Japanese Passives Research Articles

Bottom Copy Pronunciation in Japanese Passives

AbstractOn the basis of Abe's (2016) proposal that in the case of an A‐chain, any member can be the target for pronunciation, I argue that Japanese passives may have the bottom copies of the produced A‐chains pronounced. When the passivized subjects appear to occupy their original θ‐positions, it is standardly claimed that the relevant word order is derived by scrambling other material sentence‐initially. Contrary to this claim, I demonstrate that there are cases, including those of what Miyagawa (1989) calls the causative‐passive construction, where the passivized subjects actually occupy their original θ‐positions. I then provide evidence that those passivized subjects undergo “covert” A‐movement, hence giving support to my bottom copy pronunciation analysis.

Maternal passives addressed to Japanese-speaking children: A usage-based approach

This study examined Japanese-speaking mothers’ passives in the child-directed speech from the CHILDES database. We selected five parent–child corpora and analyzed the overall distribution of the mothers’ passives and further investigated the contribution of the construction and the passivized verbs to sentence meaning. The findings were as follows: (1) There are only a few verbs that accounted for much of the mothers’ passives; (2) mothers’ passives can be categorized into broad classes based on the verb–patient relation; and (3) most of the passives, both direct and indirect, were used to denote adversative meaning and these negative passives collocated with the verbal auxiliary - shimau. We suggest that analyses of child-directed speech should take into account lexical repetition and the semantic redundancy of language as part of a process designed to support language development. Furthermore, highly frequent exemplar passives and their discrete reference in the events and contexts may be facilitative for children’s learning of Japanese passives. The results are evaluated in light of the usage-based proposal of learning.

Consciousness raising tasks: Developing learners’ reflective attitude toward plurilingualism

Abstract This report proposes a number of tasks which help learners become more aware of how their feelings are moulded in their L1 and notice crosslinguistic similarities and differences between their L1 and a target language. The proposed tasks are motivated by findings in the crosslinguistic influence literature and a study that investigated Japanese learners’ perception of crosslinguistic similarities and differences between English and Japanese passives. Japanese has two types of passives, while English has only one. Although the two types of Japanese passives share some properties, they have distinctive functions; one type is mainly used to express adversative feelings of the speaker towards the event a sentence describes, while the other is much the same as the English passive. The study results indicate that half of the subjects perceive crosslinguistic similarities yet avoid using the construction and the other half incorrectly assume similarities which do not exist in reality. The proposed tasks attempt to develop learners’ metalinguistic ability through analysing Japanese and English passives and to facilitate learners’ awareness of crosslinguistic similarities and differences in the passive constructions.

KONTRASTIVITAS DIATESIS PASIF BAHASA INDONESIA DAN BAHASA JEPANG DALAM DONGENG JEPANG MOMOTARŌ

This study aims at (1) describing the rules of the passive voice in Indonesian and Japanese languages, (2) finding the markers of passive sentences in Indonesian and Japanese languages, (3) describing the similarities and differences of passive sentences in Indonesian and Japanese. The data is collected by the descriptive method. The method of data analysis is a contrastive analysis. The result of data analysis is presented by method Indonesian passivization explained by the change of morphology on the verb, for example, Indonesian language passive using markers di-, ter- and ke-an. Meanwhile, Japanese language passivization is described by verbs and nouns functioning as objects in passive sentences. Japanese verbs consist of consonant verbs, vowel verbs, and irregular verbs. Passive sentences in the Japanese language are marked by marker ni + V-areru for consonant verbs, markers ni + V-areru for vocal verbs, ni + V-areru for irregular verbs, and ni + yotte V-areru/V-rareru for verbs that are followed as object inanimate nouns. Similarly, there are two passivizations in Japanese: passivization using the direct object and the indirect object. However, the indirect passivization of the Japanese can use transitive verbs or intransitive verbs. Japanese passive sentences express the completion of an action and an unpleasant meaning. In comparison, the Japanese passive sentence is not used as regularly as Indonesian passive because Japanese passive tends to express a point of view first person. In addition, another difference between passive sentences in Indonesian and Japanese is that in Japanese it is important to know the subject.

A Typology of Japanese Passives

A Typology of Japanese Passives

Two types of possessive passives in Japanese

Abstract Many East Asian languages have possessive passives, whose subjects are interpreted as the possessor of the direct object. This paper investigates Japanese Possessive Passives (JPPs) and proposes that there are two types of possessive passives in Japanese: one with a ‘by-phrase’ headed by ni (ni JPPs) and the other with a ‘by-phrase’ headed by ni yotte (ni yotte JPPs). While previous studies assumed that JPPs are a sub-type of indirect passive, I propose that such an analysis is untenable. Instead, JPPs exhibit the same dichotomy as ni-passives and ni yotte-passives exhibit (Kuroda 1979, Kitagawa & Kuroda 1992): While subjects of ni JPPs are base-generated like ni-passives, subjects of ni yotte JPPs undergo NP movement like ni yotte-passives.

A Study on the Modern Japanese Passive Construction Based on Corpus -Syntactic Study for Practical Use-

A Study on the Modern Japanese Passive Construction Based on Corpus -Syntactic Study for Practical Use-

Floating quantifiers in Japanese passives and beyond

AbstractThis work attempts to defend the so-called Uniform Hypothesis for passives in Japanese by re-examining the empirical phenomena involving quantifier float (Q-float). We will attempt to reinforce the following main tenets of the Uniform Hypothesis — (i) that allni-passive sentences in Japanese involve complementation and the theta-marking of their subjects, and (ii) that they crucially lack NP movement. We will also closely examine the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and prosodic properties of Q-float in general.

Japanese Passives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Japanese Passives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Incremental comprehension of Japanese passives: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm

ABSTRACTPsycholinguistic research has shown that sentence processing is incremental (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999). In Japanese, a verb-final language, native speakers use case markers to incrementally assign thematic roles and predictively activate a structural representation of upcoming linguistic items. This study examined whether second-language learners of Japanese, guided by case markers, generate predictions as to whether the upcoming verb involves the active or passive voice. The results show that the native speakers made predictive eye movements before the verb, but the learners did not; the learners were less efficient in using case-marker cues than the native speakers and relied more on verb morphology information. These results suggest that case markers guide thematic role assignments, expediting the processing for Japanese native speakers. Learners may depend more on information from the verb to compensate for the inefficiency in case-marker-driven predictive processing.

A Study on the Intransitivization Verbs in Japanese Passives

A Study on the Intransitivization Verbs in Japanese Passives

Relational Grammar of Passive in Japanese

This article examines the Japanese passives through the study of relational grammar. Japanese passive construction could be divided into three types, namely Chokusetsu Ukemi ‘direct passive', Mochinushi no Ukemi 'possessive passive', and Daisansha no Ukemi ' third person passive'. An analysis of the passive grammatical relation based on the Relational Grammar (RG) theory indicates a change of grammatical relation has the same revaluation on the type of Chokusetsu Ukemi, the direct object of active construction becomes the subject of the passive and the subject of active construction becomes chomeur. In Japanese, Mochinushi no Ukemi, and Daisansha no Ukemi can be handled by the RG with its own constraints.

Another Unified Approach to Japanese Passives

The traditional analyses of Japanese passive constructions in the framework of generative grammar have been divided largely between the Uniform Hypothesis and the Nonuniform Hypothesis. Despite what its name suggests, the Uniform Hypothesis does not prove to be sufficiently “uniform” when a wider range of data is considered, and therefore it is not conceptually more elegant than the Nonuniform Hypothesis. In addition, some empirical problems still remain unsolved in these classic analyses although subsequent research has been continued to produce a more general theory for reconciling them. Hence, this paper proposes a new analysis that deserves to be called a “unified” approach to Japanese passives in such a way that only one kind of passive morpheme is needed to account for all the relevant passive constructions. In an attempt to achieve theoretical simplicity, it will also suggest a device for adding an extra argument in a monoclausal sentence.

Contrastive Analysis of Japanese and Indonesian Passive Sentences

This study describes the similarities and differences between Japanese and Indonesian passive sentences through a pairing technique. Passive sentences in both languages are classified into several types based on their syntactic functions and categories and the semantic roles in 21 types of Japanese passive (JP) sentences and 22 types of Indonesian passive (IP) sentences. The findings show that all types of Japanese direct passive (CJ) sentences can be paired directly with the Indonesian di-V construction. Some of the Japanese indirect passive (KJ) sentences can be integrated into the constructions di-V, ter-V, ke-|-an, and construction ditinggal-V-intr, while others could not be paired with Indonesian passive sentences at all but could be expressed by active sentences with Indonesian words that convey opposing meanings. In contrast, the process of pairing Indonesian passive sentences with their Japanese counterparts indicates that type A9, personal passive, and some ter-V constructions could not be paired with Japanese passive sentences but could be expressed through active sentences by putting the object in front. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1s1p317

A Study on Marks of Agent 「ni」, 「kara」 in Japanese Passive

A Study on Marks of Agent 「ni」, 「kara」 in Japanese Passive

Applicatives in Taiwan Southern Min: benefactives and malefactives

The paper explores the benefactive and malefactive applicatives in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM). The malefactive applicative discussed in the present study is introduced in the adversative passives which appear with the hoo…ka configuration. Unlike Japanese adversative passives, the additional argument in the adversative passives in TSM is the repeated patient subject, which always occurs with a pronominal form. The added argument is assumed to enhance the transitivity of the predicate. The two functional words, hoo and ka, are assumed to interact in the adversative passive hoo…ka construction. Like the malefactive applicative, the TSM benefactive applicative structure is also licensed by the word ka. The paper thus examines the syntactic and semantic properties of the ka construction. The present study further postulates a hierarchical order of ka-applicatives, modals and wh-adverbials in terms of their structural height. In line with Tsai’s (2009a) three-way applicative assumption, the paper argues that the benefactive and malefactive ka-applicatives are both situated at the lexical layer; the malefactive ka-phrase is higher than the benefactive applicative.

On the Semantics of Japanese Passives

On the Semantics of Japanese Passives

A Function of Subject of Action in Japanese Passives Voice and a form of (sa)seru of Sentence of Reflexive

A Function of Subject of Action in Japanese Passives Voice and a form of (sa)seru of Sentence of Reflexive

Input, triggering and poverty of the stimulus in the second language acquisition of Japanese passives

This article adopts an input perspective in examining a poverty-of-the stimulus (POS) learning situation in second language acquisition (SLA). Analysis of grammaticality judgement data from 81 English-speaking and 85 Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese isolates triggering input that informed English learners of subtle semantic properties of the ni direct passive underdetermined by second language (L2) input. The study shows a sufficient correlation in the case of English learners between acquisition of the ni direct passive's triggering properties (available through input) and acquisition of its POS properties (unavailable through input). Importantly, those properties are direct consequences of affectivity, an underlying semantic property of the ni direct passive. That correlation does not obtain in the case of Chinese learners due to a positive first language (L1) effect. Additional corroborating evidence comes from acquisition of another Japanese passive, the ni yotte, for which no correlation was found between its non-triggering and non-POS properties for either English or Chinese learners as those properties are available through input. The article proposes that English learners' computation of a target-like conceptual representation of the triggering input leads to the restructuring of their lexical—conceptual representation of the ni direct passive.

The passive construction in Japanese: A cognitive perspective

This paper examines the passive construction in Japanese. Focusing on the behavior of two types of by-phrase, ni and ni yotte, it is argued that the essential components that trigger the passive construction cannot be determined on the basis of structural properties such as ‘the suppression of an external argument’ or ‘defocusing the agent’. Rather, its formation is influenced mostly by factors which accord with a cognitive approach to language, in which our subjective judgment or experience of the world comes to the fore in the determination of the grammaticality of clausal structures. More precisely, the aforementioned observation suggests that the formation of Japanese passives requires more than purely structural or syntactic information. The paper further argues that the notion of EMPATHY, though it is often alluded to as being of primacy in Japanese passives in the previous literature, is still not sufficient in the light of the data at hand. The paper proposes five cognitive components, TEMPORALITY, DEPENDENCY, INVOLVEMENT, TYPICALITY, and SALIENCE, revealing that the grammaticality of Japanese passives is determined crucially by multiple human conceptualization.