open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/52614

Emotional predicates in Altaic-type languages

日本語

感情述語

2013-03-31

Center for Northern Humanities, Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University

Journal of the Center for Northern Humanities

6

83-101

Emotional adjectives cannot be used with the 3rd person subject in Japanese. This phenomenon is called as “person restriction”. The aims of this paper are as follows: (1) To contrast the emotional expressions in several languages from the viewpoint of person restriction. (2) To reconsider the reason for the person restriction. The result of elicitation is as follows: Table 1: The restriction in person and related features in some Altaic-type languages / Japanese Korean Nanai Mongolian Kirghiz Turkish / Person restriction (Adj) ○ ○ × ○ × ○ / Person restriction (V) ○ ○ × ○ × ○ / Ambiguity ○ ○ × × × × / Use as exclamations ○ △ ○ × △ △ / The conclusions of this paper are as follows: [1] The person restriction cannot be thought as any areal feature nor genealogic feature. And from the typological viewpoint, the appearance of the person restriction is not consistent in the languages of the similar type (in this case, Altaic-type). [2] The emotional predicates implicate some judgement of the speaker (i.e. 1st person). Therefore a kind of evidential markers is necessary to use an emotional predicate with a 3rd person subject. [3] The person restriction is observed not only in the emotional adjectives but also in the emotional verbs. Therefore the relation between the difference in word classes and the person restriction is not acceptable. [4] The ambiguous expressions of the emotional predicates (such as ‘kowai hito’ in Japanese) are not observed consistently in the languages which has the person restriction. [5] The emotional predicates are used frequently in the exclamational sentences in Japanese, but in the other languages not used so frequently as in Japanese.

紀要論文

Version of Record

1882-773X

AA12313676