Diachronic Syntactic Change and Language Acquisition: A View from Nominative/Genitive Conversion in Japanese

Abstract

Harada (1971) argued some forty five years ago that the Japanese phenomenon called ''Nominative/Genitive Conversion'' (NGC) was undergoing a syntactic change, which was detected as idiolectal variations. Synchronically, Miyagawa (2011) argues that the NGC is not a free alternation but that more stative predicates are more likely to accept a Genitive subject. However, no one has ever proposed an argument that bridges the synchronic preference for ''stativity'' of the NGC and its diachronic syntactic change, which is characterized as ''stativization.'' In this article, we will show that the diachronic syntactic change has been in progress at least for the last 100 years. It will be shown that the semantic ''stativization'' is an epiphenomenon of the syntactic microparametric change which we refer to as ''clause shrinking,'' or a change in the syntactic size of the Genitive Subject Clause (GSC) from CP to TP to vP to VP/AP. Moreover, we will explain how such a drastic language change have actually influenced language acquisition for children who were born in different time periods, by integrating Kayne's (2000) microparametric syntax, Snyder's (2017) theory of competition between incompatible constructions, Lightfoot and Westergard's (2009) micro-cue analysis of language acquisition, Manzini and Wexler's (1987) Subset Principle, and Bošković (1997) Minimal Structure Principle.

Between word-formation and syntax: Cross-linguistic perspectives on an ongoing debate

“…)ga iru V (*no) i-nai A (*no) de/niyotte, ... Ken-NOM/GEN is (COMP) is-not COMP with/depending.on 'Depending on whether Ken is here or not, ...' Second, in the standard NGC, the Nominative Case on the subject is unmarked, while the Genitive Case is marked. Nambu's (2014) and Ogawa's (2018) independent corpus studies show that the GSC has become less frequent in the last 100 years or so for colloquial Japanese and written Japanese, respectively, and Niikuni et al's (2017) and Ogawa et al's (2017) investigations show that the GSC is becoming increasingly unacceptable among younger age groups if the predicate is eventive. Moreover, the CHJ shows that while the standard NGC was found frequently from the Heian period (about the 800s to 1200s AD) on, the NACC of the coordination type in (1b) and (2b) types was almost never found before the Meiji period (from the 1860s on), and when it first emerged as a new construction, the Genitive subject was more frequent than the Nominative (as will be seen in Table 2 below).…”

“…The two points will be shown by corpus studies and large-scale acceptability-rating experiments targeting hundreds of participants. The diachronic change in the NGCC shows that it has been undergoing what Ogawa (2014) calls "syntactic constructionalization," while the diachronic change in the NGC shows that it has been undergoing what Ogawa (2018) calls "clause shrinking." Given Bader and Häussler's (2010) experiments, there is a correlation between the frequency and acceptability of syntactic constructions.…”

Grammaticalization from Minimizer to Focus Marker as Upward Reanalysis along the Nominal Spine*

“…I thank Yosuke Sato for bringing this issue to my attention. See alsoOgawa (2018) andOgawa et al (2017Ogawa et al ( , 2020b for the possibility of intergenerational variations within a single speech community.…”