Syntactic Word Order and Verbal Prefixes in Old Japanese (possible diachronic typological perspective)

Abstract

Basic syntactic order constitutes one of the basic linguistic categories, having its correspondences first of all with areal linguistics and typology – categories much more challenging for the Japanese language than for many others. It therefore seems logical to begin with the theoretical background for this question, before continuing with the analysis of Modern Japanese syntactic structure, in order to move to the goal of our study – verbal prefixes, their grammatical functions and influence on the basic word order in the history of Japanese language. Since the question of genetic relations of Old Japanese strongly tends towards the rhetorical, typological study of the material seems to be an adequate answer to the diachronic cross-linguistic studies of world languages. Here I will begin with a brief theoretical description of the phenomenon under the consideration continuing with the analysis of Old Japanese syntax structure and the description of the morphology of some basic elements. At the conclusion typological characteristics of Old Japanese syntax will be given.