The Syntax of the Sar- Expression in Iwate Dialect and Its Implications for Voice System in Japanese

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370453
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Iwate Prefectural University
• Principal Investigator: Takahashi Hideya 岩手県立大学, 公私立大学の部局等, 准教授 (90312636)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ヴォイス / 分散形態論 / 重層的動詞句構造 / 自他交替 / 可能動詞 / ラサル形式 / ラ抜き言葉 / レ足す言葉

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study considered empirical phenomena in the domain of Voice in the Japanese language which include (i) causative/inchoative alternation with ar- and e-, (ii) the spontaneous and potential usage of sar- expressions in Iwate dialect, and (iii) dialectal variations of potential verbs such as ra-dropped and re-added expressions in Tokai area, from the view point of the decompositional approach to the structure of VP. This study revealed that those three phenomena are given a unified treatment in morphosyntactic terms: the morphemes s-, ar-, and e- are distinct bundles of syntactic features and thus occupy three distinct syntactic heads in the multi-layered VP structure, which is followed by the "late" lexical insertion in PF. Specifically, it was shown that the apparent diversity on the occurrence of the morpheme e- is naturally captured on the assumption that it is the realization of the topmost verbal functional category Get.

Free Research Field

人文学・言語学・統語論