A Cognitive Grammar of Japanese Clause Structure

Abstract

This volume represents the first comprehensive work on Japanese clause structure conducted within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. The author proposes schematic conceptual structures for the major constructions in the language and defines Japanese case marking and grammatical relations in purely conceptual terms. The work thus makes a convincing case for the conceptual basis of grammar, thereby constituting a strong argument against the autonomy of syntax hypothesis of Generative Grammar. The volume should be of interest to any researcher wishing to know how Cognitive Grammar, whose primary focus has been on the non-syntactic aspects of language, can explain the clausal structure of a given language in a detailed, comprehensive, yet unifying manner. In addition to its theoretical findings, the volume contains a number of revealing analyses and interpretations of Japanese data, which should be of great interest to all Japanese linguists, irrespective of their theoretical persuasions.

Notes on word order variation in Korean

“…The reference point status of the first nominal in (20) has been extensively discussed in the literature, and interested readers should refer to the representative research, such as Kumashiro & Langacker (2003) and Kumashiro (2016). These authors assume that the reference point appears in the left-most position, leaving utterances like (19) unexplained.…”

Diachronic Cognitive Linguistics

“…Japan and China that have contributed immensely to broadening the scope of cognitive-linguistic concepts to other languages (see e.g. Kumashiro 2016;Shu et al 2019, to mention just two examples). Also, sign language linguistics has become increasingly important in Cognitive Linguistics, and vice versa, cognitive-linguistic approaches have become more prominent in sign language linguistics (see e.g.…”