Cognitive Linguistic Research on Grammaticalization of

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K02634
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Osaka City University
• Principal Investigator: YAMAZAKI Masato 大阪市立大学, 英語教育開発センター, 教授 (00241498)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 認知言語学 / 文法化 / 試行マーカー / アジア諸言語 / 視覚動詞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Several Asian languages share the grammaticalized element which derives from a visual verb and functions as a conative marker. The present study proposes the criteria for comparison of conative functions among Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Mongolian, Modern Uyghur, Vietnamese and Thai, all of whose linguistic data are available from their native speakers. The Written Manchu literatures also provide examples of this phenomenon. This study includes languages in north, central and south-east Asia, concluding that Japanese and Korean in the east region demonstrate visual verbs in more advanced stages of grammaticalization as conative markers. It also demonstrates that there is a contrastive clusterlike difference in functions of grammaticalized conative words originating from visual verbs between languages with agglutinative syntactic structures like Japanese, Korean and Altaistic languages and languages with isolating syntactic structures like Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本語と似ている言語が近隣のアジア諸国にどのくらいあるのか、それはどのくらい似ているのかを日本社会に発信して行くことは、学術的・社会的意義がある。ことに、アジアの一言語である日本語と他のアジア諸語にはどのような類似する表現、とりわけ似た発想に基づく表現があるかを具体的な事例をもって示すことは、文字や語彙の借用のように歴史的交流以外にもアジア的発想の広がりを探る研究として、日本語を他のアジア諸語との関係性の中で適切に位置づける研究として意義があると考える。