly well most of the time, but they might not have 100%
descriptive adequacy.

* * *

## An explanation?

I've come up with an explanation for why this the case. It's a bit of a just-
so story, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it, but helps everything make
sense in my head, so I thought I'd include it here:

  1. I think 誰だい is possible for the same reason you can say 誰だ—the presence of the question word 誰 makes it obvious that you're asking a question, even with だ and without an overt marker like か or rising intonation. That doesn't _force_ you to use だい, but it makes it possible, and practically speaking it's more common to use だい than かい when both are possible syntactically.

  2. On the other hand, a sentence like おいしいのだい fails as a question for the same reason おいしいのだ does. Without a question word, you need another way to signal to the listener that you're asking a question, and that most likely means using rising intonation or an overt question particle. This rules out だ and therefore だい as well, as they would be taken as signals that you're _not_ asking a question.

Of course, I never use だい or かい in my own speech so these rules are somewhat
academic for me :-) But I hope either the rules or the reasoning help you
understand why it was okay that he used かい in his writing.

