2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Contrastive syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic studies of noun phrases
| Project/Area Number |
15520258
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Research Institution | HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
YOSHIDA Mitsunobu Hiroshima University, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 総合科学部, 教授 (90182790)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2005
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| Keywords | Noun Phrase / Reference / Syntax / Determiner / Quantifier Expression / Semantics / Genericity / Language Parameters |
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| Research Abstract |
1)We compare Japanese with English, German, and other languages with respect to noun categories, and investigate their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties. Previous studies including Krifka (1989), Chierchia (1998) etc. argue that there is only a mass noun type as noun categories in languages with rich classifier systems (e.g. Chinese and Japanese) that lack both articles and plural morphemes. They claim that all the nouns of this language type denote kinds (classes). However, we point out that although Japanese nouns correspond to mass noun type syntactically, they nonetheless show distinction of countable mass nouns like "furniture" and non-countable mass nouns like "water". The former type refers to a minimal unit as an individual object and starts from a predicate type instead of a kind type. Therefore, Chierchia's nominal mapping parameter (1997) should be revised. Furthermore, we point out that German and English, which belong to Germanic languages, show syntactic and semantic differences with respect to the behavior of definite articles, suggesting that the nominal mapping parameter is not sufficient to explain these properties.
2)We point out that Japanese has plural morphemes "-tachi" and argues that the nouns with this plural denote plural objects or associate plural objects like "Taro and his friends".
3)We analyze generic meanings of Japanese noun phrases in comparison with English and German. We analyze Japanese numeral classifiers and their syntactic variations like "san-nin-no gakusei" or "gakusei san-nin" (=three students) and argue that they are derived from different underlying syntactic structures.
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