In:Language and Text: Data, models, information and applications
Edited by Adam Pawłowski, Jan Mačutek, Sheila Embleton and George Mikros
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 356] 2021
► pp. 69–92
N-grams of grammatical functions and their significant order in the Japanese clause
Published online: 22 December 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.356.05san
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.356.05san
Abstract
The present study investigates the statistically significant order of grammatical functions in Japanese clauses by employing n-gram frequency data of grammatical functions. There are broad rules for the order of grammatical functions, though Japanese is an agglutinative SOV language and complements can be elliptic. I conclude that the time and the place appear between the subject and object with statistical significance. The occasion takes a position before the subject, between the subject and object, or after the object. Therefore, the occasion shows that Japanese is a free word order language. The subject and object play the role of ‘anchors’ in the clause. By using the ‘two-sample test for equality of proportions without continuity correction data’, the study introduces a descriptive verification method of implicit speaker-hearer knowledge.
Article outline
- 1.Aim of the study
- 2.Descriptions of data and grammatical definitions
- 3.Hypotheses and methodology
- 4.Results for grammatical function types in the first position and in the second or later position
- 5.Results for grammatical function types in the position directly preceding the predicate and preceding it by two or more units
- 6.Results for bi-grams of grammatical function types including the subject or the object
- 7.Conclusions
Notes Abbreviations Software and digital dictionaries References
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Sanada, Haruko
2025. The length and order of grammatical elements in clauses in Japanese. In Mathematical Modelling in Linguistics and Text Analysis [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 370], ► pp. 70 ff.
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