Parsed Corpus as a Source for Testing Generalizations in Japanese Syntax

Hideki Kishimoto,Prashant Pardeshi

doi:10.33011/lilt.v18i.1431

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss constituent ordering generalizations in Japanese. Japanese has SOV as its basic order, but a significant range of argument order variations brought about by ‘scrambling’ is permitted. Although scrambling does not induce much in the way of semantic effects, it is conceivable that marked orders are derived from the unmarked order under some pragmatic or other motivations. The difference in the effect of basic and derived order is not reflected in native speaker’s grammaticality judgments, but we suggest that the intuition about the ordering of arguments may be attested in corpus data. By using the Keyaki treebank (a proper subset of which is NINJAL Parsed Corpus of Modern Japanese (NPCMJ)), it is shown that the naturally-occurring corpus data confirm that marked orderings of arguments are less frequent than their unmarked ordering counterparts. We suggest some possible motivations lying behind the argument order variations.

Highlights

IntroductionWe will discuss constituent ordering generalizations in Japanese. Japanese has SOV as its basic order, but a significant range of word order variation is permitted
In this paper, we will discuss constituent ordering generalizations in Japanese
We suggest that the same point can be made regarding the basic word order of ditransitive clauses, namely, clauses with basic word order are found more frequently than clauses with derived word order in corpus data

Summary

Introduction

We will discuss constituent ordering generalizations in Japanese. Japanese has SOV as its basic order, but a significant range of word order variation is permitted. Simple transitive clauses can have two different arrangements of nominative and accusative arguments; namely, ‘nominative-accusative’ and ‘accusative-nominative’ order. Native speakers generally agree that the ‘nominative-accusative’ order represents the basic word order of Japanese transitive clauses, while ‘accusative-nominative’ order is derived. The difference in the effect of basic and derived order is not reflected in the native speaker’s grammaticality judgments, but we suggest that the intuition about the ordering of arguments may be attested in corpus data.

The ordering of arguments and markedness

Canonical transitive clauses

Non-canonical transitive clauses

Ditransitive construction

Findings

Summary