Cover not available

In:Different Slants on Grammaticalization
Edited by Sylvie Hancil and Vittorio Tantucci
[Studies in Language Companion Series 232] 2023
► pp. 20–49

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 1
From comparative standard marker to comparative adverb

On the contact-induced (de)grammaticalization of yori in modern through present-day Japanese

 | Meiji University
Published online: 13 July 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.232.01shi
This study investigates the grammaticalization of the Japanese ablative marker yori ‘from’ into a comparative standard marker ‘than’ and further into a comparative adverb yori ‘more.’ It is widely known that ablative markers can be grammaticalized into comparative standard markers. However, little is known about the direction of change from comparative marker to comparative adverb. This study takes a corpus-based approach to uncover the process of change. The ablative yori, which had been used since Old Japanese, began to take on the adverbial property ‘more’ in the early twentieth century. While some collocational sequences facilitate the grammaticalization of yori, the overall degree of change turns out to be very slow.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A short history of yori
  • 3.Preceding studies on yori and language contact
    • 3.1Preceding studies on yori
      • 3.1.1Hida (1992, 2019)
      • 3.1.2Morioka (1999)
    • 3.2Language contact research on Japanese
  • 4.Corpora
  • 5.Survey results and discussion
    • 5.1Gradualness of grammaticalization
    • 5.2Collocational sequences that preserve the earlier ablative function of yori
      • 5.2.1Yori-collocations with particles
      • 5.2.2Yori co-occurring with sarani ‘moreover’
    • 5.3A collocational sequence that reflects the newer adverbial function of yori
    • 5.4Language contact and ‘extravagance’
    • 5.5Degrammaticalization and the emergence of the comparative adverb yori
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
  • Glossing conventions
  • Division of the history of Japanese in this study
  • Dictionaries
  • Corpora
  • References
  • Appendix
References (57)
Dictionaries
Hida, Yoshifumi & Hideko Asada. 2018. Gendai fukushi yoohoo jiten (A Usage Dictionary of Contemporary Japanese Adverbs), revised edn. Tokyo: Tokyodo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nakata, Norio, Toshimasa Wada & Yasuo Kitahawa (eds). 1983. Kogo daijiten (An Unabridged Dictionary of Old Japanese), compact edn. Tokyo: Shogakukan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikkoku=Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (The Dictionary of the Japanese Language), Vols. 1–13, 2nd edn, Yasuo Nikkoku (ed.), 2006. Tokyo: Shogakkan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corpora
Aozora = Aozora Corpus (1930s-1940s), a self-made corpus (see Note 6)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
BCCWJ = Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (1976–2008) [last access: 26 August 2022] <[URL]>
CHJ = The Corpus of Historical Japanese [last access: 26 August 2022] <[URL]>
CSJ = Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (2000s) [last access: 26 August 2022] <[URL]>
SSC = Showa Speech Corpus (1950s-1970s) [last access: 26 August 2022] <[URL]>
Taiyo = Taiyo Corpus, CD-ROM (1895, 1901, 1909, 1917, 1925). 2005. Tokyo: Hakubunkan Shinsha.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
References
Adamou, Evangelia & Matras, Yaron (eds). 2020. The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bisang, Walter. 2020. Grammaticalization in Chinese: A cross-linguistic perspective. In A Typological Approach to Grammaticalization and Lexicalization: East Meets West [Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 327], Janet Zhiqun Xing (ed.) 17–54. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blythe, Richard A. & Croft, William. 2012. S-curves and the mechanisms of propagation in language change. Language 88: 269–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2003. Dynamics of Language Contact: English and Immigrant Language. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Denison, David. 2003. Log(ist)ic and simplistic S-curves. In Motives for Language Changes, Raymond Hickey (ed.), 54–69. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W. 2003. Discourse and grammar. In The New Psychology of Language, Vol. II, Michael Tomasello (ed.) 47–88. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grant, Anthony P. (ed.). 2020. The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stephan T. & Hilpert, Martin. 2010. Modeling diachronic change in the third person singular: A multifactorial, verb- and author-specific exploratory approach. English Language and Linguistics 14(3): 293–320. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics 37(6): 1043–1068. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. On directionality in language change with particular reference to grammaticalization. In Up and Down the Cline: The Nature of Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 59], Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde & Harry Perridon (eds), 17–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond (ed.). 2020[2010]. The Handbook of Language Contact, 2nd edn. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hida, Yoshifumi. 1992. Tokyo Go Seiritsu no Kenkyuu (A Study on the Establishment of Tokyo Japanese). Tokyo: Tokyodoo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Meiji Umare no Nihongo (Japanese Words Created in the Meiji Period). Tokyo: Kadokawa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. Lexicalization and grammaticalization: Opposite or orthogonal? In What Makes Grammaticalization? A Look from Its Fringes and Its Components, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer (eds), 21–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. 1991. On some principles of grammaticalization. In Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Issues [Typological Studies in Language 19], Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds), 17–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ishiwata, Toshio. 1986. English borrowings in Japanese. In English in Contact with Other Languages. Studies in Honour of Broder Carstensen on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, Wolfgang Viereck & Wolf-Dietrich Bald (eds), 457–471. Budapest: Akadémia Kiado.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D. & Janda, Richard D. 1988. The how and why of diachronic morphologization and demorphologization. In Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics, Michael Hammond & Michael Noonan (eds), 193–210. San Diego CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keller, Rudi. 1994. On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania, Heine, Bernd, Hong, Bo, Long, Haiping, Narrog, Heiko & Rhee, Seongha. 2019. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, 2nd edn. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol.1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loveday, Leo J. 1996. Language Contact in Japan: A Socio-Linguistic History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maruyama, Takehiko. 2020. On the possibility of a diachronic speech corpus of Japanese. In Japanese Language from Empirical Perspective. Corpus-Based Studies and Studies on Discourse, Andrej Bekeš & Irena Srdanović (eds), 219–234. Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba FF.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Yo. 1988. From bound grammatical markers to free discourse markers: History of some Japanese connectives. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Shelley Axmaker, Annie Jaisser & Helen Singmaster (eds), 340–351. Berkeley CA: BLS. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morioka, Kenji. 1999. Oobun Kundoku no Kenkyuu (A study of Western languages in their Japanese Pronunciation). Tokyo: Meiji-Shoin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 2000. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Switching. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Narrog, Heiko & Heine, Bernd. 2021. Grammaticalization. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 2017. Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Palander-Collin, Minna & Säily, Tanja (eds). 2018. Patterns of Change in 18th-Century English: A Sociolinguistic Approach [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 8]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norde, Muriel. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Park, Jiyeon. In preparation. Semantic change of the Chinese loanword mwullon 勿論 in Korean. In The Emergence of Pragmatic Markers from Chinese Compounds in Chinese, Japanese and Korean: Perspectives from East Asian Languages and Beyond, Yukio Higashiizumi & R. Shibasaki (edn). Leiden: Brill.
Park, Kang-Hun. 2018. Grammaticalization of Japanese postpositions: Focusing on yori co-occurring with negatives. Language and Linguistics 81: 51–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Payne, Thomas E. 1997. Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sansom, George B. 1928. An Historical Grammar of Japanese. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shibasaki, Reijirou. 2021. Reanalysis and the emergence of adverbial connectors in the history of Japanese. In Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface: Discourse Markers and Discourse-Related Grammatical Phenomena [Studies in Language Series 219] Alexander Haselow & Sylvie Hancil (eds), 102–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. In press. Gengo sesshoku to bunpooka nitsuite: Kingandai Nihongo no yori koobun o jirei toshite (Language contact and grammaticalization: A case of yori-constructions in Modern and Present-Day Japanese). In Nihongo to Kinronshogo niokeru Bumpooka to Bumpoohenka (Grammaticalization and Grammatical Changes in Japanese and Neighboring Languages), Hirofumi Aoki & Heiko Narrog (eds). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
Stassen, Leon. 1985. Comparison and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sugimoto, Tsutomu. 1983. Nihon Hon’yakushi no Kenkyuu (A Study on the History of Translation in Japan). Tokyo: Yasaka-Shobo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tabor, Whitney & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1998. Structural scope expansion and grammaticalization. In The Limits of Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 37], Anna Giacolone Ramat & Paul J. Hopper (eds), 229–272. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G. & Kaufman, Terrence. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Constructions in grammaticalization. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds), 624–647. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weinreich, Ulrich. 1953. Languages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Introduction. In A Typological Approach to Grammaticalization and Lexicalization: East Meets West, Janet Zhiqun Xing (ed.) 1–13. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yagishita, T. 2018. Kindai Nihongo no Keisei to Oobun Chokuyakuteki Hyoogen (The Formation of Modern Japanese and Literal Translation-based Expressions). Tokyo: Bensei-Sha.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yanabu, Akira. 2004. Kidai Nihongo no Shisoo: Hon’yaku Seiritsu Jijoo (Thoughts of Modern Japanese: Circumstances on the Establishment of Translation). Tokyo: Hosei University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue