Lexicalization of Japanese light verb constructions between morphology and syntax

Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 1991

In an earlier experiment (reported in Vance 1987), Japanese speaker* had considerable difficulty choosing analogically correct forms of made-up godan (consonant-item) verbs. The results were interpreted as consistent with two claims: (a) that regular Japanese verb forms are stored in the lexicon; and (b) that Japanese speakers can operate with phonotactically inadmissible morphs. This paper reports the results of two new experiments. The first was a substantially revised version of the 1987 experiment, and the results, while consistent with claim (a), provide no support for claim (b). The second was a supplementary experiment designed to test whether made-up itidan (vowel-stem) verbs are easier to handle than made-up godart verbs. The results indicate that because of an unavoidable complicating factor, there is no straightforward answer to this question. 1

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 2007

According to the traditional view, the relation between morphology and syntax is the following: while morphology builds up word forms-typically by combining roots with other roots and with affixes, but also by applying other operations to them, syntax takes fully inflected words as input and combines them into phrases and sentences. The division of labour between morphology and syntax is thus perfect: morphology only operates below the word level whereas syntax only operates above the word level.

ling, 1993

Japanese verbal nouns, like English deverbal nominals, such as destruction and examination, can take arguments and assign theta roles to the arguments. They can also form complex predicates with the verb suru in such forms as VN suru and VN-o suru. In these two constructions, only activity/ accomplishment class nominals, which denote actions or activities going on in time, allow the VN-o suru construction. The nominals in other classes, achievement and state, which do not have such a denotation, cannot take this construction. Grimshaw and Mester (1988) claim that suru in this construction is the "light" verb. However, we argue that the verb suru is actually the regular "heavy" verb assigning the accusative case to its direct object NP. Their evidence that topicalization is unavailable is independent of whether the matrix verb is "light" or "heavy" and is rather a matter of the proper binding condition.

2016

A principal aspect of a language analysis is the investigation of the structure of words and their organization into the grammar of a language. A language satisfies the communicative needs of the society and people using it when certain rules are observed in the production of linguistic expressions. Lexical category is a unit of classification of words in the grammar of a language and serves to portray the unique configuration properties of certain words and word classes. This paper surveys an aspect of word categorization in Ẹdo language (lexical category) with special focus on the properties of the verb as a member of this class. Illustrations will be provided in the paper to justify first of all the dichotomy between different classes of words in the language (lexical vs functional) and the place of the verb in the category of words known as ‘lexical’. The findings of the paper will show that the verb possesses rich morphological, syntactic and semantic features that justify its ...

Verb-Verb Complexes in Asian Languages (OUP)

The present chapter aims to examine the V-V complexes in the Irabu dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan, spoken in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Two major classes of V-V complexes are identified, phrasal V-V complexes (Auxiliary Verb Constructions and Serial Verb Constructions) and one-word V-V complexes (lexical and syntactic compounds). After a detailed description of these structures, the present study provides a comparison with the V-V complexes in Japanese (Chapter 1).

言語研究, 1973

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia , 2017

Akan verb-verb nominal compounds exhibit unusual formal and semantic properties, including extreme formal exocentricity, where the composition of two verbs yields a noun some of whose semantic properties may not be directly coded in the constituents, and argument structure suppression, where no argument of either constituent can occur in the compound. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I delineate the membership of the class, showing that some of the constructions listed in the literature as verb-verb compounds do not belong to the class; they have formal features that betray them as affix-derived nominals. Secondly, I discuss the rather idiosyncratic properties of the compound. I argue that the form class is inherited from a metaschema for compounding in Akan which bears a nominal output category. Again, it is a unique constructional property of Akan verb-verb compounds that, unlike other verb-involved compounds, they do not allow any argument of the constituents to become part of the compound. These extra-compositional holistic properties can be accounted for straightforwardly in a framework like Construction Morphology which does not assume that every property in a construction must emanate from its constituents. This study provides evidence for the view that constructions can have holistic properties.

Diachronica, 2004

Modern Japanese has a morphological causative, formed by suffixes on the verb, and lexical causatives. The morphological causative has been in use since Late Old Japanese. However, the etymology of this morphological causative and the status of related causative formations in Old Japanese remain unclear. This paper supports the view that lexical causative formations in Old Japanese are the direct predecessors of the morphological causative. In their morphological, syntactic, and semantic features they form a chain of morphologization with the productive causative that emerged from them. Similar diachronic developments have also been observed in Sanskrit and North American languages. Thus, the formation of a morphological causative from a lexical pattern, a path of development that has received little attention, seems to constitute a crosslinguistically valid source for the evolution of productive causatives. It is proposed that the type of change observed here is an exaptation of fossilized morphological material, which, in several important aspects, runs counter to the directionality of change posited in mainstream grammaticalization theory.

Proceedings of the …, 2003