Structural analysis of modern Japanese

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STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN JAPANESE

Bernard Saint-Jacques

University of British Columbia Publications Centre

Vancouver

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN JAPANESE

© 1971 by University of British Columbia All rights reserved.

Parts of this book have been translated from ANALYSE STRUCTURALE DE LA SYNTAXE DU JAPONAIS MODERNE

© 1966 by Salesian Press, Tokyo. Published by Librairie C. Klincksieck, Paris.

1234567890 EP 987654321

SBN 9 1 9 4 9 4 -5 3 - 5

Printed in Canada by Evergreen Press Vancouver, B.C.

TO A N D R fi MARTINET

Contents

Foreword ....................

ix

Preface

xi

............................................................................................................

Introduction ........................................................................................................ xiii Chapter

1 ： LINGUISTIC INDEPENDENCE IN JA PA N ESE ........ 1 Three forms of the minimal independent syntagm.

Chapter

2 : THE MINIMAL UTTERANCE IN JA PA N ESE ...........

8

Message-bearing morphemes; actualizing morphemes; the minimal utterance as a functional unit.

vii

Chapter

3: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MINIMAL UTTERANCE IN JA PA N ESE ...........................................

21

The position of the minimal utterance in the sequence of speech.

Chapter

4: LINGUISTIC AUTONOMY IN JAPANESE

Chapter

5: AUTONOMOUS SYNTAGMS, AUTONOMY-PRO­ VIDING MORPHEMES IN JA P A N E S E ......................

34

40

Autonomous syntagms and autonomous morphemes; mor­ phemes not providing autonomy for the syntagm to which they are adjoined.

Chapter

6: PAR TIC LES..........................................................................

58

Chapter

7: SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN JAPANESE ： ..............

62

Expansion of the minimal utterance.

Chapter

Chapter Chapter

8: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE ..........................................................................

71

9: TEXT A N A L Y SIS ..............................................................

76

10 ：SYNTAX AND NATIONAL PERSONALITY

83 The cultural features; the linguistic features; synchronic aspects of correlation; changes in the social structure; changes in the language; diachronic aspects of correlation.

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 104 Index ................................................................................................................... 108

viii

Foreword

the number of foreign scholars who understand and are able to describe

our own language and culture— sometimes even with greater accuracy than we Japanese— is always increasing. The author of this book is one of these scholars. On several occasions, through Professor Saint-Jacques5 writings I have had the opportunity of gaining new insights into the very nature of my mother tongue and the particular culture to which it is related. In this book, Professor Saint-Jacques presents a clear and penetrating description of the important linguistic and cultural features of the Japanese language. Readers of all nationalities will certainly profit from this Struc­

tural Analysis of Modern Japanese. I wish, therefore, to extend my deep gratitude to the author and, as a conclusion to this brief foreword, I would like to quote a passage from Robert Frost. It says in a very beautiful way what I could not express myself: When I was young... I went to school to age to learn the past. Now I am old. . . I go to school to youth to learn the future.

H isanosuke Izui

University o f Kyoto

ix

Preface

Recent publications in linguistics have revealed a growing interest in the ‘universes’ of language. In the tradition of ‘universal, or ‘philosophical grammar5, as exemplified by the Port-Royal Grammaire generate et raisonnee (1 6 6 0 ), modem linguists are often concerned with universal features forming the underlying structure common to all languages. The emphasis is not on the ‘surface structure’ of languages, that is, how they differ among themselves, but on their ‘deep structure’ where are found the universals of language, mirroring the structure of human thought. At first sight, the emphasis in this book seems to be different. Indeed, the main purpose of this book is to describe some of the most characteristic linguistic features of Japanese and consequently to show how they differ from related features in other languages. It is even frequently stressed that many of these features are deeply rooted in a particular perception of reality which is the social and cultural universe of the Japanese. In fact, it is one basic assumption of this book that uthe conceptual division or design of reality is different according to the language’’1 or, again, “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.’’12 In short, languages 1 ^En verite le decoupage conceptuel varie avec chaque langue.1* C. Levi-Strauss, La Pensee sauvage, (Paris: Plon, 1962), p. 5. 2 E. Sapir, 49 It is certainly disappointing to find out, at the end of Jorden's long and thorough analysis, that the only information supplied about the structure of Japanese can be summed up in a list of affirmations telling us which segment is of the 4Noun + Verb* type, which segment is of the ‘Particle + Verb’ type, which segment has a “sus­ pensive” intonation, or which has a “conclusive” one, etc. One could also consider a description of Japanese based on transforma­ tional principles. However, I believe that the application of these principles to the description of more than a mere fragment of the grammatical struc­ ture of any one language is a task of immense complexity. Moreover, some basic syntactic problems一 some of which are particularly important in Japa­ nese— have not yet been treated satisfactorily at present by the constantly changing transformational theories.10 John Lyons wrote correctly: “Al­ though great advances have been made in the understanding and formalization of the relationships between sentences of different types, none of the models of transformational syntax that have yet been proposed (the best known of which is that developed by Chomsky and his associates) is cap­ able of handling the complex interrelationships between the many kinds of constructions referred to in this chapter in a systematic and intuitively satis­ 4 M. Tokieda, Nihon Bunpd: Kogohen. 5 The reader can find some examples quoted from Tokieda in the chapter on linguistic autonomy. 6 Jorden, “The Syntax of Modern Colloquial Japanese”. 7 B. Bloch, ^Studies in Colloquial Japanese**, Part II: Syntax, Language 22 (1 946), pp. 200-248. 8 R. S. Wells, ^Immediate Constituents**, Language, 23 (1947): pp. 81-117. 9 A. Martinet, t4The Foundations of a Functional Syntax,** Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, N o . 17 (April 1964), p. 26. 10 i4What is at issue here is precisely how this theory should be formulated/* N . Chom­ sky, Aspects of the Theory o f Syntax, (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1964), p. VI. XV

factory way.J, The constructions referred to are subject, predicate, adjunct, transitivity, ergativity, “agentless sentences' etc.11 While recognizing the contributions made by the descriptions cited here and by others (see Bibliography), I have attempted to base this analysis on different grounds. My object was to find certain basic principles which would lead the analysis to the very core of the linguistic structure of Japanese and thus reveal its characteristic functioning. Such principles could be con­ trolled if necessary by some formal criteria12, and would provide us with the necessary objectivity to examine the arrangement of relationships— or func­ tions一 unique to the structure of Japanese. These are the principles of 4linguistic independence5 and ^nguistic auto­ nomy.* One can find the theoretical presentation of these principles in Ele­ ments of General Linguistics and A Functional View of Language, as well as in other works of Anare Martinet (see Bibliography). These two princi­ ples, which we shall elaborate further in the course of the analysis, are the main foundation of this study. The aim of this analysis is very precise and very modest. I do not pretend in this study to furnish a complete description of the syntax of Japanese. My main purpose is to delineate the characteristic functions of Japanese; that is to say, the arrangement of the various relationships of partial elements of the experience to communicate with respect to the global experience. I believe that the most representative linguistic fact of a language resides in the description of these functions. Two levels of description are to be taken for granted in this analysis: one, the deeper level of the elementary structures called elements of experience, and the other, the surface structure level, their linguistic representations, the functions. The work, however, presents no systematic and explicit des­ cription of deep structure in the Chomskyan sense. As a consequence of this fact, I am well aware that this structural analysis will be labeled Surface syntax* by some transformationalists. I would like to point out simply that my decision was partly motivated by the present unsatisfactory state of generative-transformational grammar, particularly concerning deep struc­ ture. The conflicting and ever-changing theories about the form, the nature

11 J. Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 380. 12 ^Controlled by some formal criteria (or evidence)M implies simply the refusal of observations which are so Subjective* that they resist any kind o f verification. (Cf. B. Saint-Jacques, ^Review o f a Review**, Foundations of Language, III, 3 (1 967), p. 295.) This methodological attitude is not therefore the ^nti-mentalist* one, rightly rejected by Chomsky. I fully agree with him when he writes: **To maintain, on grounds of methodological purity, that introspective judgments o f the informant (often, the linguist himself) should be disregarded is, for the present, to condemn the study o f language to utter sterility C h o m sk y , Aspects of the Theory o f Syn­ tax, (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1965), p . 194. XVl

and, more recentiy, about the existence itself of deep structure13 make the systematic and explicit description of any large section of the deep structure of a language a very precarious endeavor. It is my sincere hope that in the light of further development in grammatical theories, this structural analysis will serve at least as the preliminary step for more thorough descriptions of Japanese. I have adopted, as being the most practical, the romanization system pre­ sented by Kenkyusha.14 Capital letters have been used only for proper names and places. I have not thought it necessary to transcribe the intonation of the examples quoted, the intonation being a secondary consideration in the perspective of this study. Actually it is very rare that a change in intonation produces a change in the syntactic relationships of elements in a Japanese utterance.15 The translations into English of Japanese and French quotations are mine. The original texts of these authors are given in the notes. The material for this analysis has been gathered among Japanese who were born in Tokyo and have lived in that city for several years. The lan­ guage herein described is, therefore, the hydjungo ''standard Japanese,J, the speech of Tokyo, the dialect which enjoys the greatest prestige in Japan. 13 It (Generative Semantics) has a narrower theory of rule types (no Projection Rules, more generally no “interpretive” rules), and requires no unique, intermediate level of Deep Structure [as in the Classical Theory]. Generative Semantics assumes only the levels of Semantic Representation and Surface Structure, which no linguistic theory can do without.** ( p . I l l ) . . . uThere is no supportable notion of Deep Struc­ ture distinct from Semantic Representation/* ( p . 112) P. M. Postal, **On The Sur­ face Verb 4Remind,,MLinguistic Inquiry, V o l . 1 , Number 1 (January, 1970), pp. 37-

120. 14 New Japanese-English Dictionary, (Tokyo: Kenkyusha: 1954). 15 Utterances like: asa-gohan o tabemashita ka