Seminar in Linguistics 2008 : Abstracts

4/21 SON Jaehyun, "Accent Types and Their Correspondences in Korean Dialects"

The present paper introduces representative types of accent in the dialects of Korean, and examines both their distribution and their correspondences. By the comparison of the accent types among the Korean dialects, it is shown what kinds of corresponences there are, as well as what kind of process they underwent to reach the current stage. It concludes that the following four factors are relevant:

1. Delay of descent;
2. Delay of Ascent;
3. Establishment of the 'Phrase Type';
4. Integration of Types.

4/28 XU Yongxin, "A Contrastive Study on Ingestive Verbs in Japanese and Chinese"

Ingestive verbs (verbs of eating and drinking) occasionally exhibit typologically different behaviors from other verbs. The present paper proposes, in view of the syntactic features of ingestive verbs in Japanese and Chinese, that such verbs have two facets of transitive and reflexive. It can be shown that, depending on which facet is profiled, they present a duality in various constructions. The following three points are claimed:

1. The reason why the indefinite object frequently does not surface is because the agent has the characteristic of affectedness.
2. Whether or not a passive sentence can be formed in Japanese depends on which facet, transitive or reflexive, is being profiled.
3. The apparent violation of the so-called D(irect) O(bject) R(estriction) in Chinese is not so, as far as ingestive verbs are concerned, because the affectedness of the agent is being profiled.

5/12 KOGURA Norikazu, "The Auxiliary bi in Shibo and Deixis. Its Use in the Narrative"

The auxiliary bi in Shibo is used to express the 'mirativity' or inference of the speaker as well as in the context of folklore. These uses habe been discussed in terms of tense / aspect or of evidentiality, but not without problems. The present paper focuses on the occurrences of the auxiliary bi in folklore texts attempting to interpret its functions from the usage in the text. As a result it concludes that the auxiliary bi introduces a new 'deictic center'. A deictic center, a term proposed by Zubin and Hewitt (1995), is a reference point of deixis such as the speaker, or the time and place of the utterance. It can be shown that the use of the auxiliary bi serves to distinguish two deictic centers, of the narrater and the characters within the discourse.

5/19 HASEGAWA Sayaka, "Metonymy in the Words for Taste amai and sweet in Terms of Perception and Sensation"

The Japanese word amai and the English word sweet, both of which pertain primarily to the sense of taste, are conventionally extended to characterize attributes of other sensory domains. While most of these extended uses mean 'pleasing to the senses', there are a few examples where the semantic focus of these terms is shifted to the person pleased. The present paper seeks to identify the motivation for this metonymic extension. The two meanings of 'pleasing' and 'pleased' can be related to the concepts of perception and sensation: perception is triggered by the perceiver's discovery through a sensory organ of an entity in his/her surroundings, while sensation is a resulting event in the individual mind. Thus in actual experiences of perceiving something perception and sensation are not mutually exclusive but are comprehended as a whole, which motivates the metonymy in question.

5/26 UCHIHARA Hiroto, "Subject/Object in Cherokee"

Cherokee is characterized as having the active type of coding, with the grammatical relations such as subject / object being not represented explicitly. It has also been claimed that in Cherokee (or in the Iroquoian languages in general) the syntactic categories of subject / object do not exist because the criteria of subjecthood suggested by Keenan (1976) on the basis of the syntactic behavior are unapplicable to these languages. The present paper, however, attempts to show that the grammatical categories of subject / object do exist in Cherokee in view of the internal structure of the language as opposed to a mechanical application of Keenan's criteria. The arguments employed are as follows:

1. Alternation of active / stative according to the tense.
2. Defocusing by means of the middle voice affix ataa(t)-.
3. Causativization.

6/2 HAYATA Suzushi, "Existential Verbs in Mongolian of the Manzhou Shilu"

The present paper attempts a semantic / grammatical description of the verbs bayi- , bü-, a- in the Written Mongolian of the Manzhou Shilu, whereby the following two points are raised:

1. bayi- is an ordinary verb with the meaning 'halt of an action' (transitive) and 'the state of an action being halted' (intransitive). Although it can be used to express 'existence', it is not an 'existential verb'.
2. bü-, a- are auxiliaries / copulas. They can also be used as 'existential verbs'.

6/9 Mark ROSA, "Recent Discoveries in the Kaida-Writing of the Yaeyama Islands"

In late 2006, several artifacts stored at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka were discovered to contain kaida writing, the system used for recording taxes and other records in the Yaeyama islands of Okinawa until the early 20th century. This presentation will discuss wooden boards from Ishigaki island which contain both Japanese and kaida notation, as well as several previously-undeciphered paper records believed to be from Yonaguni. An attempt will be made to read the Yonaguni papers.

6/16 HORITA Koji, "The Accent of Compound Verbs and Verbs with the Suffix seru in the Tsubota Dialect, Miyake Island"

The accent of compound verbs in the Tsubota Dialect is decided by two rules as below:

1. If the first member of the compound (X) is a three-mora verb having the accent kernel on the basic form (shushi-kei), the accent kernel of the compound falls on the last mora of X;
2. Otherwise, the accent kernel of the second member (Y) serves as the kernel of the whole compound. If Y is kernelless, the accent kernel of the compound verb falls on the last mora.

Seru-forms, with the causative suffix -seru attached to the verb-stem, have an accent similar to compound verbs, behaving as if seru is a two mora verb as the second member (Y) having the accent kernel in the basic form. Thus the accent of the seru form falls on seru as the second member. Note that the accent of a two mora verb has the kernel on the initial mora, and seru has the kernel on se-.

6/23 NIINAGA Yuto, "The Accent System of Nouns in the Yuwan Dialect, Amami Oshima"

In the present paper it is claimed that two kinds of accent kernel is found in the noun of the Yuwan dialect, the falling and the high. The falling kernel causes the lower pitch after it, while the high kernel raises the pitch of a single mora. It is also claimed that the dialect distinguishes up to n+2 patterns of the falling kernel in the n-mora nouns, and up to 3 patterns of the high kernel in accordance with the position of the kernel. In some nouns the position of the kernel cannot be determined, which suggests that a diachronic change is in progress.

6/30 HIRATA Shu, "The Accent of the Three Mora Second Member of Compound Nouns in the Suzuka Dialect, Mie Prefecture"

The accent rules of the three-mora second member of compound nouns in the Suzuka dialect can be summarized as follows:

1. In the high onset (kouki-shiki) group, the kernel falls on the antepenultimate mora (-3 pattern).
2. In the low onset (teiki-shiki) group, the kernel falls on the antepenultimate mora in some words, while it falls on the penultimate mora in the others (-2 pattern). The accent of the second member and the special morae (Q, N etc.) therein are do not affect the choice of the accent pattern of the compound nouns.

2. is different from the rule of the Kyoto dialect.

7/7 TAKAYAMA Rintaro, "Reflections on the Diachronic Phonological Changes in the Dialect of Hachijo Island"

The present paper attempts to improve on some explanations hitherto given for diachronic phonological changes in the Hachijo dialect. 1. and 2. below represent the two major pathways of change. Note that B stands for a, o, u, F for e, i.

Some products of these changes such as a'u or o'u, o'o or o'a, e'i, a'i underwent further changes separately in each region of Hachijo, which made the vowel correspondences complicated.

7/14 KAJI Hiromi, "Problems of Notation and Phonological Interpretation of Even (Tungusic)"

The present paper deals with the phonological system of the Even language. Having surveyed the studies on this issue and their shortcomings, it proposes, chiefly on the basis of the notation in Эвенско-русский словарь by В.А. Роббек, М.Е. Роббек (2005), the following phonological system and the syllable structure.

At C2 only /j/ can appear. When C2 is absent, any consonant can appear at C1, but when /j/ is at C2, a consonant at C1 is limited to /p/, /b/, /m/, /t/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, or /h/.

7/14 WUNGPRADIT Apasara, "The Expression kamo shirenai 'possibly' not Expressing Possibility"

The present paper examines the Japanese expression kamo shirenai 'possibly' from the viewpoint of the speaker's knowledge, that is, wheteher or not the speaker is capable of the truth judgment of the proposition through his/her direct experience. As a result, it is shown that kamo shirenai can be used in both epistemic and evidential modalities. The cases examined can be summarized as follows:

1. Kamo 1 in the epistemic modality expresses a 'possibility', as generally recognized in the studies on modality, where the possibility of p and the possibility of ¬p coexist.
2. In utterances where kamo 2 in the evidential modality is used, the possibility of ¬p disappears. Kamo 2 is used under the condition of <:the speaker's evaluative judgment based on his/her direct experience>.
3. The evaluative judgment has the following features:
   1. Reference to the current situation
   2. Scalar predicates: psychological predicates, or standards for a specific individual or purpose.
4. Kamo 2 can be used as a hedge in the discourse referring to a vague area on the scale.

10/6 MORITA Tetsuya, "'Before' and 'After' in Space and Time. How Spatial-Temporal Metaphors Become Possible"

It is widely known that spatial expressions also refer to temporal expressions. Those temporal expressions are said to be metaphorical. The present paper tries to show why they are metaphorical and why language change concerning these expressions occurs in the direction from spatial to temporal, by looking at the front-back oriented spatio-temporal metaphors in Japanese and English.

10/20 SHIMADA Tamami, "Speakers' Awareness of Grammar in Irish English"

The evidence gathered from the survey conducted by the author in 2006 in southwest Ireland suggests that speakers of Hiberno-English make significant distinctions regarding what are favourable / unfavourable linguistic forms and regarding in what significant ways forms are associated with extra-linguistic icons, namely 'Irishness' and 'bad grammar'. The main aims of the present paper are to exhibit the numerical data concerning correlations of four categories of the subjective judgement ('use', 'non-use', 'Irishness' and 'bad grammar') and to examine how speakers’ awareness of 'Irishness' and 'Standard' is related to 'use' / 'non-use' judgements. Such lexical items as craic 'fun', and grammatical items as Hot-news Perfect be after V-ing, Perfect have, Durative be V-ing with Adverbial, and Habitual do be V-ing are discussed.

10/27 KAMBA Mariko, "The Use of Space for Person in JSL"

In Japanese Sign Language, verbs indicate persons by changing the direction of manual movement. They are called 'agreeing forms'. However, it happens that 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 'disagreeing form'. Kamba (2008) shows that the frequency of the disagreeing form varies from verb to verb. It also argues that the occurrence of the form is predictable if the concreteness of the verb object is considered. The present paper takes into consideration the phenomenon of referential shift and classification of verbs, and shows the direction of the research in the future.

11/10 IWASAKI Kanae, "Defining Word-Classes in Hawaiian: the Class of Noun-Verb"

In the description of Hawaiian grammar, in addition to the noun and the verb, a third word class called 'noun-verb' is required. This class can be used either as a noun or as a verb depending on the context. In this paper, the noun-verb class is recognized as 'the class of words which can be used with either the elements that usually co-occur with a noun or the elements that usually co-occur with a verb.' It is argued that :

1. a large number of the content words behave like noun-verbs, so the recognition of this class will make the grammatical (especially lexical) description much simpler, and,
2. other Polynesian languages very often recognize a similar word class.

11/17 Jennifer BOO, "A Survey of the Studies of language Loss and Their Problems"

Language attrition or loss is defined as permanent or temporary regression from a subject’s previous linguistic performance or competence at any linguistic level (phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics) in exerting any linguistic skill (speaking, listening, reading, writing and metalinguistic judgement). First, this paper reviews the existing attrition literature and introduces the theoretical frameworks used in these studies. The paper then discusses the analytical index used there in order to establish and clarify the rationale for the choice of each type of index, wherein the validity and reliability as a measurement are assessed. A general survey of the hypotheses of the relation between acquisition and the loss are also presented. With the understanding of the current development in the studies on language loss, further studies should be encouraged to promote an understanding of the language development in individuals not only through acquisition but also the attrition process.

12/8 YAMASHITA Rika, "Patterns of Multilinguism As Seen in Discourse. Global and Local Borrowings"

Code switching is still often labeled as a result of speakers' competence in the languages or the absence of an adequate form in the other language for cultural reasons. Although these biased views reflect the reality to some extent, they do not explain the vast majority of the phenomena. These views stem from form-oriented analysis, and here it is proposed that discourse-oriented view is more adequate in describing the phenomena in multilingual conversations. Two types of borrowing, or incorporation of L2 elements at lexical or phrasal level, are proposed, namingly local and global, with former stemming from on-the-spot discourse, and latter from previous discourse or other reasons such as speakers' mistakes or incompetency.

12/15 NAGASAWA Itsuki, "Semantic Development in Adverbs of Chinese Origin in Early Modern and Modern Japanese"

This paper discusses the semantic development of Sino-Japanese adverbs from the Early Modern Period (1868-1945) to the Present. Nine adverbs that have undergone remarkable semantic changes are taken up and their processes of semantic developments are traced. Each semantic change has a certain feature in common: in the process of change the adverbs gradually lost their literal meanings derived from the Chinese characters, and have become words that convey speaker's subjective attitude. Such semantic developments occurred relatively frequently during a short period of time. It might be triggered partly by particular social circumstances at the time when a modernized society was intensively pursued, and when a functional writing style which shed off the old-fashioned kanbun style was increasingly preferred.

12/15 KANAZAWA Yusuke, "The Perfect of the First Conjugation in the Carte Volgari in Old Sardinian"

The present paper explores possible processes of development of the personal endings in the first declension perfect on the basis of the Carte Volgari (1070-1226), a group of documents written in the Campidano dialect of Old Sardinian. It is shown that the first person singular ending -ei and third person singular ending -edi were formed on the analogy to the perfect forms dei and dedi, respectively, of the verb dari 'to give'. Moreover, while the third person plural ending -arunt can regularly go back to the corresponding Latin form, the first person ending -arus cannot, which must have been formed on the analogy to -arunt as parallel cases in other Romance languages suggest.

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