by maik

Tokyo University Linguistic Papers Vol. 29 : Abstracts


FUKUI Rei, "An Accentological View of Middle Korean Tones Reflected in the Musical Score of Chihwapyeng"

This paper shows that Middle Korean tones are regularly reflected in the melody of Chihwapyeng, a piece of Korean classical music composed in the 15th century and included in the Sejong Sillok (Chronicle of King Sejong). This finding leads to a deeper understanding of the phonetic reality and phonological characteristics of the tonal or accentual system of Middle Korean.


HAYASI Tooru, "Difference between the Turkish Varieties Spoken in Istanbul and Berlin in the Usage of Demonstratives"

In Berlin about 190,000 of the residents have the Turkish immigrant background. The purpose of this study is to characterize the Turkish variety spoken in Berlin by comparing it to the variety spoken in Istanbul. The data are responses to a linguistic questionnaire on the selection of the three demonstratives bu, şu and o in various contexts. 32 students in the 9th and 10th grades from Berlin and 58 from Istanbul participated in the survey. The result shows that although a demonstrative chosen as the most appropriate token differs from question to question, responses of the Berlin and Istanbul students show quite a similar pattern of selection. This may suggest that even second and third generation immigrants retain pragmatic knowledge necessary for the usage of demonstratives, which usually form a major obstacle for those learning Turkish as a foreign language.


HOSHI Izumi, "Existential Verbs in the rGyal-rabs gSal-ba’i Me-long, a 14th Century Tibetan Narrative"

A pragmatic distinction in terms of a speaker’s knowledge is known to exist between the existential verbs yod and ’dug (or their cognates) inseveral Tibetan dialects; this knowledge may be old and assimilated or newly acquired.

This paper attempts to trace the history of this type of distinction between these verbs through a comparison among Modern Tibetan, Old Tibetan (9th to 11th century), and Middle Tibetan (14th century).

It has been revealed that almost the same distinction that is seen in Modern Tibetan dialects can be found in the 14th century narrative rGyalrabs gSal-ba’i Me-long, and that these verbs were already being used as auxiliary verbs and carried aspectual or inferential functions. Thus, it can be concluded that the grammaticalization of these verbs dates back to the 14th century.


JABŁOŃSKI Arkadiusz, "Phatic Function of Language and Cross-Cultural Communication"

Phatic function of language is a long-established, yet not fully described concept. In this paper, the concept will be analyzed and proposed as a convenient tool for cross-cultural linguistic studies.

With numerous concepts propagated during recent years, linguistics still seems to be rather far from its most challenging pragmatic goal, that is, scientific explanation of the issues related to cross-cultural (mis)communication. Unfortunately, many promising explanation techniques miss their target. The problem lies, as the article points out, in the fact that the concepts of foreign cultures are often explained regardless of wider (phatic) cultural context. Several cases of misunderstandings resulting from this fact will be critically assessed including Wierzbicka’s approach to the description of Japanese vs. non-Japanese communication. Furthermore, a number of Japanese vs. Polish cross-cultural (mis)communication cases will be analyzed according to the “phatic context” approach proposed in this paper.


KANG YoungSuk, "The Accent Kernel and Word-tone of the Tongyeong-si Dialect of Korean"

In this paper I will describe the accent system of the Tongyeong-si dialect, located in wastern Gyeongsangnamdo in Korea .This dialect exhibits an (n+2)-way opposition for monosyllabic and bisyllabic nouns, and a (n+1)-way opposition for nouns longer than that. It has the prosodic properties of accent kernel and word-tone. In contrast to other interpretation, I discuss the characteristic of accent kernel and word-tone in the accent system of the Tongyeong-si dialect.


KAWASUZAKI Hideyuki, "Comparison of the Accent Systems of Korean Spoken in China"

This paper describes the accent systems of Korean spoken in China and attempts to project the direction of accent change by comparing the systems of speakers from various areas. The accent systems of Korean spoken in China are said to be similar to those of Korean spoken in Hamgyŏng-do. The existing studies on Korean accents focus on the Gyeongsang-do accent; this paper, however, introduces another aspect of data with regard to Korean accents.

First, the data from six speakers from various areas are introduced and compared with each other, focusing on the accent alternation when the subjective marker (-i/-ga) or the locative marker (-e) is attached to nouns and when various endings are attached to verbs.

Then, the accent data of those speakers are compared to those of Middle Korean and which contrast (or accent type) is likely to disappear is discussed. Concretely speaking, the type of no accent is likely to fade away; moreover, closed syllables at the end of words tend to lose accent and open syllables at the end of words tend to gain accent.


LEE Munsuk, "Reexamination of the Accent of Jeolla-do Dialect"

It has been assumed that Jeolla-do dialect does not have a distinctive accentual system based on the fact that the segmental features are strongly relevant in the distribution of accent classes and that extensive variation among different generations and individuals is observed. This paper aims to challenge this problem by expanding the notion of “accent” itself and concludes that Jeolla-do dialect has a kind of distinctive accentual system (accent in transition) which may not be used to distinguish words in minimal pairs but exhibits customarily shared patterns within the same community. The influence of segmental features and the variations/confusions appear more widely as the accentual change proceeds, and so the older and younger generations in Jeonju dialect show quite different accentual systems as a result.


MACHIDA Ken, "On the Specification Process of the Temporal Properties of the Events Expressed by Sentences"

Events expressed by sentences include temporal properties like the time intervals where events happen (past, present, future), closeness (totality, partiality), plurality (habit, repetition). What specifies these temporal properties is the composing process of the lexical or functional properties of the morphemes constituting sentences. In this composing process, no simple summing up of the properties of the morphemes takes place, but these properties are so adjusted that possibilities of inconsistency among the related semantic properties will be excluded. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the way the semantic properties of the morphemes are mutually adjusted to finally determine the temporal properties of the events expressed by the string of the morphemes.


MIMURA Tatsuyuki, "Varieties of Stress Accent –Towards the Typology of Stress Accent–"

This paper aims at revealing how diverse stress accent is and propounding the theory of stress accent typology from the view point of the Nordic languages.

Compared with pitch accent and tone, there are still some aspects left unrevealed with respect to stress accent. For instance, it has long been claimed that the accent system of Norwegian whose stressed syllable is accompanied by either of two tonal patterns is a complex or ‘coexistence’ of tone and stress or an ‘intermediate’ entity between pitch and stress accent.

In the present paper, the author first argues against the previous accounts, pointing out that all the earlier studies have little understanding of stress accent. Second, through a close examination of the accentual phenomena of Norwegian, the author claims that the accent system of Norwegian is a sort of stress accent. The author also examines several prosodic phenomena of Danish, another Nordic language, and claims the accent system of the language which seemingly is a complex of glottalization and stress is also a sort of stress accent. Finally, from the thorough examination of those languages, the author concludes that stress accent is to be classified into several subcategories in terms of phonetic characteristics involved and thereby attempts to establish the typology of stress accent.


NAGASAWA Itsuki, "From Space to Individual: Semantic Change of the Japanese Noun zibun in Compounds"

The Japanese noun zibun ‘self’ grammatically functions as an anaphor or a reflexive pronoun, and sometimes as a first personal pronoun. The extent of the functions of zibun is based on its own meaning, but the lexical meaning itself has not been given much consideration. The aim of this paper is to cast a light on a semantic aspect of this word, and show that the present meaning of zibun is different from that of the early modern and the modern periods, by examining 42 compound words. The conclusions are as follows:

  1. zibun in the early modern and the modern periods, which was used as zibun-yōzi ’private business’, zibun-issatu ‘a family register of a feudal retainer’, zibun-ie ‘one’s own house’, and zibun-gami ’hairstyle tied up or neatly arranged by oneself rather than by a specialist’, referred to a (mental) territory belonging to an entity. The scope of the territory was not fixed: it might be a political domain or a family or an individual person. It was a kind of spatial expression. The use of zibun as a first personal pronoun has developed from this.
  2. The present zibun, however, has lost the characteristic of a spatial expression, and has become a word that indicates an individual person: it refers to ‘self ‘ or ‘oneself’. It forms compounds like zibun-siyō ‘customized’, zibun-ryū ‘one’s own manner’, and zibun-zikan ‘leisure time for oneself’, in which zibun means a person who is different from everyone else.

NAKAGAWA Hiroshi, "Plural and/or Iterative Marker of Ainu Verbs - pa and ci"

In the Ainu language, pa, which has been treated as a verb suffix forming a plural form, can be divided into a verb suffix pa1 and a free form(auxiliary) pa2. pa1 spreads over all of the Hokkaido dialects, whereas the distributions of pa2 are different according to the dialects: while it is productive in the Saru dialect, it is limited to few verbs in the Shizunai dialect. By contrast the iterative form ci is absent in the Saru and Chitose dialects, while it is very productive as an auxiliary in the Shizunai and Abuta dialect.

From these phenomena it can be inferred as follows.

Formerly the verb suffix pa (pa1) and ci were used to indicate plurality and/or iterativity of verb phrases, assigned different functions each other. Then gradually the free form pa2 has emerged from pa1 and replaced ci, leaving only suffixed iki-ci or other few verbs. Furthermore in the Saru dialect even the suffixed -ci was replaced by pa, so that now we can observe both iki- pa1 and iki pa2 in the dialect.


SHIOHARA Asako, "Desiderative Markers in Sumbawa"

Sumbawa is a language spoken in the western part of Sumbawa Island, Indonesia. This study deals with the two modal markers that indicate the desiderative in this language: ma and its negative form, na that occur either in jussive main clauses or purposive subordinate clauses. Their distribution, synchronically, can be explained by the fact that both the jussive and the purposive are expressions of a desire for the expressed situation to be realized. Cross-linguistically, it is not unusual to see the same marking for expressing the jussive and the purposive. However, in most languages with them (e.g., Spanish), the markings are a part of wider category of mood, such as subjunctive. The distribution of ma and na in Sumbawa is uncommon in that it can be directly related to its desiderative meaning, mentioned above.


SON Jaehyun, "Accent in the Daegu Dialect of Korean"

This paper presents an interpretation from renewed angles of the Daegu dialect of North Gyeongsang-do in Korean and also provides a comprehensive analysis of previous literature on them based on author's research.


UTSUMI Atsuko, "Pitch Accent in the Bantik Language"

This paper aims to present a detailed description of the accent system of the Bantik language. A West Malayo-Polynesian language, Bantik, is spoken in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is a member of the Philippine language group, some of which have phonemic stress. The pitch height has a distinctive function in the Bantik language as well. It is suggested that the difference in the pich height in Bantik is best described as ‘pitch accent’ rather than ‘stress’. The term ‘accent nucleus’ is employed to indicate the considerable pitch fall within a base, which has been called ‘stress’ in other authors’ articles. The position of the accent nucleus in bases in Bantik and the influence of other linguistic elements over it are discussed in this paper.


YOSHIDA Hiromi, ""Impersonal" Expressions Using the Construction da> in the Azpeitia Dialect of Basque"

This paper deals with "impersonal" expressions using the construction da> in the Azpeitia dialect of Basque. It is argued that this expression is likely to be acceptable with a certain kind of verb, with absolutive NPs of inanimate, indefinite or plural meaning, and without NPs suggesting a definite agent or experiencer.


YOVKOVA-SHII Eleonora, "Informational Structure and Grammatical Functions"

This paper deals with the Bulgarian –l participle and the Japanese particle ‘ga’. The reason for these two distinct linguistic forms to be treated together is that both behave in the same way toward expressing information. The Bulgarian –l participle has various functions like ‘inference’, ‘hearsay’ or ‘admirativity’. The Japanese particle ‘ga’ also has functions which, at first glance, cannot be related to the basic semantic feature of this particle. However, the informational structure of the propositions in which these specific usages are found, justifies the relationship between the specific usages and the basic functions of these two forms.


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