Abstract
This paper provides a corpus-linguistic study on subjectivity in Japanese, in an effort to arrive at how subjectivity, transitivity and grammaticalisation are related. 899 lexicons from nine grammatical categories (suffixes and prefixes, adjectives, particles, auxiliaries, nouns, adnominals, adverbs, and transitive/intransitive verb pairs) are examined. The findings reveal that Japanese is a subjective/objective-split language, and that subjectivity in affixes is facilitated by phonology: voiced/voiceless consonant alternation. The data also show that consonant-voiced prefixes and suffixes yield a subjective reading, while consonant-voiceless prefixes and suffixes render an objective meaning. Split subjectivity in adjectives is realised by morphology: しい-ending adjectives tend to be subjective, while い-ending adjectives are mostly objective. The differentiation of subjectivity in adjectives is further tied to the constraints on personal pronoun and verbalisation possibilities. Intriguingly, objective/subjective readings of しい-ending adjectives andい-ending adjectives are switchable. Furthermore, among transitive/intransitive verb pairs, intransitive verbs are likely to get grammaticalised, while transitive verbs are likely to be lexicalised and thus render a subjective reading. This is confirmed by change-of-state verbs and motion verbs. This paper therefore puts forward the hypothesis that the interrelationship of grammaticalisation and lexicalisation is orthogonal.
Highlights
The study of subjectivity in Japanese is of particular interest for the following reason
This paper provides a corpus-linguistic study on subjectivity in Japanese, in an effort to arrive at how subjectivity, transitivity and grammaticalisation are related. 899 lexicons from nine grammatical categories are examined
The findings reveal that Japanese is a subjective/objective-split language, and that subjectivity in affixes is facilitated by phonology: voiced/voiceless consonant alternation
Summary
Attention will be drawn to the distribution of subjectivity To achieve this goal, nine grammatical categories are to be examined: suffixes and prefixes, adjectives, particles, auxiliaries, nouns, adnominals, adverbs and transitive/intransitive verb pairs. This paper will consider whether a relationship can be mapped between transitivity, subjectivity and grammaticalisation. To this end, I will conduct an investigation into the distribution of transitive and intransitive verbs that are grammaticalised and lexicalised. When a grammatical item is involved with an evaluation or an imperative To put it another way, when it occurs with imperative auxiliaries, e.g., ~tekudai, the item can be characterised as subjective. The rest of the paper is mapped out as follows: Section 2 addresses the data and draws an overall picture of split subjectivity in different grammatical categories.
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