Japanese Syntax and Semantics

Japanese Syntax and Semantics
Author: S.-Y. Kuroda
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9401127891

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1. Two main themes connect the papers on Japanese syntax collected in this volume: movements of noun phrases and case marking, although each in turn relates to other issues in syntax and semantics. These two themes can be traced back to my 1965 MIT dissertation. The problem of the so-called topic marker wa is a perennial problem in Japanese linguistics. I devoted Chapter 2 of my dissertation to the problem of wa. My primary concern there was transformational genera tive syntax. I was interested in the light that Chomsky'S new theory could shed on the understanding of Japanese sentence structure. I generalized the problem of deriving wa-phrases to the problem of deriving phrases accompanied by the quantifier-like particles mo, demo, sae as well as wa. These particles, mo, demo and sae may roughly be equated with a/so, or something like it and even, respectively, and are grouped together with wa under the name of huku-zyosi as a subcategory of particles in Kokugogaku, Japanese scholarship on Japanese grammar. This taxonomy itself is a straightforward consequence of distributional analysis, and does not require the mechanisms of transformational grammar. My transformational analysis of wa, and by extension, that of the other huku zyosi, consisted in formally relating the function of the post-nominal use of wa to that of the post-predicative use by means of what I called an attachment transformation.

Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics

Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics
Author: Wesley M. Jacobsen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 887
Release: 2020-10-12
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1614512078

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The volume on Semantics and Pragmatics presents a collection of studies on linguistic meaning in Japanese, either as conventionally encoded in linguistic form (the field of semantics) or as generated by the interaction of form with context (the field of pragmatics), representing a range of ideas and approaches that are currently most influentialin these fields. The studies are organized around a model that has long currency in traditional Japanese grammar, whereby the linguistic clause consists of a multiply nested structure centered in a propositional core of objective meaning around which forms are deployed that express progressively more subjective meaning as one moves away from the core toward the periphery of the clause. The volume seeks to achieve a balance in highlighting both insights that semantic and pragmatic theory has to offer to the study of Japanese as a particular language and, conversely, contributions that Japanese has to make to semantic and pragmatic theory in areas of meaning that are either uniquely encoded, or encoded to a higher degree of specificity, in Japanese by comparison to other languages, such as conditional forms, forms expressing varying types of speaker modality, and social deixis.

Japanese Sentence Processing

Japanese Sentence Processing
Author: Reiko Mazuka
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134770146

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This volume is a direct result of the International Symposium on Japanese Sentence Processing held at Duke University. The symposium provided the first opportunity for researchers in three disciplinary areas from both Japan and the United States to participate in a conference where they could discuss issues concerning Japanese syntactic processing. The goals of the symposium were three-fold: * to illuminate the mechanisms of Japanese sentence processing from the viewpoints of linguistics, psycholinguistics and computer science; * to synthesize findings about the mechanisms of Japanese sentence processing by researchers in these three fields in Japan and the United States; * to lay foundations for future interdisciplinary research in Japanese sentence processing, as well as international collaborations between researchers in Japan and the United States. The chapters in this volume have been written from the points of view of three different disciplines, with various immediate objectives -- from building usable speech understanding systems to investigating the nature of competence grammars for natural languages. All of the papers share the long term goal of understanding the nature of human language processing mechanisms. The book is concerned with two central issues -- the universality of language processing mechanisms, and the nature of the relation between the components of linguistic knowledge and language processing. This volume demonstrates that interdisciplinary research can be fruitful, and provides groundwork for further research in Japanese sentence processing.

Handbook of Japanese Syntax

Handbook of Japanese Syntax
Author: Masayoshi Shibatani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 972
Release: 2017-10-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1501501003

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Studies of Japanese syntax have played a central role in the long history of Japanese linguistics spanning more than 250 years in Japan and abroad. More recently, Japanese has been among the languages most intensely studied within modern linguistic theories such as Generative Grammar and Cognitive/Functional Linguistics over the past fifty years. This volume presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese syntax from these three research strands, namely studies based on the traditional research methods developed in Japan, those from broader functional perspectives, and those couched in the generative linguistics framework. The twenty-four studies contained in this volume are characterized by a detailed analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with broader implications to general linguistics, making the volume attractive to both specialists of Japanese and those interested in learning about the impact of Japanese syntax to the general study of language. Each chapter is authored by a leading authority on the topic. Broad issues covered include sentence types (declarative, imperative, etc.) and their interactions with grammatical verbal categories (modality, polarity, politeness, etc.), grammatical relations (topic, subject, etc.), transitivity, nominalizations, grammaticalization, word order (subject, scrambling, numeral quantifier, configurationality), case marking (ga/no conversion, morphology and syntax), modification (adjectives, relative clause), and structure and interpretation (modality, negation, prosody, ellipsis). Chapter titles Introduction Chapter 1. Basic structures of sentences and grammatical categories, Yoshio Nitta, Kansai University of Foreign Studies Chapter 2: Transitivity, Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University Chapter 3: Topic and subject, Takashi Masuoka, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies Chapter 4: Toritate: Focusing and defocusing of words, phrases, and clauses, Hisashi Noda, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Chapter 5: The layered structure of the sentence, Isao Iori, Hitotsubashi University Chapter 6. Functional syntax, Ken-Ichi Takami, Gakushuin University; and Susumu Kuno, Harvard University Chapter 7: Locative alternation, Seizi Iwata, Osaka City University Chapter 8: Nominalizations, Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University Chapter 9: The morphosyntax of grammaticalization, Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University Chapter 10: Modality, Nobuko Hasegawa, Kanda University of International Studies Chapter 11: The passive voice, Tomoko Ishizuka, Tama University Chapter 12: Case marking, Hideki Kishimoto, Kobe University Chapter 13: Interfacing syntax with sounds and meanings, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Indiana University Chapter 14: Subject, Masatoshi Koizumi, Tohoku University Chapter 15: Numeral quantifiers, Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT Chapter 16: Relative clauses, Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka University Chapter 17: Expressions that contain negation, Nobuaki Nishioka, Kyushu University Chapter 18: Ga/No conversion, Masao Ochi, Osaka University Chapter 19: Ellipsis, Mamoru Saito, Nanzan University Chapter 20: Syntax and argument structure, Natsuko Tsujimura, Indiana University Chapter 21: Attributive modification, Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo Chapter 22: Scrambling, Noriko Yoshimura, Shizuoka Prefectural University

Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation

Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation
Author: Taro Kageyama
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 748
Release: 2016-01-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1614512094

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This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.

Syntax and semantics

Syntax and semantics
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2005
Genre:
ISBN: 9780415332378

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Jacy

Jacy
Author: Melanie Siegel
Publisher: Studies in Computational Linguistics (CSLI)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Computational linguistics
ISBN: 9781684000180

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This book describes the fundamentals of Jacy, an implementation of a Japanese head-driven phrase structure grammar with many useful linguistic implications. Jacy presents sound information about the Japanese language (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) based on implementation and tested on large quantities of data. As the grammar development was done in a multilingual environment, Jacy also showcases both multilingual concepts and differences among the languages and demonstrates the usefulness of semantic analysis in language technology applications.

The Grammar of Japanese Mimetics

The Grammar of Japanese Mimetics
Author: Noriko Iwasaki
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317295781

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Mimetic words, also known as ‘sound-symbolic words’, ‘ideophones’ or more popularly as ‘onomatopoeia’, constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children’s early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.