Paper short abstract:

In this paper we observe the criteria that different researches use to explain the choice of an auxiliary verb in Japanese benefactive constructions focusing on direct/inverse alignment. We verify this approach using data from the BCCWJ and the NPCMJ corpora.

Paper long abstract:

The choice of an auxiliary verb in Japanese benefactive constructions obviously has to do with some deictic categories that do not translate easily into the grammatical person system of Standard Average European languages. One of these categories is social deixis having to do with a vertical hierarchy. And another dimension is personal deixis, sometimes described using such terms as direct-inverse alignment or empathy.

In this paper we are verifying the applicability of these terms using corpus data from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese and the NINJAL Parsed Corpus of Modern Japanese.

We compare Japanese benefactives with canonical direct/inverse systems as described by Jacques and Antonov (2014) to demonstrate their highly non-canonical status. And although Japanese benefactives demonstrate a certain hierarchical alignment, it cannot be described in the terms of grammatical person only.

The direct-inverse alignment involves relative positions of the predication subject and object on a person-animacy hierarchy. Here is a version of the hierarchy we used, slightly modified for the purpose of our research: 1 > 2 > 3-animate > 3-inanimate. The direct construction (presumably the one with yaru, ageru and sashiageru) is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in the person hierarchy, and the inverse (presumably with kureru and kudasaru) is used when the object outranks the subject. According to our data and other examples both so-called direct (yaru, ageru, sashiageru) and inverse (kureru, kudasaru) verbs repeatedly violate the direct and inverse alignment respectively. Shigeko Nariyama in Ellipsis and Reference Tracking in Japanese (2003) explains it by the fact that the direct-inverse alignment gets overridden by empathy. We argue that all the cases where the direct-inverse alignment is not violated can also be described using the concept of empathy (people just tend to empathize more with themselves rather than with a third party, especially an inanimate one). Therefore the briefest linguistic description of deictic elements in Japanese benefactives will include only social deixis and empathy as understood by Kuno and Kaburaki (1977).

*supported by RSF (Russian Science Foundation, grant #17-18-01184)