Submergence of lexically encoded egocentricity in syntax: The case of subjective emotion predicates in Japanese

Abstract

In Japanese, subjective emotion predicates such as kanashii ‘sad’ and tsurai ‘painful’ are exclusively used to describe the inner state of the speaker, reflecting a highly subjective construal. This study investigates systematically how emotion is expressed in formal but confidential narrative texts, in which the egocentric perspective normally conveyed by these predicates would be inappropriate. In the data examined, subjective predicates occurred very infrequently in the form of direct assertions. Instead, a range of syntactic structures is used which reflect a departure from a subjective construal; the emotion is either presented as severed in some way from the experiencer or a separate reporting self emerges, distanced from the experiencing self. These syntactic structures reflect a less egocentric, more objective construal of emotion, suitable for this narrative genre. In this way, syntax is shown to work to obscure the linguistic privilege lexically encoded in subjective emotion predicates in Japanese.