1. Shibatani 2017 Nominalization Mouton Hand Book Syntax
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 Masayoshi Shibatani 2 3 8 Nominalization 4 5 I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 6 7 (Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”) 8 9 10 1 Introduction 11 12 Studies on nominalization, in both Western and Eastern grammatical traditions, have 13 largely concentrated on lexical nominalizations, neglecting grammatical nominaliza- 14 tions, despite their theoretical importance and far-reaching implications to the 15 descriptive practice.1 This imbalance is due to the fact that while lexical nominal- 16 izations (e.g. English sing-er) typically involve distinct morphology and their lexical 17 status as nouns is relatively clear-cut, grammatical nominalizations (e.g. [I know] 18 that John recklessly shoots trespassers; [I saw] John shoot trespassers; John’s recklessly 19 shooting trespassers [angered the entire community]; To shoot trespassers [is unaccept- 20 able]) vary considerably in form, some of which displaying structural properties 21 similar to clauses, and their nominal status is less fully realized compared to lexical 22 nominalizations (e.g. a/the shooting [of trespassers]; those terrible shootings [of 23 trespassers], but not *a/*the shooting trespassers [is unacceptable]).2 24 The Japanese grammatical tradition is no exception to this general trend. In the 25 context of Japanese there have been two historical developments that have con- 26 tributed to the failure to properly recognize grammatical nominalizations and their 27 roles in grammar. One is a terminological issue, which nonetheless has had a pro- 28 found effect on the thinking of Japanese grammarians. One of the major functions 29 of grammatical nominalizations is that of modifying a noun. Because of this, the 30 monk-scholar Tōjō Gimon (1785–1843) named a nominalized verbal form Rentaigen3 31 (adnominal word). This term has gained wide currency in the name of Rentaikei 32 (adnominal form), used today in the paradigms of verb conjugation, where the nomi- 33 nalized form is recognized as a conjugated verbal form along with finite (Shūshikei) 34 and other forms. The term Rentaikei and placing Rentai forms in the verb paradigm 35 have led many grammarians to believe that these forms in both Classical4 and 36 37 1 This chapter is a vastly expanded version of an earlier paper, which will appear as Shibatani 38 (2018a). This version contains a shorter description of lexical nominalizations and several new sections and subsections on grammatical nominalizations, which are the main topic of this version. 39 2 See Lees (1965) for early, but still the most comprehensive treatment of English nominalizations. 40 3 Japanese grammatical terms all have an initial letter capitalized in this article. 41 4 Pre-Modern forms of Japanese, such as Old Japanese, Early and Late Middle Japanese, are collec- 42 tively referred to as Classical Japanese in this chapter. DOI 10.1515/9781614516613-009 (Unicode 9 16/8/17 13:13) WDG-New (170mmÂ240mm) DGMetaSerifScience (OpenType) pp. 271–332 1823 Shibatani_08_Shibatani (p. 271) 272 Masayoshi Shibatani 1 Modern Japanese are simply conjugated forms of verbs associated with the function 2 of noun modification rather than distinct grammatical nominalization structures 3 with different usage patterns, one of which is modification of a noun. 4 The other confounding issue has to do with a formal distinction between a finite 5 verb form and its nominalized counterpart. In Old Japanese, there was a formal dis- 6 tinction for many verbs between a finite verb form (Shūshikei) and its nominalized 7 counterpart labeled as Rentaigen by TŌJŌ. These two forms, however, began to merge 8 in the eighth century and the merger of the two was largely completed by the middle 9 of the sixteenth century, when nominalized structures supplanted finite sentences. 10 This process, known as insubordination/desubordination in the current literature, 11 obliterated the historical formal distinction between Shūshikei, e.g. ot-u ‘fall.PRS’, 12 and Rentaikei forms, e.g. otu-ru ‘falling’, resulting in single modern forms based 13 on the latter, e.g. oti-ru ‘fall-PRS/falling’. This loss of the formal distinction between 14 finite and nominalized forms of verbs has led many grammarians to believe that 15 grammatical nominalizations are just regular clauses, rather than independent struc- 16 tures or constructions with functions and syntactic properties distinct from those of 17 clauses and sentences. 18 The two issues touched on here are, of course, related. The lack of formal dis- 19 tinction between finite verb forms and their nominalized counterparts in Modern 20 Japanese and maintaining the label for the latter suggesting a modification function 21 have had a profound effect on generations of Japanese grammarians. Had TŌJŌ 22 given a more neutral term to what we consider to be grammatical nominalizations, 23 such as Juntaigen (quasi-nominal), the term coined by YAMADA Yoshio (see below), 24 and had grammarians paid more attention to grammatical functions, both semantic 25 and syntactic, than just to formal appearances of linguistic structures, which may 26 vary over time and from one language to another, Japanese grammar would have 27 had a countenance quite different from what it is purported to be. 28 This paper is organized as follows. After a brief introduction to the process of 29 nominalization in the next section, where nominalization is defined as a metonymic 30 process of deriving new nominal expressions, section 3 discusses lexical nominaliza- 31 tions as a way to set the stage for the discussions of grammatical nominalizations, 32 the main concerns of this paper. This section first sets the record straight that 33 nominalization applies to nouns as well, contrary to the received wisdom on the 34 possible inputs to this process, and then delineates the range of concepts that 35 derived nominalizations are associated with via metonymic extensions. Section 4 36 starts a long discussion of grammatical nominalizations. Verbal-based nominaliza- 37 tions are discussed in section 4.2 beginning with a critical appraisal of the seminal 38 study on this topic by Yamada (1908), followed by a discussion on event nominali- 39 zations (section 4.2.1) and on argument nominalizations (section 4.2.2). Section 4.2.3 40 discusses two major uses of grammatical nominalizations, namely an NP-use and a 41 modification-use. Major claims advanced in these sections are that there are nothing 42 like relative clauses apart from these uses of nominalizations. So-called restrictive (Unicode 9 16/8/17 13:13) WDG-New (170mmÂ240mm) DGMetaSerifScience (OpenType) pp. 271–332 1823 Shibatani_08_Shibatani (p. 272) Nominalization 273 1 relative clauses are a modification-use of argument nominalizations, and so-called 2 internally-headed relative clauses are event nominalizations in NP-use. These claims 3 lead to the view that so-called relative clauses are not really clauses, let alone 4 sentences. Section 4.2.4 clarifies the differences among nominalizations, clauses, and 5 sentences in terms of the different functions they play. Section 4.2.5 discusses the 6 role of so-called Juntaijoshi (nominalization particle). Contrary to the wide-held 7 belief that the Juntaijoshi no is a nominalizing particle or nominalizer, we claim that 8 it is actually a marker of the NP-use of nominalizations and that nominalization 9 itself obtains independently from the Juntaijoshi. 10 Section 4.3 argues for nominal-based nominalizations and reanalyzes so-called 11 genitive/possessive constructions as a modification-use of N-based nominalizations, 12 marked by the so-called genitive particle no in central dialects. Section 5 discusses 13 the historical development of Juntaijoshi from the so-called genitive particle, which 14 we reanalyze as a nominalizer for N-based nominalization. Data from peripheral 15 Japanese dialects are drawn in support of the radical proposal for reanalyzing so-called 16 possessive constructions as a modification-use of N-based nominalizations, just as 17 so-called relative clauses are reanalyzed as a modification-use of V-based argument 18 nominalizations in earlier sections. Sections 6 and 7 take stock of our proposals and 19 analyses by re-examining two popular approaches to related phenomena, namely 20 so-called ga/no conversion and the characterization of two types of noun modifica- 21 tion in terms of the Uchi no kankei (internal relation) and Soto no kankei (external 22 relation) by TERAMURA Hideo. It is shown that the relevant phenomena go far 23 beyond the range of the observations and analyses offered in these past efforts. It is 24 shown that the no-marking of noun modifiers goes well beyond the realm of ga/no 25 conversion and that our distinction between restrictive modification and identifying 26 modification by both V-based and N-based nominalizations cuts across different 27 types of modification constructions. 28 29 30 2 What is nominalization? 31 32 Nominalization is a metonymic process that yields constructions, including both words 33 and phrasal units, associated with a denotation comprised of substantive or entity 34 concepts that are metonymically evoked by the nominalization structures, such as 35 events, facts, propositions, and resultant products (event nominalizations), and event 36 participants (argument nominalizations) or other concepts closely associated with the 37 base forms. As products, nominalizations are like nouns by virtue of their associa- 38 tion with an entity-concept denotation, a property that provides a basis for the 39 referential function of a noun phrase headed by such nominalizations.5 Verbs and 40 41 5 Denotation refers to the relationship between a linguistic form and concepts, both entity- and 42 relational-concepts, connected with it, while reference is the denotation-mediated relationship between a nominal linguistic form and a real (or imaginary) world entity. (Unicode 9 16/8/17 13:13) WDG-New (170mmÂ240mm) DGMetaSerifScience (OpenType) pp.