Send message to Author

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.