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The Japanese passive voice is quite different from that of English. This thesis is an attempt to investigate the nature of the passive form in Japanese in contrast to the English passive voice and to examine the reasons for the differences. An examination is made of the English passive voice, followed by a contrastive analysis of Japanese transitive-intransitive verbs. Results of the investigation show that to some extent, the usage of Japanese intransitive verbs resembles the passive voice in English. There are three chapters in this thesis. The first chapter deals with an historical discussion of the European passive voice, from the notions of the Greek grammarians to the theories of the transformationalists. Japanese traditional grammar is the subject of the second chapter. The gradual development of the discussion of verbs by Japanese grammarians is outlined. Also, the nature of transitive-intransitive verbs is dealt with and an extensive, though not exhaustive, list of root-related transitive-intransitive verbs is presented. In the final chapter, discussions of the passive forms, by various grammarians are presented. Thereafter, the passive forms are examined by dividing them into two major groups: the ordinary form and the adverse passive form. Each form is syntactically examined and illustrations from literary sources are included. Conclusions show that, semantically, the ordinary passive form is similar to the English passive voice, whereas, the adverse passive form indicates a strong emotional feeling. The romanization of Japanese examples is represented by using Kunrei-Shiki¹ except for the following: /shi/...si, /sha/...sya, /shu/...syu, /sho/...syo, /chi/…ti, /tsu/...tu, /cha/…tya, /chu/…tyu, /cho/...tyo, /ji/...zi These latter symbols represent the verbal and adjectival conjugations much easier than the ordinary Kunrei-Shiki. Syllabic /n/ is represented as N to avoid confusion between such morphemes /tani/ (valley) and /tan'i/ (credit), which are shown as tani and taNi, respectively. These symbols are only used for the examples in the text; Kunrei-Shiki is used for references. English translations of Japanese quotations are mine. Romanization approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

At the stage in the development of generative -transformational grammar when the primary emphasis of research was on the syntactic analysis of sentences, morphology was largely ignored, and the lexicon was simply viewed as an unstructured list of lexical items. However, Chomsky's Lexicalist Hypothesis brought about a renewed interest in word formation, and it is now clear that "the lexicon has a rich, internal structure. In this thesis we will apply the Lexicalist Hypothesis to Japanese, a non -Indo- European, agglutinative language. The analysis presented will be referred to as the "lexical analysis." Two major theoretical issues face the lexical analysis of Japanese. First, it attempts to provide an alternative framework to the transformational analysis that has dominated Japanese linguistics for the past fifteen years. With emphasis on sentences instead of words, the transformational analysis, in a sense, "deagglutinizes" morphologically complex verbs made up of a verb stem and one or more bound morphemes, e.g., V-sase-rare-ta-gat-ta 'V-cause-passive-want-appear- past'. A complex underlying structure is postulated for a sentence with such a verb, with each of the morphemes acting as "higher" verbs in the structure. In the transformational analysis, the fact that the morphemes combine to form a word seems almost incidental. The lexical analysis starts with the assumption that a complex verb comprises a single word that is formed in the lexicon. This forces us to look at Japanese in a different light, as a language with fairly simple phrase structure, and virtually no transformations (if any), but with a rich, highly structured lexicon. This view is closer to the original intuition that Japanese is an agglutinative language. The second theoretical issue concerns the theory of the lexicon. The Lexicalist Hypothesis has been worked out mainly for English, a nonagglutinative language. Since a primary concern of the Hypothesis is with words, it makes sense to test it using a language such as Japanese that has rich and varied word formation processes. The lexical analysis of Japanese draws from major works on the lexicon in English, but because of the highly agglutinating nature of Japanese, we find it necessary to reject, alter, and extend various aspects of lexical analysis of English. The goal of the lexical analysis is to define organizations within the Japanese lexicon. Two types of organizations the lexical analysis focuses on are (a) content and ordering of rules that apply within the domain of the lexicon, and (b) arrangement of verbs, both simple (i.e., verb stem) and complex, listed in the lexicon. Regarding (a), word formation rules akin to those proposed by Aronoff bear the responsibility of forming complex verbs in Japanese; and "redundancy rules" assign rule- governed, i.e., "regular," case arrays to the NPs in the subcategorization feature of verbs. Idiosyncratic case marking is either attributed to a particular lexical item -- verb -specific case marking --or assigned by a rule with a limited scope (Marked-Case Specification Rule). As for (b), the lexicon imposes an organization on all listed verbs by providing slots within "paradigmatic structures." Verb stems automatically receive a slot, and thus they are the most basic verbs, while complex verbs formed by word formation rules can only enter an appropriate slot if the slot is not already occupied by a more basic lexical item, usually a verb stem. If a complex verb can occupy a slot, it receives a lexical entry and becomes part of the permanent lexicon. These verbs undergo lexical processes such as semantic drift and nominalization commonly attributed to the basic verb stems. It is hoped that the lexical analysis of Japanese presented in this thesis will be a model for other agglutinative languages. As a way of illustrating this possibility, Turkish, Mitla Zapotec, and Navajo are briéfly considered in light of the lexical analysis of Japanese. While all of these languages share virtually the same components within the lexicon, a slight difference in the arrangement of the components leads to the difference in the morphological characterization among the languages.

In this dissertation, I propose a model of the Lexicon in order to have a satisfactory account of interactions between morphology and phonology. The model is a modification of Lexical Prosodic Phonology introduced in Inkelas (1989). The main point of this study is that there are three types of morphological operations defined by the number of prosodic domains constructed corresponding to one morphological domain. (1) Three types of morphological operations: (a) One that constructs two new prosodic domains; (b) One that constructs one new prosodic domain; and (c) One that does not construct any new prosodic domain. The first two types are cyclic, while the third one is noncyclic. The three types of morphology are referred to as compounding, cyclic affixation, and noncyclic affixation, respectively. Interaction between morphology and phonology in Japanese verbs provides arguments for the three-way distinction of morphology. Some rules apply only in compounding; some other rules take effect only in cyclic affixation; some rules take effect in all three morphological processes. Nonapplication of rules is due to either their structural description or their nonstructural property. In the former case, the structural description of a cyclic rule is not satisfied because of prosodic representation. In the latter case, a cyclic rule does not apply, even if the structural description is satisfied, because the domain is noncyclic.

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In the Japanese language, there are various modal elements, which mark speakers' subjective attitudes toward propositions. One of the most common modals is the noda predicate, which possesses the dual function of either asserting the truth of the position or relaying the speaker's desire for information sharing. Japanese Native Speakers (JNSs) use noda frequently in conversation; however, Japanese Language Learners (JLLs) often face difficulty in learning noda because of its wide variety in function and use. To determine the nature of noda use, this study examines conversational data from role-plays and a case study of two JLLs. The main aims of this thesis are 1) to review research on noda and to provide a cohesive and concise explanation of its functions and 2) to examine the use and acquisition of noda by JLLs. Following Noda's (1997) categorization, noda can be divided broadly into two types: scope and mood. Noda of scope exhibits the speaker's assertion that the proposition is true, while noda of mood marks the speaker's strong desire for information to be shared by speaker and hearer. This study proposes a framework with which to understand the functions of noda, and classifies information which is speaker-oriented (+ Speaker/- Hearer knowledge), hearer-oriented (-Speaker/+ Hearer), and shared (+ Speaker/+ Hearer). JLLs first tend to use noda with speaker-oriented information, and later acquire functions related to hearer-oriented and shared information. In the study of role-plays, JLLs with higher oral proficiency levels as rated by the ACTFL-OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) used a higher frequency of noda. Both the JLLs and JNSs used noda primarily to provide and seek explanations. The intermediate-level JLLs underused noda in providing supplemental explanations. Other uses of noda in the role-plays included emphasizing information, seeking validity, and back-channeling. The two JLLs in the case study did not notice the use of noda during conversations with the JNS, but began to use noda more frequently during practice conversations upon receiving explicit instructions on the use of noda. While the post-test did not demonstrate increased use of noda due to the limited time of this study, there are clear indications for pedagogy. First, because the functions of noda are varied and numerous, Japanese language textbooks and classrooms should not be limited in providing only the 'explanation' function of noda. Second, the frequent use of noda in Japanese conversation suggests that it should be an area of focus in oral practice. Finally, JLLs need to develop skills in both comprehension and production of noda to improve their Japanese discourse.

This thesis investigates the question of how the arguments of a given verb are linked to positions in a phrase structure. Through a study of passives, psych verbs, and ditransitive verbs in Japanese, it provides empirical support for the hypothesis that arguments having particular thematic roles are associated with particular syntactic positions systematically. / Chapter 2 deals with passives, in particular, two types of passive constructions, direct and indirect passives. Following some previous works, it is argued that the subject of a direct passive is generated in the same position as an object of the corresponding active verb, having the same thematic role, whereas the subject of an indirect passive is projected as an argument of a separate predicate. Several pieces of evidence for this hypothesis which are not given in the literature are provided here. / Chapter 3 is concerned with psych verbs, focusing on those that participate in a causative alternation. It is proposed that causative counterparts of these verbs can have two different structures that are parallel to the two types of passives discussed in Chapter 2. The subject of one type is generated in the same position as the object of the noncausative counterpart, having the same thematic role, whereas the subject of the other type is projected as an argument of a separate predicate. / Chapter 4 takes up ditransitive verbs, specifically, those that have inchoative counterparts, which do not project the subject of the ditransitive construction. There are two types of such verbs: one promotes the accusative argument of the ditransitive construction, rather than the dative one, to the subject of the inchoative counterpart, while the other chooses the dative argument over the accusative one for the subject of the inchoative counterpart. It is argued that this reflects the difference in the base-generated position of the dative argument between the two types of verbs. Moreover, the dative arguments of the two are distinguished in terms of thematic role. / This research is meant to contribute toward having a further understanding of how the participants of an event are expressed in grammatical forms.

In the Japanese language, there are various modal elements, which mark speakers' subjective attitudes toward propositions. One of the most common modals is the noda predicate, which possesses the dual function of either asserting the truth of the position or relaying the speaker's desire for information sharing. Japanese Native Speakers (JNSs) use noda frequently in conversation; however, Japanese Language Learners (JLLs) often face difficulty in learning noda because of its wide variety in function and use. To determine the nature of noda use, this study examines conversational data from role-plays and a case study of two JLLs. The main aims of this thesis are 1) to review research on noda and to provide a cohesive and concise explanation of its functions and 2) to examine the use and acquisition of noda by JLLs. Following Noda's (1997) categorization, noda can be divided broadly into two types: scope and mood. Noda of scope exhibits the speaker's assertion that the proposition is true, while noda of mood marks the speaker's strong desire for information to be shared by speaker and hearer. This study proposes a framework with which to understand the functions of noda, and classifies information which is speaker-oriented (+ Speaker/- Hearer knowledge), hearer-oriented (-Speaker/+ Hearer), and shared (+ Speaker/+ Hearer). JLLs first tend to use noda with speaker-oriented information, and later acquire functions related to hearer-oriented and shared information. In the study of role-plays, JLLs with higher oral proficiency levels as rated by the ACTFL-OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) used a higher frequency of noda. Both the JLLs and JNSs used noda primarily to provide and seek explanations. The intermediate-level JLLs underused noda in providing supplemental explanations. Other uses of noda in the role-plays included emphasizing information, seeking validity, and back-channeling. The two JLLs in the case study did not notice the use of noda during conversations with the JNS, but began to use noda more frequently during practice conversations upon receiving explicit instructions on the use of noda. While the post-test did not demonstrate increased use of noda due to the limited time of this study, there are clear indications for pedagogy. First, because the functions of noda are varied and numerous, Japanese language textbooks and classrooms should not be limited in providing only the 'explanation' function of noda. Second, the frequent use of noda in Japanese conversation suggests that it should be an area of focus in oral practice. Finally, JLLs need to develop skills in both comprehension and production of noda to improve their Japanese discourse. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Typescript (photocopy) / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980. / Bibliography: leaves 263-269. / Microfiche. / xvi, 269 leaves, bound ill. 28 cm

This thesis investigates L2 acquisition of intransitive verb constructions in Japanese and English. Within the Generative framework, the Unaccusative Hypothesis has been proposed, which divides intransitive verbs into two syntactically distinct classes: unergatives and unaccusatives (Burzio 1986). The sole argument of unergative verbs is an Agent generated in subject position, whereas that of unaccusative verbs is a Theme or Patient base-generated in object position. While the unaccusative/unergative distinction at the level of Deep (D)-Structure holds universally, as derived by a universal principle called the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH, Baker 1988), languages differ as to where the underlying object of unaccusatives may be positioned at the level of Surface (S)-structure. In the case of English, it surfaces in the subject position where it receives Nominative Case. In the case of Japanese, on the other hand, it has been argued that the argument of unaccusative verbs remains in its base-generated object position and that Nominative Case is assigned within the Verb Phrase. / Experimental studies are conducted to examine learners' knowledge of unaccusativity at the two levels, i.e. D-Structure and S-Structure. It is hypothesized that learners will show sensitivity to unaccusativity at D-Structure, but that they may not acquire the correct representation of unaccusativity in the L2 at S-Structure, at least in an earlier stage. The first two studies present the L2 acquisition of English by Japanese speakers. The next two studies are concerned with the L2 acquisition of Japanese by English speakers. Overall, results of the four studies confirm the hypotheses, and L2 learners appear to have problems where the L1 manifests a different representation from the L2. Nevertheless, it is observed that L2 learners behavior is not random even when difficulty arises, in that the L2 learners are often consistent with one class of verbs, but not with the other. Thus, it is suggested that the L2 acquisition of intransitive verb constructions is constrained by universal principles, such as the Unaccusative Hypothesis and the UTAH.