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Paper short abstract

While it is common to classify Japanese as agglutinative, this may be based on superficial understanding of the term. Alternatively, agglutination can be viewed as a sub-type of inflection. It enables a paradigmatic approach to word forms, with individual exceptions explained within general rules.

Paper long abstract

In theoretical terms, morphological categorization of Japanese as agglutinative is common (Shibatani 1990, Kiyose 1991, Shibatani, Kageyama 2016). It is despite contradictive definitions of agglutination in first sources mentioning this concept (von Humboldt 1988, F. von Schlegel in Greenberg 1954). Further insight reveals that the sources mentioning Japanese agglutination often base on its incoherent or contradictive definitions. This shows detachment from the inflectional origin of the term.

Agglutinative inflection features prove valid in practice i.e. in morphological analysis of Japanese. Inflectional word forms, nominal and verbal, with uni-functional marker strings, can easily be parsed into stems and markers. Lexical stems are constant in Japanese nominal forms, while verbal stems show highly regular changes at boundaries of their phonemic structures.

The above facts are largely neglected by majority of sources, on a preconception that “agglutination is not inflection”. Nominal stems are identified with nouns, adnominal grammatical markers being viewed as analytic “particles”. Verbal forms are admittedly described, but with the markers habitually referred to as analytic “auxiliary verbs”. Word forms may hence merge with the phenomena of word formation. This obscures the specifically Japanese grammatical dimensions, with regular, finite values. An alternative approach, based on precise definition of agglutination as a sub-type of inflection, enables systemic description. Individual words can thus be reduced to paradigmatic word forms, with inevitable exceptions to be explained primarily in terms of general rules.

References (selected)

Greenberg, J. H. 1954: A quantitive approach to the morphological typology of language. [In:] R. W. Spencer [ed.] Method and Perspective in Anthropology: Papers in Honor of Wilson D. Wallis. Minneapolis, 192-220.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von 1988/1836. On Language. Transl. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kiyose Gisaburō 1991. Nihongo no kōchakuteki seikaku – nihongo no dōshi wa katsuyō nado shinai. The Agglutinative Character of Japanese Language: Japanese Verbs Do Not Conjugate. [In:] Gisaburō N. Kiyose [ed.] Nihongo to Arutaigogaku. Japanese Linguistics and Altaic Linguistics. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 26-53.

Shibatani, Masayoshi 1990. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shibatani, Masayoshi, Taro Kageyama 2016. „Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Languages and Linguistics.” [In:] Kageyama, Kishimoto [eds.] 2016, vii-xxxiii.