[Lingtyp] Inquiry on Japanese grammar

[Hartmut Haberland]

I am not an expert on Japanese grammar and have none whatsoever native intuitions, and furthermore, some people will object to my analysis because it doesn’t conform to certain models of grammar, but in my understanding there are no RCs in Japanese but only pre-modifyers in an NP, most of which are clauses consisting of, or ending in, a predicate (historically, these predicates had different endings from sentence-final predicates). Now from this point of view there is no real difference between what would be translated into a RC in English and a pre-modifying adjective (this similarity is strengthened by the fact that adjectives are inflected for tense in Japanese). On the other hands, certain expressions require な to form a predicate (like 静か ‘quiet'), and this な has sometimes (e.g. by Bloch) been analyzed as an allomorph of the copula. It is thus not a RC marker, but a predicate-builder. One could also say, that the copula is the only verb where there still is a difference between rentaikei and shuushikei:
静かな町 vs. 町は静かだ。

The second question concerns the order of pre-modifiers, where obviously a constraint that demonstratives have to be the first pre-modifier  before any clausal modifier has been liftet. I cannot say anything about that.

Happy New Year,
Hartmut Haberland
________________________________
Fra: Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] på vegne af Jianming Wu [wu.jianming2011 at gmail.com]
Sendt: 28. december 2014 12:59
Til: Jean-Christophe Verstraete
Cc: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Emne: [Lingtyp] Inquiry on Japanese grammar

Dear typologists,
      The following two questions on Japanese grammar are from a graduate stuent in my department. I am wondering if you may offer some help for him.  Many thanks!

Best

Jianming Wu

Institute of Linguisitcs,
Shanghai International Studies University


" Hello! I am a graduate student at SISU. I have some questions about Japanese linguistic facts as I couldn’t find relevant literature. I will truly appreciate it if any typologists would kindly answer them as below or point me to the relevant literature:


1.       Relative clauses (RC) in Japanese can do without RC markers. This has been testified by all the examples I have seen in the Japanese RC literature. For instance:


[RCaniki-ga         katte-ki-ta __]            ringo

brother-NOM buy-come-PAST gap  apple

“The apple that the brother bought.”



However, a Japanese native informant told me that it does not sound natural to omit the RC marker (な/na/) before the head noun. Therefore, I wonder if the inconsistency is due to the stylistic difference between the spoken and the written language.



2.       According to Kamio (1977) and Ishizuka (2008), demonstratives (Dem) can either precede or follow RCs in Japanese. See below:



(1)     Sono [aniki-ga         katte-ki-ta__]              ringo             (Kamio, 1977)

that brother-NOM buy-come-PAST gap   apple
“That apple which the brother bought.”

(2)     [minna-ga            __  sagasi-teiru]   sono ronbun

everyone-NOM gap  look-for-ASP that paper

“That paper which everyone is looking for.”


Leaving aside the functional differences, I wonder if there is any biased usage of either configuration (Dem-RC or RC-Dem). In a study published in a Chinese journal (Japanese Learning and Research), Sheng (2010: 86-94) has found a significant Dem post-positioning bias in RCs in a Japanese corpus study. In fact, only 6 instances of Dem-RC configuration were found. However, the corpus is based on Japanese novels. I have talked to 2 participants after the experiment and they admitted that either configuration (Dem-RC or RC-Dem) was equally acceptable to them. So I wonder if the post-positioning bias reported in Sheng (2010) is also due to the stylistic difference. I have been trying to locate corpus studies based on the spoken Japanese that bear on this question, but I couldn’t find any relevant literature in English or Chinese.

Thanks a lot!
Lv Jun"

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