Abstract
Based on a statistical analysis of a corpus data from the period of 1915–2005, this article discusses two variants for a subject marker in Japanese, and argues that it is a case of linguistic change in progress. While representing effects of three linguistic factors on the use of the variants, the chronological observation of each factor revealed that this phenomenon demonstrates the Constant Rate Effect. The quantitative data also provides firm evidence for effects of other independent diachronic changes on the current phenomenon, pushing the change further by shrinking the linguistic environment for the dying-out variant. Dissecting the relationship between those diachronic changes and the current phenomenon in a quantitative manner, the findings of the study reveal that the two competing hypotheses in theoretical syntax properly capture the essential syntactic properties of the phenomenon in the contemporary Japanese and the discrepancy of the two accounts is attributable to their data reflecting a different stage of its ongoing change.
The abbreviations used in the glosses and graphs are
- ACC
accusative
- ACOP
adjectival copula
- ADN
adnominal
- C/COMP
complementizer
- CP
complementizer phrase
- D
determinate
- DAT
dative
- DP
determinate phrase
- ETOP
emphatic topic
- EVID
evidential
- GEN
genitive
- GER
gerund
- HON
honorific
- INF
infinitive
- N
nominal feature
- NOM
nominative
- NML
nominalizer
- NP
noun phrase
- PER
perfective
- PRS
present
- PST
past
- STAT
stative
- T
tense
- TP
tense phrase
- TOP
topic
- VP
verb phrase
- v
little verb
- vP
little verb phrase
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Er hod gegeybm ales far de yi:dn ‘He gave the Jews everything’: On the emergence of prepositional dative marking with far in Transcarpathian Yiddish
- Regular and copular fragments in Basaá
- Sentence-final aspect particles as finite markers in Mandarin Chinese
- Clustering and stranding in Dutch
- The Hebrew dative: Usage patterns as discourse profile constructions
- (Inter)subjective uses of the Dutch progressive constructions
- If everything is syntax, why are words so important? An a-morphous but non-lexicalist approach
- Japanese subject markers in linguistic change: A quantitative analysis of data spanning 90 years and its theoretical implications
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Er hod gegeybm ales far de yi:dn ‘He gave the Jews everything’: On the emergence of prepositional dative marking with far in Transcarpathian Yiddish
- Regular and copular fragments in Basaá
- Sentence-final aspect particles as finite markers in Mandarin Chinese
- Clustering and stranding in Dutch
- The Hebrew dative: Usage patterns as discourse profile constructions
- (Inter)subjective uses of the Dutch progressive constructions
- If everything is syntax, why are words so important? An a-morphous but non-lexicalist approach
- Japanese subject markers in linguistic change: A quantitative analysis of data spanning 90 years and its theoretical implications