Historical and contrastive study of grammatical voice description: by means of constructional network

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K02726
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Shiba Ayako 名古屋大学, 人文学研究科, 准教授 (80570423)
• Research Collaborator: Aoki Hirofumi ; Okabe Yoshiyuki
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 受身・可能・自発 / 自然発生 / ヴォイス / 中動態 / 視点 / 非情の受身 / ラレルの多義性 / 自動詞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We demonstrated that the reason behind the absence of the agent-defocusing passive (inanimate subject passive) is that Japanese developed the non-volitional/potential construction with “rare” in the area where other languages have developed the agent-defocusing passive. Contrasting the voice system in Early Middle Japanese with the Spanish middle voice system (reflexive construction), we can observe that both languages have extended the grammatical voice construction from the spontaneous intransitive construction. However while the Spanish middle voice established the agent-defocusing passive which signifies that "the event (is caused to) occurs by someone", the Japanese "rare" established the non-volitional/potential construction, expressing that "the event occurs spontaneously to someone."

Free Research Field

日本語文法

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は，独自の観点から古代語のラルが持つ受身（人主語），可能，自発，尊敬といった多義性にせまり，自然発生的自動詞文とのつながりと相違点を明らかにした。自然発生的自動詞文から再分析によって取り出されたラルは，人間に視点を置いて，「人間に対して行為が自然発生する（変化が実現する）」という述べ方で述べる構文であったと考えられる。このため，中立視点の非情主語受身文を持たなかった。こうしたラル構文の特性が，上のような多義の体系を作り出したと考えられる。