Paper short abstract:

A crosslinguistic survey reveals that the Japanese verb 'naru', in contrast to its corresponding verbs in other Asian languages, tends markedly towards 'transition' ('(X ga) Y ni naru': "haru ni naru" as in Japanese) rather than 'emergence' ('(X kara) Y ga naru': "haru ga naru" as in Korean).

Paper long abstract:

The verb 'naru' is a remarkable lexical item in Japanese. In one statistical study of word frequency in modern Japanese it ranks fifth) less frequent than the verb 'aru', but more frequent then the verb 'iru'). As a full verb, it semantically accommodates nearly the whole range of the meanings ('jihatsu' as in "kanashiku naru", 'kanō' as in 'mite wa naranu', 'ukemi' as in "sewa ni naru", 'sonkei' as in "goran ni naru") of the auxiliary '(ra)reru'. Its use is amply attested in the earliest documents ((e.g. Man'yōshū) of ancient Japanese, and in present-day Japanese it does not cease developing certain 'novel' uses (e.g. "Kochira ga otomari no oheya ni narimasu"). Some thinkers (e.g. Masao Maruyama) suggest that there is something congenial in the verb 'naru' to the mentality of Japanese speakers.

I propose to hypothesize that in spite of the apparently rich variety of meanings developed by the verb across languages, there are, in fact, two focal semantic points, 'emergence' and 'transition', the former deriving from the 'source'-implied construal, '(X kara) Y ga naru' and the other deriving from the 'goal'-directed construal, '(X ga) Y ni naru'. I am going to show and argue on the basis of my own and my colleagues' crosslinguistic survey that the verb 'naru' in Japanese has characteristically developed in line with the 'goal'-directed' pattern ('transition'), while in other languages on the Asiatic portion of the Eurasian Continent, the pattern in terms of 'source'-implied construal ('emergence') is quite as robust. (Cf. "haru ga naru" as in Korean vs. "haru ni naru" as in Japanese) One can speculate about what it was that motivated the speakers of Japanese to prefer the construal in terms of 'transition' rather than 'emergence'. One may profitably refer in this connection to points discussed under the rubric, 'Jikan kara Kūkan e?' ('Transfer from Time to Space?'). Eventually, I suggest, the whole problem will come down to what is, in cognitive linguistics, called 'subjective (or 'subject-object merger' type of) construal', the stance of construal opted for preferentially by the speakers of Japanese.

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Paper short abstract:

This study presents a typology of Japanese temporal description strategies. The results of qualitative and quantitative analyses of experimental data suggest that there are four description strategies: Linear Limited Time, Non-limited Linear Time, Endless Linear Time, Non-Linear Time.

Paper long abstract:

A solid body of theoretical and empirical work on temporal description has been written over the last two decades (e.g. Evans 2003; Klein 1994; Tenbrink 2011). However, in the context of global scholarship, strategies of Japanese temporal description remain predominantly terra incognita, which leads to the representation of time and temporal description strategies in Japanese as a number of separate cultural, social and linguistic phenomena.

This work presents the results of qualitative and quantitative analyses of a corpus of 150 texts obtained from 50 Japanese native speaking participants through a spontaneous speech experiment on temporal description strategies.

Qualitative analysis of the corpus allowed formulating a typology of temporal description strategies in contemporary Japanese as having four distinct strategies defined as 1) Linear Limited Time - a sequence of events is described with the main emphasis on the ending point/completion of the temporal change; 2) Non-limited Linear Time is such strategy where the description focuses on the contents of the events with no marked start and end points of events; 3) Endless Linear Time descriptions are focused on the starting point of the temporal process/change and leave the end "open" as if the change is ongoing or the speaker perceives it as an ongoing; 4) in Non-Linear strategy the speaker tends to utilize more temporally extended cyclical, e.g., seasons, positional terms for the sequences of more concrete or shorter events.

The results of the study form the basis of the systematic description of temporal conceptualization in contemporary Japanese and confirm the suggestions of the previous studies (e.g. Shinohara and Pardeshi 2011) about a unique position of seasonal time in the conceptualization of time in Japanese.

References

Evans, Vyvyan. 2003. The structure of time: language, meaning, and temporal cognition. Human Cognitive Processing. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.

Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in Language. London: Routledge.

Shinohara, Kazuko, and Prashant Pardeshi. 2011. "The more in front, the later: The role of positional terms in time metaphors." Journal of Pragmatics 43 (749-758).

Tenbrink, Thora. 2011. "Reference frames of space and time in language." Journal of Pragmatics 43: 704-22.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I take the category of no-adjectives as a starting point to reevaluate the traditional claim that Japanese does not exhibit direct modification. Besides its role in nominal modification, I focus on the conditions for class membership and the hybrid nature of this adjectival subgroup.

Paper long abstract:

The Japanese adjective class has traditionally been considered to consist of two morphologically distinct members. Focusing on their morphological side, these can be referred to as i-adjectives and na-adjectives. In this paper, I argue in favor of a third morphologically distinct independent subclass of the Japanese adjective class that shares more syntactic and semantic features with the two canonical adjective groups mentioned above than with the nominal class which it has been attributed to in most traditional analyses focusing on morphemic distribution. In parallel fashion, this group can be referred to as no-adjectives (Muraki 2012 [Nihongo no hinshitaikei]; Morita 2010).

The first aim of this paper is to establish the morphological, semantic and syntactic features of potential members besides the necessary and optional conditions for class membership that justify the status of no-adjectives as an independent adjectival subgroup. Despite their independent status, no-adjectives show close relations to almost all other members of the Japanese word class system and can be characterized as rather morphosyntactically inconsistent. In the next step, I evaluate the hybrid nature of this word class by examining these inconsistencies, which include free alternation between different attributive morphemes or different syntactic roles (sentential vs. attributive argument), besides the potential cases of dual membership and/or class shifts.

Furthermore, I am analyzing no-adjectives from the viewpoint of comparative syntax with particular emphasis on their role in nominal modification. Intriguingly, most equivalents of direct modifiers put forward in the syntactic literature can be found in this word class. An especially relevant case is the nominally derived group of relational adjectives, whose members in most European languages retain strong nominal behavior. This case is among others discussed by Nagano (2016 and subsequent work), who denies the lexemic status of equivalent expressions in Japanese. By analyzing the cross-linguistic role of no-adjectives as attributive modifiers with direct reference to the language-specific results of the present paper, I put forward the claim that Japanese uses no-adjectives as the lexemic equivalents of direct relational adjectives. Thus, they serve as a starting point to reevaluate the traditional claim that Japanese does not exhibit direct adjectival modification.

Paper short abstract:

This paper provides a lexical-semantic analysis of verb-noun compounds that ambiguously denote an event and a thing, e.g. 'wasure-mono' (forget-thing) 'a lost property'. I will explicate how the denoted meanings are created and disambiguated in the combinatory process of verbs and their arguments.

Paper long abstract:

There is a class of verb-noun compounds in Japanese that ambiguously denote an event or a thing depending on the context that they are used in. For instance, compound nouns such as 'wasure-mono' (forget-thing) 'a lost property' and 'hiroi-mono' (pick-up-thing) 'a found property' may refer to an event in combination with the light verb 'suru' (do) as in "wasure-mono o suru" (forget-thing ACC do) 'lose something', or refer to a concrete object with a regular verb as in "wasure-mono o todokeru" (forget-thing ACC report) 'report a lost property'. On the other hand, however, compounds such as 'nomi-mono' (drink-thing) 'a drink' and 'tabe-mono' (eat-thing) 'food', despite being in the same word form, may only denote an object as in "nomi-mono o kau" (drink-thing ACC buy) 'buy a drink', rejecting an event reading with the light verb as in "*nomi-mono o suru" (drink-thing ACC do) 'have a drink'. Why do 'wasure-mono (a lost property)' and 'hiroi-mono (a found property)' exhibit event/thing homomorphism; whereas, 'nomi-mono (a drink)' and 'tabe-mono (food)' do not? Why do 'wasure-mono' and 'hiroi-mono', although they have seemingly an object-denoting form, denote an event in combination with a light verb? I would like to address those questions and attempt to show a lexical-semantic analysis of those compounds in terms of the Generative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky 1995).

Moreover, there are some more examples that show event/thing homomorphism. Compounds such as 'hari-gami' (paste-paper) 'poster' and 'sasi-mizu' (add-water) 'added water' may denote an event with the light verb 'suru' (do) or denote an object with regular verbs. In light of the fact that event-denoting nominal compounds consist of a combination of a noun and a nominalized verb head (ren-yookei) like 'kingyo-sukui' (goldfish-catch) 'goldfish-catch', the above-mentioned compounds are exceptional in form. If the order of verb-noun is reversed, the reversed N-V compounds only denote events, i.e. 'kami-hari' (paper-paste) 'to paste paper' and 'mono-wasure' (thing-forget) 'forgetfulness'. Through a lexical-semantic analysis of those compounds, I will explicate how event/thing homomorphism takes place and how the denoted meanings are disambiguated in the combinatory process of verbs and their arguments.