scholarly journals Appositive possession in Ainu and around the Pacific

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bugaeva ◽  
Johanna Nichols ◽  
Balthasar Bickel
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Finite Clause

Abstract Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inalienable into two different phenomena: argument structure (with types based on possessibility: optionally possessible, obligatorily possessed, and non-possessible) and valence (alienable, inalienable classes). Valence-changing operations are derived alienability and derived inalienability. Our survey classifies the possessive systems of languages in these terms.

Niuean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Massam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

Unsettling Memories of Japanese Migrant Sex Workers: Carceral Mobilities of the Transpacific Underground at the Turn of the 20th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Ayaka Yoshimizu
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Sex Trade ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of

Between 1908 and 1909 and in 1912, Vancouver-based journalist Shohei Osada published a two-part series entitled “Exploration of Devil Caves” in a local Japanese language newspaper, detailing the lives of Japanese migrants involved in the sex trade in Canada. The series showcases the presence of underground networks that extended across the continent and the Pacific, or what I call the “transpacific underground.” Many characters in Osada’s series are transient migrants, who did not settle in any one specific nation but continued moving on across multiple borders seeking new opportunities, or sometimes, last resort for survival. By reading Osada’s writing closely, this article develops the notion of the transpacific underground as method to engage the history of migrant sex workers and understand it from a carceral space of migration regulated by multiple imperial and colonial forces, gendered nationalist ideologies, and human trafficking, making migrant women’s movements forced but also transgressive and open-ended.

The End of the War in the Pacific

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-250
Author(s):  
Peter Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Tokyo Bay ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
Language School

The Allies were making plans to invade the Japanese main islands in late 1945 and spring 1946 when the Japanese government, following the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan, decided to bring the war to an end and the Emperor broadcast the decision on the radio on 15 August. On 27 August a fleet of Allied ships entered Tokyo Bay and the surrender ceremony took place on 2 September on board the battleship USS Missouri. On board the British battleship HMS King George V was a British naval officer who had learnt Japanese at the US Navy Japanese Language School: he acted as interpreter when a Japanese pilot came on board to guide the ship to its anchorage. Other surrender ceremonies took place in Hong Kong, Singapore and other places which had been captured by Japanese forces: on each occasion Allied linguists were present to act as interpreters.

The Wavy Navy in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-206
Author(s):  
Peter Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Junior Officers ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
Language School

In 1943 five junior officers in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve made their way to Boulder, Colorado, to join a course at the US Navy Japanese Language School. The US Navy had turned its attention to Japanese language training before the outbreak of war, largely thanks to the efforts of two intelligence officers who had grown up in Japan. While the US Army began training Japanese Americans, the US Navy Japanese Language School did not accept Japanese Americans as students but did use them as teachers. Most of the five RNVR officers already had extensive naval experience, including combat on the high seas, but they finished their 18-month course too late to be able to play much of a part in the war, unlike their American fellow students, who saw action in the Pacific.

scholarly journals Tunnekausatiivilauseen argumenttirakenne II

Virittäjä ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saara Huhmarniemi
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Lower Position ◽  
Express Emotion ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Complement Clause ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Finite Clause

Suomen tunnekausatiivilause muodostuu tunnetta ilmaisevasta verbistä, johon liittyy tyypillisesti partitiivimuotoinen kokija, aiheuttaja tai kumpikin. Aiheuttaja voi olla paitsi nominatiivimuotoinen NP myös lausemainen, kuten ­A-infinitiivi, kun-lause, että-lause tai alisteinen kysymyslause. Tämän artikkelin tavoitteena on osoittaa generatiivisen syntaksin työkaluja käyttäen, että A-infinitiivi ja että-lause sijoittuvat tunnekausatiivi­lauseen argumenttirakenteessa komplementti­positioon, kun taas aiheut­tajana toimiva kun-lause voi sijoittua joko adjunkti- tai komplementti­positioon. Lisäksi artikkelissa esitetään Suomi24-korpusaineiston perusteella, että tunne­kausatiivien luokittelu tunne- ja tuntemusverbeihin korreloi lausemaisen aiheuttaja-argumentin yleisyyden kanssa. Artikkeli on toinen osa kahden artikkelin sarjasta. Ensimmäisessä osassa esitettiin, että aiheuttajana toimiva NP asettuu rakenteessa tyypillisesti ylemmäs kuin kokija. Koska lausemainen aiheuttaja asettuu välttämättä komplementtiin ja alemmas kuin kokija, tunnekausatiivilauseen argumenttirakenne näyttää siis vaihtelevan ainakin aiheuttaja-­argumentin tyypin mukaan.   The argument structure of the Finnish experiencer construction II: An embedded clause as a causer argument This paper investigates the Finnish experiencer construction, which involves a psychological predicate and two optional arguments: the nominative causer and the partitive experiencer. The causer argument can be clausal, such as the A infinitive, the kun clause, a finite clause headed by the complementizer että, or an embedded interrogative clause. Mua    jännittää                      kertoa   tämä         sulle. (colloquial) I.par   excite.caus.pres.3sg   tell.inf   this.nom   you.to ‘I’m excited to tell you about this.’ The aim of this paper is to show within the framework of generative syntax that the A infinitive and the finite complement clause occupy the complement position in the experiencer construction, while the kun clause may occupy either the adjunct or complement position. The syntactic analysis is complemented with a corpus analysis of a corpus taken from the Suomi24 online messaging site. The comprehensive Finnish grammar divides experiencer verbs into two classes: those that express emotion and those that express sensation. The corpus analysis shows that verb type correlates with the frequency of a clausal causer. This article is the second in a series of two. The first article investigated constructions in which the causer argument was an NP. It demonstrated that the causer NP -occupies a higher position in the argument structure than the experiencer NP. In this -article, the author argues that a clausal causer occupies a lower position than the experiencer. This means that the experiencer construction has alternating argument structures for different types of causers.

Space as space and space as grammar

Gesture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Haviland
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Spatial Orientation ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Spatial Frames Of Reference ◽  
Spatial Grammar

Abstract Research on narratives in an Australian language demonstrated surprising facts about speakers’ spatial orientation and knowledge both in the insistent use of morphologically hypertrophied spoken directional terminology and in accompanying gestures. Pursuing comparable phenomena in a Mayan language from the other side of the globe revealed correspondingly complex gestural devices for communicating about location and direction but with very different kinds of support from speech. Evidence from a new sign language, emerging in the same Mayan context, suggests that mechanisms for signing about space both resemble and depart from the gestural practices of the surrounding speech community. In particular, they invoke spatial “frames of reference” not used by speakers to sign about location and direction, and they employ signed “spatial grammar” to express syntactic argument structure.

A linguistically-informed way of introducing Japanese verbs to second language learners

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-72
Author(s):  
J.-R. Hayashishita ◽  
Daiki Tanaka ◽  
Ayumi Ueyama
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Reference Book ◽  
Japanese Speakers

AbstractThis paper describes how the Japanese speakers’ knowledge is organized in regards to verbs, and proposes a linguistically-informed way of introducing it to second language learners. It is maintained by a number of researchers that each verb is stored with the information of its argument structure in the speaker’s mental lexicon. That is, a given verb is stored with the information of how many arguments it takes and what types of arguments they are. In this paper, capitalizing on this assumption, we will maintain that the knowledge of the native speakers of Japanese is organized in such a way that if a verb gives rise to n-number of different meanings, there are n-number of lexical entries, and each such entry is independently stored with the information concerning the meaning of the verb, the verb arguments and their accompanying particles. After the description of the organization of Japanese speakers’ knowledge in regards to verbs, as an effective way of introducing this to Japanese language learners, the paper proposes the format of an innovative approach to Japanese verbs reference book. This proposed format capitalizes on full sentence definitions in the sense of the Collins Cobuild Dictionary.

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