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Japanese has a deletion operation, called argument ellipsis, that targets arguments (Oku in A theory of selection and reconstruction in the minimalist program, 1998). The operation does not apply to adjuncts, and thus, adjuncts are unelidable. Funakoshi (J East Asian Linguist 25(2):113–42, 2016), following in the footsteps of Otani and Whitman (Linguist Inquiry 22:345–58, 1991), argues that adjuncts can be elided when V-stranding VP-deletion applies. This article refutes Funakoshi's proposal. Under rigorous control, adjuncts are generally unelidable even when the context strongly favors the adjunct inclusive interpretation, showing that the language lacks VP-deletion. It is also shown that, for a small number of speakers who permit the adjunct inclusive interpretation, the interpretation is sensitive to island constraints. The observation is attributed to covert right dislocation (Tanaka in J Linguist 37:551–79, 2001), marginally available for such speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how the Japanese speakers' knowledge is organized in regards to verbs, and proposes a linguistically-informed way of introducing it to second language learners. It is maintained by a number of researchers that each verb is stored with the information of its argument structure in the speaker's mental lexicon. That is, a given verb is stored with the information of how many arguments it takes and what types of arguments they are. In this paper, capitalizing on this assumption, we will maintain that the knowledge of the native speakers of Japanese is organized in such a way that if a verb gives rise to n-number of different meanings, there are n-number of lexical entries, and each such entry is independently stored with the information concerning the meaning of the verb, the verb arguments and their accompanying particles. After the description of the organization of Japanese speakers' knowledge in regards to verbs, as an effective way of introducing this to Japanese language learners, the paper proposes the format of an innovative approach to Japanese verbs reference book. This proposed format capitalizes on full sentence definitions in the sense of the Collins Cobuild Dictionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this article, predicative elements in Japanese complex predicates are shown to be concatenated into single units via either head movement or PF merger, i.e. morphologically tight complexes are formed with or without syntactic head movement. The two types of morphological units are seen to display a difference as to whether their morphological sequence can be disrupted by an adverbial particle. The negative scope of negative predicates, which varies depending on whether syntactic raising of a negative head to tense is instantiated, confirms that the two types of verbal complex formation need to be distinguished, despite an apparent similarity in their final morphological outputs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Tsujimura and Aikawa (J Assoc Teach Jpn 33: 26-43, ) argue that objectless zi-verbs in Japanese uniformly have the unaccusative argument structure based on two tests for unaccusativity (resultative predication and quantifier floating). In this paper, we provide new evidence against their uniform unaccusative analysis. Applying several other diagnostics for external/internal argumenthood in Japanese, we demonstrate that objectless zi-verbs instantiate a full range of argument structure configurations: (a) transitive (e.g., zi-satu-suru 'kill oneself'), (b) unaccusative (e.g., zi-kai-suru 'collapse by itself'), and (c) unergative (e.g., zi-sui-suru 'cook for oneself'). We further show that our new analysis framed in terms of the Lexical Conceptual Structure not only derives the various properties of the three types of objectless zi-verbs but also derives the different argument structural functions and meanings that the zi-morpheme is associated with in each type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper claims that psychological sound-symbolic words (or psych-mimetics; e.g., kat (to) 'angry', wakuwaku 'exhilarated') in Japanese and predicates they form have embodied semantic characteristics. Previous studies have assumed that psych-mimetics form one category. However, the possibility of cooccurrence with locus NPs enables a clear distinction among them. Psych-mimetics that optionally take a locus NP (termed 'somatopsych-mimetics') refer to bodily sensation and those that cannot take one (termed 'visuopsych-mimetics') refer to observable activity or behavior in addition to emotion. Several sorts of reinforcement are given to this dichotomy. First, not a few somato- and visuopsych-mimetics can be synchronically or diachronically analyzed as being derived from mimetics for bodily sensation and mimetics of vision, respectively. Second, some morphosyntactic properties of mimetic psych-verbs, including their morphology and participation in two controllability-related constructions, support the distinctive statuses of somato- and visuopsych-mimetics. Third, an experiment asking Japanese speakers to draw pictures for psych-mimetics provided further evidence for the visual basis of visuopsych-mimetics. Thus, like other psychological/perceptual expressions, psych-mimetics represent emotion by referring to particular physical experiences associated with or similar to it. Consequently, this study is dually significant. It contributes to the embodiment theory and points out the regularity of this apparently peculiar word class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case marking is the major cue to sentence interpretation in Japanese, whereas animacy and word order are much weaker. However, when subjects and their cases markers are omitted, Japanese honorific and humble verbs can provide information that compensates for the missing case role markers. This study examined the usage of honorific and humble verbs as cues to case role assignment by Japanese native speakers and second-language learners of Japanese. The results for native speakers replicated earlier findings regarding the predominant strength of case marking. However, when case marking was missing, native speakers relied more on honorific marking than word order. In these sentences, the processing that relied on the honorific cue was delayed by about 100 ms in comparison to processing that relied on the case-marking cue. Learners made extensive use of the honorific agreement cue, but their use of the cue was much less accurate than that of native speakers. In particular, they failed to systematically invoke the agreement cue when case marking was missing. Overall, the findings support the predictions of the model and extend its coverage to a new type of culturally determined cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an alternative analysis of the two Japanese existential verbs: aru and iru. By appealing to the notion of conceptualisation that pervades the cognitive linguistic literature, I demonstrate that the two verbs pattern as motion verbs, and not simply as verbs of existence and/or location. Throughout the paper, I demonstrate that the traditional opposition of inanimacy versus animacy, said to determine the use of aru versus iru, respectively, is not a reliable predictor. Instead, contextual and cognitive factors such as perceived movement/displacement potential of the sentential subject, actual expectation of movement and the relative immediacy of potential displacement, both literally and metaphorically, will be shown to be more at play than the simple dichotomy of inanimacy versus animacy. The data include acceptability judgements by native speakers of Japanese on a 20-item questionnaire. Participants' line item responses and open-ended comments reflect a consistent tendency to draw upon traditional grammatical 'rules' which explicitly place the animacy/inanimacy of the sentential subjects as the primary (if not the sole) distinguishing feature. However, as will be shown, participants also exhibit a clear orientation to the concept of motion as a key element in their selection of one form over other possible competing forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the theoretical implications of the negative inflected forms of verbs in Japanese. Japanese verbs and adjectives overlap considerably in their morphology and syntax, but there is strong evidence that they constitute distinct morpholexical classes. Verbs and adjectives realize negative polarity, but in verbs this is realized by synthetic suffixal forms (inflections), while in adjectives it is achieved by a periphrastic construction with the negative form of the copula. However, the negative form of the plain style verb (as opposed to the polite style verb in -masu) inflects in the same way as the positive polarity adjective. Thus, in the negative conjugation the verb is morphologically an adjective. This is not a case of heteroclisis or deponency because it affects all verbs and all plain negative forms. It is also not an instance of a participle, since the primary function of the negative forms is as the head of the predication as with any other verb form, while a participle is canonically a verb transposed to an adjective so that it can function as an attributive modifier to a noun. We therefore have an instance in which a word of one morphological category shifts to another category for a large portion of its paradigm, without shifting in syntactic category. Such cases represent an important, though hardly studied, instance of morphosyntactic mismatch. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we propose a lexicalist account of constructions which initially appear to be nominalisations of phrasal structures. We argue that lexical nominalisation of verbs preserves their form-selectional properties, creating nouns which select for dependents in exactly the way that the source verbs do. These properties hold in the ‘sub-phrasal’ syntax – essentially a domain of complex predicate formation – but do not hold in the regular phrasal syntax, where the form-selectional properties of verbs and nouns are disjoint. The overall view of grammar is one in which all morphological derivation and inflection is in the lexicon, interacting with a syntax in which there is a crucial distinction between words – items from the lexicon which do not project phrases, but create sub-phrasal constituents – and phrases, which are standardly projected from words. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the vagueness in the expression of the verb, tari suru, which means "doing things like" in the English language, in modern Japanese language. The article will also mention the history of -tari, the conventional usage of the verb, tari suru construction and its primary function, and report various descriptions given of the newer usage of the construction. The author argues that the newer usage of verb-tari suru is related to other usages of the construction and that the sense of lack of specification is responsible for various connotations associated with the expression.

In this article I distinguish two types of sentence final particles (SFPs) and two types of predicates in Chinese in terms of the aspectual features [±dynamic]. I assume that aspect in Chinese projects a maximal projection, AspectP, which determines the temporal properties of predicates. It is argued that the predicates and the SFPs in Chinese sentences must agree in the [±dynamic] features in syntax. It is also argued that Chinese has two light verbs: the static light verb slv and the dynamic light verb dlv. These two light verbs, in conjunction with the lexical verbs, determine the event structures of the predicates in Chinese, and furthermore serve as the basis for the syntactic agreement of the aspectuality between the SFPs and the predicates. In this article I also compare the SFPs and predicates in Chinese and Japanese. Based on empirical evidence, I propose that Japanese lacks syntactic aspect agreement, in sharp contrast with Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ditransitive verbs such as send and give appear in two distinct structures in English, the double object and the to-dative constructions. It is well known that the two differ semantically and syntactically. In some recent works, it is suggested that the semantic differences observed by Bresnan (1978), Oehrle (1976) and others, and the structural properties noted by Barss and Lasnik (1986), Larson (1988), and others, can both be captured by postulating an extra head for the Double Object Construction (DOC, e.g., Marantz (1993), Harley (1995), Pylkkänen (2002)). This head, which corresponds to the applicative head in Bantu languages, takes the goal as its specifier and relates it either to the VP that contains the verb and the theme (Marantz (1993)), or directly to the theme (Pylkkänen (2002)). The applicative head contributes the meaning distinct to the DOC, and it gives rise to the hierarchical structure noted by Barss and Lasnik. This applicative head is missing in the to-dative so that this construction has an argument structure distinct from the DOC. In this paper, we will look at the corresponding construction(s) in Japanese. Unlike English, Japanese appears to have only one structure, in which the goal is marked with the dative and the theme with the accusative case marking. The goal-theme order is assumed to be the basic order (Hoji (1985), Takano (1998), Yatsushiro (1998, 2003)). The only variation is that the theme can occur before the goal, but this is viewed simply as an instance of optional scrambling. We will give arguments that the difference between English and Japanese is only apparent. With close scrutiny, we find that the two argument structures corresponding to the DOC and the to-dative in English exist in Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of verb-raising in Japanese (or in other languages where such an operation would be string vacuous) has been and still is quite controversial. Recently, Koizumi (2000) has put forward direct evidence for verb-raising drawing on data involving, among other things, numeral classifiers. Based on relevant and important facts that are overlooked by Koizumi and other researchers, this paper demonstrates that the alleged evidence based on the behavior of numeral classifiers does not support his claim that verb-raising occurs in Japanese. The apparently odd behavior of such classifiers (which can give rise to unusual looking constituents) noted by Koizumi will be given a semantic account. The present account is also capable of dealing with additional data with numeral classifiers that are problematic for him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While observing and producing gesture can enhance native language learning, research in foreign word learning is limited. English-speaking university students were verbally presented with Japanese verbs with their English translations in one of three conditions: no gesture, observing an instructor's iconic gestures, or observing and reproducing the instructor's gestures. Participants verbally recalled the words immediately following training and after a one-week delay. Both observing only as well as observing and reproducing gestures at encoding enhanced learning and were equally beneficial for both the short and longer term beyond verbal learning alone. Reproducing the instructor's gestures during learning increased the rate of spontaneous iconic gesture production during recall, though the effects of this spontaneous gesture production at test were inconsistent. Findings emphasise the importance of an instructor's gesture production during foreign language learning, and suggest that motor imagery plays a key role in the beneficial effects of gesture on learning. • Observing iconic gestures at encoding enhanced Japanese word learning. • Reproducing an instructor's gestures at encoding enhanced Japanese word learning. • Observing and reproducing gestures were equally beneficial across time points. • Reproducing gestures increased spontaneous iconic gesture production at recall. • Gesture production at recall mediated effects of encoding condition on recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]