A descriptive study of the relativity of the noun in Japanese: Its grammar and meaning

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520504
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Osaka City University
• Principal Investigator: NIWA Tetsuya 大阪市立大学, 大学院文学研究科, 教授 (20228266)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 日本語文法 / 名詞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The noun is the most understudied aspect of Japanese grammar. We focus on abstract nouns and aim to shed light on their semantic and grammatical characters, especially the “adnominal clause-head noun” structure (jiken- ga okita haikei (“the background where the event occurred”)), the “noun-adnominal particle no -head noun” structure (jiko- no gen-in (“the cause of the accident”)/ kanojo- no seikaku (“her character”)), the existence and location construction (kono kyoku-niwa dokusousei-ga aru. (“There is originality in this music.”)/hito-wa sinu unmei-ni aru. (“A human being is destined to die.”)), and the copular construction (shourai-no kenen-wa infure-da. (“Our future anxiety is inflation.”)). We investigated the sub-classification of each structure/construction, the relations between them, and the relations between the semantic class and their structures/constructions. Our analysis laid the groundwork for compiling an abstract nominal lexicon.

Free Research Field

日本語文法