[Lingtyp] Inquiry on Japanese grammar

[Tasaku Tsunoda]

Dear Jianming,

    My name is Tasaku Tsunoda, and I am a native speaker of Japanese.

    My responses are given below.

From:  Jianming Wu <wu.jianming2011 at gmail.com>
Date:  2014年12月28日日曜日 20:59
To:  Jean-Christophe Verstraete
<jean-christophe.verstraete at arts.kuleuven.be>
Cc:  <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject:  [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.


=> Japanese does not have any RC marker.
    The sentence above is correct.

    The following book provides a detailed discussion of pre-nominal clauses
(or RCs) of Japanese.

Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 1997. Noun-modifying constructions in Japanese[:] A
frame-semantic approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    I add the following for your information.
    Japanese has no single word for 'brother'. It has ani 'elder brother'
and otooto 'younger brother'.
    Aniki literally means "elder brother". But it is often used in some
other contexts, e.g. referring to an older member in a gangsters' group. So,
I would not use aniki in sentential examples like the above.
    
 

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"

=> I do not know statistical studies or corpus studies of this issue.
    At least, (1) is ambiguous. It can have two readings.
    
    Reading 1: that apple which ….
                    "That" modifies "apple".
    Reading 2: the apple which that elder brother …
                     "That" modifies "elder brother".

    (2) is not ambiguous. It has only one reading.

    As far as I can see, there is no stylistic difference between (1) and
(2).

    The fact that (1) is ambiguous may be one of the reasons why Dem-RC is
infrequent.

    I hope the above information is of some use.

Best wishes,

Tasaku Tsunoda


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