Adnominal Clauses and the Noun-Concluding Construction: Grammaticalization of Nouns
| Project leader | : | TSUNODA Tasaku |
|---|---|---|
| Research field | : | linguistics |
| Keywords | : | adnominal clauses, noun-concluding construction,mermaid construction, grammaticalization of nouns |
Summary
Sentences of Japanese such as the following are labeled the 'noun-concluding construction' ('NCC').
| (1) | Taroo=ga Tookyoo=ni kuru yotee=da. 'Taro plans to come to Tokyo tomorrow.' (Literal translation: 'Taro is a plan to come to Tokyo tomorrow'.) |
It may look as if these sentences contain the following structure: an adnominal clause + noun. In (1), the noun in question (i.e. yotee) is underlined. However, the clause that precedes the noun (i.e. Taroo=ga Tookyoo=ni kuru) exhibits syntactic behaviour different from that of an adnominal clause. Instead, its syntactic behaviour is the same as that of a clause whose predicate is a verb.
Sentences such as (1) can also be displayed as follows.
| (2) | Taroo=ga Tookyoo=ni kuru yotee=da. |
The first part resembles a clause whose predicate is a verb, while the second part resembles a clause whose predicate is 'noun + COPULA'. These sentences are reminiscent of a mermaid, whose upper body is a human, while its lower body is a fish. Thus, such sentences may be labeled the 'mermaid construction' ('MC').
So far, the NCC/MC has been reported from, or appears to exist in, languages such as Japanese, Ryukyuan, Ainu, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Tibetan, Newar (Nepal), Burmese, Marathi, and Tagalog. These are all languages of Asia. The NCC/MC has not been reported from languages of Australia or Europe.
The present joint research aims to investigate the following points, among others.
(a) What are the properties of the nouns that can occur in the NCC/MC?
(b) What are the morphosyntactic properties of the clause that precedes the noun?
(c) Are there any crosslinguistic tendencies in terms of (a) or (b)?
(d) What is the geographical distribution of the NCC/MC?
- Core Research Projects
- Phonological Characteristics of the Japanese Lexicon
- Syntactic, Semantic, and Morphological Characteristics of the Japanese Lexicon
- Modeling of the Ecology of Writing and its Application to Sociolinguistics
- The Japanese Lexicon: A Rendaku Encyclopedia
- General Study for Research and Conservation on Endangered Dialects in Japan
- Field Research Project to Analyze the Formation Process of Japanese Dialects
- Exploring the Variation in the Contemporary Japanese: Multiple Approaches
- Formation Processes of Japanese Language Varieties and Creoles
- Basic Research on Corpus Annotation
- Design of a Diachronic Corpus
- Foundation of Corpus Japanese Linguistics
- Adnominal Clauses and the Noun-Concluding Construction: Grammaticalization of Nouns
- Modal and Speech-Act Constraints on Clause-Linkage
- Universals and Cross-Linguistic Variations in the Semantic Structure of Predicates
- Study on Teaching and Learning Japanese as a Second Language in a Multicultural Society
- Core Research Projects
- Original/Developing-Type
- Incubation/Discovery-Type
