Argument Structure and Ditransitive Verbs in Japanese

Abstract

Ditransitive verbs such as send and give appear in two distinct structures in English, the double object and the to-dative constructions. It is well known that the two differ semantically and syntactically. In some recent works, it is suggested that the semantic differences observed by Bresnan (1978), Oehrle(1978) and others, and the structural properties noted by Barss and Lasnik (1986), Larson (1988), and others, can both be captured by postulating an extra head for the DOC (e.g., Marantz 1993, Harley 1995, Pylkkänen 2002. This head, which corresponds to the applicative head in Bantu languages, takes the goal as its specifier, and relates it to the VP that contains the verb and the theme (Marantz 1993), or directly to the theme (Pylkkänen 2002). The applicative head contributes the meaning distinct to the DOC and it gives rise to the hierarchical structure noted by Barss and Lasnik. This applicative head is missing in the todative, so that this construction has an argument structure distinct from the DOC.In this paper, we will look at the corresponding construction(s) in Japanese.Unlike English, Japanese appears only to have one structure, in which the goal is marked with the dative and the theme with the accusative case marking. The goaltheme order is assumed to be the basic order (Hoji 1985, Takano 1998, Yatsushiro 1998, 2003. The only variation is that the theme can occur before the goal, but this is viewed simply as an instance of optional scrambling. We will give arguments that the difference between English and Japanese is only apparent.With close scrutiny, we find that the two argument structures corresponding to the DOC and the to-dative in English exist in Japanese.

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Canonical Word Order of Japanese Double Object Constructions

“…There have been a number of studies on the canonical word order of Japanese double object constructions ranging from theoretical studies (Hoji, 1985;Miyagawa and Tsujioka, 2004) to empirical ones based on psychological experiments (Koizumi and Tamaoka, 2004;Nakamoto et al, 2006;Shigenaga, 2014) and brain science (Koso et al, 2004;Inubushi et al, 2009). However, most of them required either manual analyses or measurements of human characteristics such as brain activities or reading times for each example.…”

Significance of Linear Information in Prosodically Constrained Syntax

“…The examples in (4) are accusative-V idioms and those in (5), dative-V idioms, in the sense that reversing the two DPs is impossible or results in the loss of idiomatic meanings as shown in the starred counterparts (Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004), Kishimoto (2008) Although the degree of idiomaticity seems to differ from one idiom to another (Kishimoto (2008: 149)), the idioms in (4) and (5) are thought to be fixed expressions and consist of fixed combinations of lexical items. A generalization is that idiom elements are linearly adjacent, accusative-V or dative-V, in Japanese.…”

“…On the basis of data from nominalized clauses, and adopting the introduction of an Appl(icative)P(phrase) to ditransitive constructions (Pylkkänen (2002), Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004)), Kishimoto (2008) argues that accusative-V and dative-V idioms in Japanese are base-generated as in (8a) and (8b), respectively. (Idiom sequences are circled below.)…”

Mandarin Distributive Quantifier Ge ‘Each’, The Structures Of Double Complement Constructions And The Verb–Preposition Distinction

“…While the double object and the dative constructions have received much attention in the literature, their exact structures remain controversial (Larson (1988), Aoun and Li (1989), Marantz (1993), Pesetsky (1995), Harley (1995Harley ( , 2002, Baker (1996), Bruening (2001), Richards (2001), McGinnis (2001aMcGinnis ( , 2001b, Pylkka¨nen (2002), Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004)). One aspect of the disagreement is whether there is more structure in the double object construction than in the dative construction.…”

“…One aspect of the disagreement is whether there is more structure in the double object construction than in the dative construction. For example, Marantz (1993) argues that the double object construction involves an additional VP layer compared to the dative construction (see also Bruening (2001), Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004)). On the other hand, Pesetsky (1995) and Harley (1995Harley ( , 2002 assign structures of equal complexity to both the double object and the dative constructions.…”