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Last update:
9 February 2010

© John Benjamins
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Grammar in Use across Time and Space

Deconstructing the Japanese ‘dative subject’ construction

Misumi Sadler
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Studies in Discourse and Grammar 20

2007. xiv, 212 pp.
Publishing status: Available

Hardbound – In stock
978 90 272 2630 3 / EUR 105.00 / USD 158.00
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e-Book – Available from e-book platforms
978 90 272 9174 5 / EUR 105.00 / USD 158.00
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This monograph contains the first systematic investigation of the Japanese ‘dative subject’ construction across time and space. It demonstrates that, in order to capture what speakers/writers know about how to put an utterance or a clause together, it is necessary to pay attention to what they do in actual language use and in different discourse types. The work also shows the importance of diachronic perspectives to help us better understand the ways in which a particular grammatical structure is represented synchronically. By utilizing modern Japanese conversation, contemporary Japanese novels, and a pre-modern and modern Japanese literature corpus, the study highlights the role of ‘dative subjects’ at the semantic and discourse-pragmatic levels. Specifically, it demonstrates that what has been considered to be a most ‘grammatical’ aspect of Japanese actually turns out to be rather pragmatically oriented.

Table of contents

List of tables
ix
List of figures
xi
Acknowledgments
xiii
Chapter 1. Introduction
1–37
1.1. Overview
1
1.2. Previous approaches
6
1.3. Theoretical approach
31
1.4. Goals
36
1.5. Organization
36
Chapter 2. Data and methodology
39–70
2.1. Introduction
39
2.2. Spoken versus written
39
2.3. Modern Japanese discourse data
49
2.4. Criteria for selecting the dative subject construction in discourse
52
2.5. Examples of coding clauses
63
2.6 Summary
70
Chapter 3. The dative subject construction in naturally occurring conversation
71–107
3.1. Introduction
71
3.2. Overall distribution
72
3.3. Clauses with or without overt core argument NPs
74
3.4. Clauses with no overt core argument NPs
80
3.5. Clauses with one overt core argument NP
94
3.6. Marking of NPs
97
3.7. The characteristics of "dative subjects" in naturally occurring conversation
102
3.8 Summary
107
Chapter 4. The dative subject construction in contemporary Japanese novels
109–132
4.1. Introduction
109
4.2. Overall distribution
110
4.3. Clauses with or without overt core argument NPs
112
4.4. Clauses with one overt core argument NP
115
4.5. Clauses with no overt core argument NPs
119
4.6. Marking of NPs
123
4.7. The characteristics of "dative subjects" in contemporary Japanese novels
125
4.8 Summary
131
Chapter 5. "Dative subjects" across time: An examination of pre-modern and modern Japanese texts
133–170
5.1. Introduction
133
5.2. The history of the Japanese language: The divergence and convergence of spoken and written Japanese
134
5.3. Data
137
5.4. Ni-marked NP1s in pre-modern and modern Japanese texts
140
5.5 Summary
170
Chapter 6. Conclusion
171–184
6.1. Introduction
171
6.2. Summary
171
6.3. The semantic and pragmatic enrichment of ni-marked NP1s
173
6.4. Implications
180
6.5. Suggestions for further studies
182
Appendix A: List of abbreviations
185–186
Appendix B: Transcription symbols
187
References
189–203
Author index
205–207
Subject index
209–212

Subject classification

Linguistics
Discourse studies
Japanese linguistics