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Paper short abstract

In Japanese, first-person desiderative suffixes may exceptionally refer to a non–first-person entity when attached to existential verbs. This paper examines modern and classical desiderative markers and existential verbs to clarify the distribution and underlying causes of the phenomenon.

Paper long abstract

The Modern Japanese desiderative suffix -tai generally implies identity between speaker and agent and requires a first-person subject, a property shared with adjectives of emotion (kanjō keiyōshi) and known as person restriction (ninshō seigen). However, its combination with existential verbs gives rise to a peculiar semantic effect. In such cases, the resulting forms exceptionally permit the target of desire (i.e. the subject of the existential predicate) to be a non–first-person entity.

A concrete illustration of this phenomenon is provided by the combination of -tai with the existential verb aru, yielding the form aritai, which allows a reading in which the desire is directed toward the existence or state of affairs involving a third-person entity. For example, in “jibun no jinsei mo kō aritai” (BCCWJ PM22 00007) "I want my life to be like this too", the desiderative predicate does not express the speaker’s wish to exist, but rather a wish concerning how a third-person entity (“one’s life”) should exist. This phenomenon is not limited to the Modern Japanese suffix -tai, but is also observed with some classical desiderative markers, such as -mafosi and -baya.

The extent to which this relaxation of the person restriction arises is not uniform, and appears to vary depending both on the desiderative marker involved and on the particular existential verb with which it combines. For instance, while some markers tend to retain the original alignment between speaker and agent, -mafosi more consistently allow an agent shift.

The present study examines Modern (-tai) and Classical (-tasi, -mafosi, -baya, -(te/ni)sika) desiderative suffixes attested in combination with existential verbs. Other Old/Classical markers (-na, -koso, -namu), strictly non-desiderative but exhibiting related semantics in combination with existential verbs, will also be taken into account. First, newly collected data are used to clarify the distribution and usage of each suffix–verb combination, also taking diachronic change into consideration for classical lexemes. Finally, the study addresses the broader question of why desiderative morphology interacts differently with existential predicates, and why such interactions vary across individual lexemes. The analysis evaluates to which extent these effects reflect a shared cause, marker-specific semantics, and diachronic developments.