Massey Documents by Type

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294

Browse

Filters

1999 - 199912000 - 20033

Settings

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.Grammar

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Stative sentences in Japanese and the role of the nominative marker "ga" : a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Japanese at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2000) Halliday, George Charles
    The Japanese nominative particle ga is normally associated with the marking of subjects. However, there are several constructions involving stative predicates, where it has been claimed, notably by those working within a generative framework, that a ga-marked NP can be an object and that such sentences are transitive. Such an analysis has particularly arisen in the case of sentences with more than one ga-marked NP, exhibiting so-called double ga marking. The following study makes two claims. Firstly, that one of the functions of ga in such sentences is to provide a discourse frame akin to the topic marking function of the postpositional particle wa. Secondly it argues that stative sentences associated with double ga-marking are in fact intransitive and that the ga-marked NP's that have been claimed to be objects are in fact subjects.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Sentence-final expressions-- rasii and yoo : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Japanese at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2003) Tochigi, Asuka
    In the Japanese language there is a group of sentence-final expressions, which indicate the speaker's attitude toward the proposition they are maintaining. Included in this group are expressions such as kamosirenai, tigainai, hazu, yoo, mitai, rasii, soo (hearsay) and (si) soo. This thesis is an examination of the functions of the two expressions yoo and rasii. In many cases rasii and yoo are interchangeable in the respect that they work as evidential markers that the speaker makes a judgment based on evidence. However there is a subtle difference between them. The distinction between them is made by the degree of the speaker's perception. Even though the same types of evidence may be used, rasii indicates that a lesser degree of the speaker's perception is involved, whereas yoo indicates that a higher degree of the speaker's perception is involved. A closer investigation of the uses of rasii and yoo, based on Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, is carried out and it is concluded that both rasii and yoo work as politeness strategies. That is, the speaker utilises the function of either rasii or yoo to satisfy the other's feeling and to establish a good rapport between the speaker and the addressee in human interactions, as well as to maintain the speaker's own desire.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Syntax and semantics of the nominals mono and koto in Japanese : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Japanese at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1999) Murata, Masami
    There is a group of words which are usually referred to as keisiki-meisi (i.e. formal nouns) in Japanese. The formal noun is defined as a noun which does not have a substantive meaning, and is not used in isolation, but requires a preceding modifier. In this thesis, examinations of various aspects of the Japanese nouns mono and koto, which are widely acknowledged as typical examples of formal noun, will be presented. Mono and koto occur with a variety of terms to produce additional derivatives. For example, when the copula da is attached to mono or koto at the end of a sentence, it becomes a sentence-final modality which strongly reflects the speaker's emotions or feelings. However, owing to the fact that mono and koto are also used on occasion as substantive nouns without preceding modifiers, scholars tend to merely clarify the boundary between the use of mono or koto as a substantive noun, and its use as a formal noun, giving two separate labels to the same noun. In this study, the existence of continuity between these two usages - substantive and formal - is hypothesised. The syntactic and semantic features observed throughout the derivative forms of mono and koto offer a chance to explore and identify the unifying features of the two different usages. It is also demonstrated that, viewed in the light of the framework of grammaticalisation, the category 'formal noun' is only a label that has been put onto a group of nouns which can be grammaticalised or which have already been grammaticalised.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Syntax and semantics of the existentials ar-u and i-ru in Japanese : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2003) Murata, Masami
    This thesis is a descriptive study of the Existentials ar-u and i-ru in contemporary standard Japanese. The study encompasses not only the lexical-verb usages of ar-u and i-ru, which are referred to as Lexical Existentials, or LEs, in this thesis, but also the auxiliary-verb usages, which are referred to as Grammatical Existentials, or GEs. The reasons for undertaking the present study are: (i) the true characteristics of the Japanese Existentials have not been understood accurately in linguistic-typological studies of Existential constructions due to a paucity of purely descriptive studies on the subject published in English; (ii) although a large body of Japanese literature on the nature of both LEs and GEs now exists, it is still fragmentary and a comprehensive account has yet to be produced; (iii) most studies adhere to previously accepted concepts, such as the strict dichotomy between monovalent intransitives and bivalent (or multivalent) transitives, without questioning the validity of such concepts, and, in consequence, the explanations fail to elucidate the fundamental nature of ar-u and i-ru. I first claim that LEs are bivalent verbs, contrary to the conventional view that they are monovalent verbs. I then demonstrate that recognition of the bivalent nature of the Japanese LE leads to a unified analysis for various LE constructions, including those which denote the existence of a possessive relation and those which anticipate the existence of a future event. I divide GEs into two categories: verbaliser-GEs that turn nominals into verbal predicates, and stativiser-GEs that turn active verbal predicates into stative verbal predicates. I argue that the former preserve the bivalent properties inherited from the LE to a significant extent, whereas the latter do not. I also show that stativiser-GEs serve not only as aspect markers but also as quasi-evidential markers. The significance of this research project is: (1) the provision of a new framework for analysing the LEs ar-u and i-ru in contemporary standard Japanese, based on the assumption that they are bivalent verbs; (2) the application of the same framework to an investigation of the GEs in order to shed light on the continuity between the LEs and the Ges.