The structure of the Japanese language

List of maps Preface List of abbreviations used in glosses Part I. The Ainu Language: 1. Introduction 2. Sound structure 3. Grammatical structure Part II. The Japanese Language: 4. Introduction 5. Genetic affiliation 6. History 7. Lexicon 8. Phonology 9. Dialects 10. Word formation 11. Grammatical structure 12. Epilogue References Index.

The languages of Japan

Functional syntax : anaphora, discourse and empathy

In this text, the author demonstrates how the study of language and consciousness together can provide an unexpectedly broad understanding of the way the mind works. Relying on close analyses of conversational speech, as well as written fiction and non-fiction, he investigates both the flow of ideas through consciousness and the displacement of consciousness by way of memory and imagination. Chafe draws on several decades of research to demonstrate that understanding the nature of consciousness is essential to understanding many linguistic phenomena, such as pronouns, tense, clause structure and intonation, as well as stylistic usages, such as the historical present and the free indirect style. While the book focuses on English, there are also discussions of the North American Indian language, Seneca, and the music of Mozart and of the Seneca people.

The Concept of Consciousness in the Theory of Language@@@Discourse, Consciousness and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing

A Reference Grammar Of Japanese

This article presents two reading comprehension experiments, using the sentence correctness decision task, that explore the causes of processing cost of Japanese sentences with SnomOaccV, StopOaccV, OaccSnomV, and OtopSnomV word orders. The first experiment was conducted in order to see if either syntax or frequency plays a significant role in the processing of these sentences. The results of the first experiment have shown that both the structure-building process and frequency directly affect processing load. We observed that there was no difference in processing cost between SnomnOaccV and StopOaccV, both of which are easier to process than OACCSNOMV, which is in turn easier to process than OtopSnomV: SnomOaccV = StopOaccV < OaccSnomV < OtopSnomV. This result is the mixture of the two positions. Specifically, the structure building cost of StopOaccV was neutralized by its high frequency. The aim of the second experiment was to investigate the interaction between syntactic structure, frequency, and information structure. The results showed that the processing cost of OaccSnomV was facilitated by given-new ordering, but SnomOaccV, StopOaccV, and OtopSnomV were not. Thus, we can conclude that information structure also influences processing cost. In addition, the distribution of informational effects can be accounted for by Kuno’s (1987: 212) Markedness Principle for Discourse Rule Violations: SnomOaccV and StopOaccV are unmarked/canonical options, and as such are not penalized even when they violate given-new ordering, OaccSnomV is penalized when it does not maintain given-new ordering because it is a marked/non-canonical option, and OtopSnomV is penalized even when it obeys given-new ordering possibly because more specific contexts are needed. Another reason for the increased processing cost of OtopSnomV is a garden path effect; upon encountering Otop of OtopSnomV, the parser preferentially (mis)interpreted it as Stop due to a subject-before-object preference. The revision of the interpretation may be the cause of the high processing cost observed in OtopSnomV.

/pdf/the-processing-cost-of-scrambling-and-topicalization-in-47otue05er.pdf

The processing cost of scrambling and topicalization in Japanese

The effects of syntactic and information structures on sentence processing load were investigated using two reading comprehension experiments in Japanese, a head-final SOV language. In the first experiment, we discovered the main effects of syntactic and information structures, as well as their interaction, showing that interaction of these two factors is not restricted to head-initial languages. The second experiment revealed that the interaction between syntactic structure and information structure occurs at the second NP (O of SOV and S of OSV), which, crucially, is a pre-head position, suggesting the incremental nature of the processing of both syntactic structure and information structure in head-final languages.

Interaction Between Syntactic Structure and Information Structure in the Processing of a Head-Final Language.

Several studies contend that the main motivation for scrambling is heaviness. In particular, Yamashita (2002) maintains that scrambling has nothing to do with givenness and that heaviness is the primary factor for scrambling. However, her conclusions count on only 19 examples and she does not distinguish VP-internal scrambling from VP-external scrambling. Thus, it is conceivable that some types of scrambling rely on givenness. In order to see if this hypothesis is on the right track, I conducted a corpus analysis of OSV order in Japanese, largely based on the quantitative approach. Consequently, it has been revealed that both givenness and heaviness have a high explanatory power for the usage of OSV order. Furthermore, there was no correlation between givenness and heaviness, showing their independent influence on OSV order. Therefore, I conclude that both givenness and heaviness are sufficient to trigger OSV order and the phenomenon cannot be fully accounted for except with reference to both. Furthemore, based on the mapping between information structure and syntactic structure, I propose that VP-external scrambling is discourse-driven while VP-internal scrambling is not.

/pdf/the-influence-of-givenness-and-heaviness-on-osv-in-japanese-s4tbuaglid.pdf

The Influence of Givenness and Heaviness on OSV in Japanese

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of given-new ordering on word order change and topic marker WA, using a self-paced reading task. The results demonstrated that OACCSNOMV is sensitive to given-new information, but SNOMOACCV, STOPOACCV, and OTOPSNOMV are not. This fact can be explained by the Markedness Principle for Discourse Rule Violation (Kuno, 1987: 212): both SNOMOACCV and STOPOACCV are not penalized even when they violate given-new ordering because they are unmarked options, OACCSNOMV is penalized when it violates given-new ordering because it is a marked option, and OTOPSNOMV is penalized even when given-new ordering is preserved because it requires more contrastive contexts (McGloin, 1990:113). Another point is that topic marker WA is not responsive to the given-new distinction. This suggests that the usage of WA does not rely on anaphoricity in general. Note that there are two usages of WA: thematic topic needs to be previously mentioned while contrastive topic does not require anaphoricity. Taken together, we can conclude that the essence of WA is not thematic topic but contrastive topic.

Influence of Information Structure on Word Order Change and Topic Marker WA in Japanese

The purpose of this article is to study the interactions between givenness, heaviness, and scrambling in the Japanese language. It is found that, first, the effects of givenness are stronger in VP-external scrambling than in VP-internal scrambling. This can be explained by the left periphery. Since the sentence initial position is relevant to information structure, VP-external scrambling is strongly influenced by discourse context. In contrast, VP-internal scrambling is unrelated to discourse context because there are no discourse-related projections within the VP. Second, it is shown that heaviness has the same effects both on VP-external scrambling and VP-internal scrambling. Third, there is no interaction between givenness and heaviness: both concepts independently affected word order choices.

Satoshi Imamura

Papers

The processing cost of scrambling and topicalization in Japanese

Interaction Between Syntactic Structure and Information Structure in the Processing of a Head-Final Language.

The Influence of Givenness and Heaviness on OSV in Japanese

Influence of Information Structure on Word Order Change and Topic Marker WA in Japanese

The Effects of Givenness and Heaviness on VP-internal Scrambling and VP-external Scrambling in Japanese