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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