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The Japanese word amai and the English word sweet, both of which pertain primarily to the sense of taste, are conventionally extended to other domains, such as olfaction and audition. This article is an attempt to analyze two of these extended uses, both of which can be plausibly viewed as metonymic. The first case involves taste-for-smell synesthesia, where amai and sweet are used to characterize the smell of sweet-tasting foods. This extension is motivated by the integrated nature of the domain of eating, which includes both elements of taste and smell. The second case has to do with a few examples where the semantic focus of these words is shifted from the pleasing object to the person pleased. The two meanings observed in this metonymic extension, 'pleasing' and 'pleased,' are related to each other in the integrated domain of perceiving something, which comprises both the subject and the object of perception.
The Manchu verbs ili- and naka- have been incompletely described in the literature. The present paper compares the usages of ili- and naka- in Manchu of the Manzhou Shilu. The following characteristics are pointed out.
The present paper deals with eight so-called three-place verbs in Amis:
Syntactically, the verbs (1) to (5) are real three-place verbs, whereas it has been revealed that (6), (7) and (8) are two-place ones. Morphologically, the verb (1) is close to productive causatives and the verb (6) is similar to three-place verbs. Consequently, these verbs can be ordered on a scale as follows: productive causative – (1) – (2)(3)(4)(5) – (6) – (7)(8) – other two-place verbs. It is also argued that the distinction between two- and three-place verbs can be explained by the difference in the semantic saliency of the "recipient / source" noun phrase.
Hawaiian possessives are formed on the basis of two series of characteristics (k-/z-/n distinction and O/A/Ex distinction) and the persons of the possessor. In this paper, examples of the actual use are extracted from three folktales and the relations between the possessor and possessee which can be expressed by possessives are listed. First, these examples are classified according to whether they have the verbal characteristics or not, then they are further divided into subcategories which are decided by each of their semantic relations. Besides, the relations between those categories and the forms of the possessives are considered, although no apparent and exact answer can be established.
The brief remarks presented here concern some issues of Old Turkic: areality, chronology, periodization, contact history and functionality. Rather than providing new data, the paper will summarize some considerations based on known facts and argued for in earlier writing.
This article examines the color terms in Ewen (Even), a Tungusic language. Observing the data collected in sessions with native speakers, this article attempts to identify the basic color terms of Ewen. Focal colors of basic color terms show a tendency to coincide among different speakers. Comparing the Ewen color term system with the Russian color term system, this article claims that the focal colors of Ewen and Russian correspond to each other.
In Japanese Sign Language, there are verbs which indicate persons by changing the direction of manual movement. They are called 'agreeing forms'. However, verbs are sometimes marked by the first person even in a case where they are supposed to indicate the second or third person. In the present paper, this form is called 'disagreement form'. The present paper shows that the frequency of the disagreement form varies from verb to verb. It also argues that the occurrence of the form is predictable if the concreteness of the verb object and the focus on the agent and the undergoer are considered. The less obvious and concrete the verb object is and the more focused the agent and the undergoer are, the more probable it is that the disagreement form occurs.
In the recent works on Danish phonology, mora is claimed to be necessary in addition to syllable. The author takes the standpoint that, while the syllable is inherent in any language, the necessity of recognizing the unit of mora depends on languages and on whether it will provide a better explanation of their phonological phenomena. Starting from this position, and critically examining the mora in modern Danish phonology as well as in recent phonological theories, the author points out the following two issues:
Thus mora lacks the explanatory power and raison d'être. From these arguments, the author concludes that mora is unnecessary in Danish phonology.
It is not easy to define the semantic character of intransitive verbs in Japanese, though they or part of them have been roughly described as "a movement represented by the verb occurs by itself" or "enter a state of its own accord" or "spontaneous": some of the various uses cannot be explained by simple application of these descriptions. This paper is an attempt to address this problem. Intransitive verbs expressing change (e.g. agaru, hairu), which form a significant portion of Japanese intransitive verbs, are mainly discussed here. One basic principle, "represent a change which realizes without any external control", is extracted from their various uses through two levels of examination — at the single word level and the sentence level. In addition, more detailed usage conditions are clarified through analyses of competitive relation vis-à-vis potential sentences or passive ones, and so on. Furthermore, the idea that the subject's self-control is not an issue is another important factor that determines the extent of the Japanese intransitive verbs both at the single word level and the sentence level.
The present paper is concerned with the pragmatics of the be after construction (e.g. I'm after cleaning your room.) in Hiberno-English. This construction is often referred to as "hot-news perfect". The validity of this label is discussed in order to examine the aspectual and functional properties of the be after construction. The paper includes examples which highlight the pragmatic oppositions of this construction with the have Perfect in Hiberno-English.
The present paper examines both deictic and anaphoric uses of Vietnamese demonstratives đây, đó, kia, based on the comparison with those of Japanese demonstratives. The results are as follows.
Turkish has three demonstratives, bu, şu and o. While bu and o are very likely to function as the proximal and distal demonstratives, respectively, characterizing şu remains problematic. Attempts have been made to explain it, based on such criteria as distance between the speaker and the referent, proximity to the hearer, gesture accompanying utterance, non-attention of the hearer to the referent, and joint attention shared by the speaker and the hearer, though none of them seems successful enough to stop the pursuit. In this paper I propose temporal proximity to the moment of utterance as a key concept to characterize the usage of şu. Thus, Turkish has two proximal demonstratives: bu for spatially proximal reference and şu for temporally proximal reference.
This is the first in a series of reports on accentual surveys of nouns the Miryang and Changnyeng dialects with the largest number of accentual oppositions in the dialects of Korean among those previously studied by the author in South Gyeongsang-do. A list of 1,134 words, with accents for each, is presented with particular reference to prosodemes of the present-day Miryang and Changnyeng dialects and Middle Korean (from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 16th century) for each item.
In order to clarify the accents of dialectal lexicons, which are difficult to elicit through the questionnaires written in Standard Japanese, an accent survey based on the dialect vocabulary is made. Wordlists of the Okino-erabu island dialect of Japanese are given with the accentual information. In part 8, 875 four-syllable words are dealt with.
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