This monograph contains the first systematic investigation of the Japanese ‘dative subject’ construction across time and space. It demonstrates that, in order to capture what speakers/writers know about how to put an utterance or a clause together, it is necessary to pay attention to what they do… read more
The present study examines two commonly-used Japanese verbs of cognition, WAKARU and SHIRU, in naturally occurring conversation, and demonstrates that these verbs are expressions of position and attitude that are relevant both to individual speakers (i.e., subjective uses) and to relational… read more
The Japanese ni is a postpositional particle, known for its wide range of semantic and grammatical roles such as a marker of locations, directions, recipients, and dative subjects. Based on an examination of pre-modern and modern Japanese texts, this study documents how the most basic meaning/usage… read more
The current study examines pre-modern and modern Japanese texts from the seventh ~ twentieth century, and documents the semantic and pragmatic change of ni-marked NPs, which include “dative subjects” and NPs which appear to refer to human referents. The data demonstrates that what are called… read more
Several researchers have reported the increased use of o and semantic/pragmatic or syntactic motivations for direct object marking based on texts from between the 8th and 11th centuries. However, very few studies documented direct object marking after that period on until Modern Japanese, and the… read more
