2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Plausibility of Conceptual Expansion of Nominal Participants

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19520420
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	English linguistics
Research Institution	Osaka University
Principal Investigator	OKADA Sadayuki Osaka University, 大学院・文学研究科, 教授 (90233329)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	意味 / 概念拡張 / 際だち / 語彙選択 / 比較基準 / 比較形態素
Research Abstract	Starting with the typological survey of Japanese-type languages which allow the conceptual expansion of the comparative standard in the basic comparative construction and English-type languages which do not allow the same type of expansion, this research tried to identify the general conditions licensing the conceptual expansion of nominal participants in a given sentence. As a result, the following general tendency was found : the participant in question should be either lexically selected by the main predicate of the given clause, or ceded a salient status from the standpoint of the constructional meaning. In other words, conceptual expansion of a nominal participant is likely to be induced when that participant is regarded as a salient element in the clause.