Word Order and Clause Structure in Early Old Japanese*

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show that there is a striking difference in word order between Modern Japanese and Early Old Japanese. Early Old Japanese lacks the canonical transitive pattern [Subject-ga Object-o V]. The basic word order in Early Old Japanese is [Subject-ga/no Object-B V], in which the subject is marked by the genitive ga or no and a morphologically unmarked object must appear immediately adjacent to the verb. When the object is marked by wo, it is obligatorily moved over a subject, resulting in [Object-wo Subject-ga/no V]. Following Miyagawa (1989) and Miyagawa and Ekida (2003), I argue that a bare object is assigned abstract case under the strict adjacency requirement, but that wo in Early Old Japanese does not function as an accusative case. The particle wo differs crucially from the case particle o in Modern Japanese in that it marks not only the direct object of a transitive verb, but all kinds of internal arguments of both transitive and intransitive verbs. Furthermore, wo conveys a definite interpretation. An element marked by wo moves to a particular structural position, namely Spec(vP) or Spec(CP), where it is assigned definite/topic interpretations.

C-T Inheritance and the left periphery in Old Japanese

“…Part of the evidence that the genitive subject remains in the vP comes from the fact that it follows an accusative marked object. Yanagida (2006) identifies an asymmetry 4 in OJ between bare objects and objects taking the particle wo: wo-marked objects are interpreted as specific and are required to precede a genitive subject, as in (9b), while bare objects remain in their base positions immediately preceding the verb, as shown in (9a). Yanagida analyzes wo-marked objects as undergoing object shift to the edge of vP.…”

“…Additional evidence for dislocation comes from the fact that focused constituents can precede objects marked with accusative wo. Given that the object must move minimally to the edge of vP, as per Yanagida (2006), the focus preceding this object has to be located outside of vP.…”

“…(35) repeats (33a) from section 3. Assuming with Yanagida (2006), Whitman (2009), andYanagida (2012) that these subjects receive inherent genitive case in their base positions in [Spec, vP], there is no need for them to move to [Spec, CP].…”

Syntactic Reanalysis of Pronouns as Demonstratives: A Case of Degrammaticalization

“…Ga and wo (the ancestor of accusative o) are functional heads and the clitics are head-adjoined to these particles. Clitics do 8 Under Kayne's (1994) Yanagida (2006) points out that OJ has a peculiar word order restriction; when the subject and object are both case-marked, the object necessarily precedes the subject. The clitic adjoined to genitive ga must appear immediately before the nominalized (rentai) verb (head adjunction is represented by "=," as in wa=ga): …”

“…Data cited here include personal pronouns written with phonographs but not the freestanding ideograph , which can be read with or without a case particle, depending on the metrical context. 10 Assuming with Chomsky (1995) that AgrP is eliminated and replaced by vP, Yanagida (2006) proposes that the OJ subject with ga appears in Spec, vP, and that the object obligatorily moves to Spec, CP. The genitive no is the head of PP, whereas the genitive ga is the Agr-head that takes the NP complement on its right.…”