A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Japanese Benefactives: The Case of the Yaru-Construction

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Japanese Benefactives: The Case of the Yaru-Construction ⋆ Akira Otani and Mark Steedman School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK {aotani, steedman}@inf.ed.ac.uk Abstract. This paper discusses the semantic and pragmatic properties of Japanese benefac- tives with the main focus on the yaru-construction. The benefactive sentence is judged to be acceptable if the transitive verb complement falls into a certain semantic class in which the meaning of transfer of possession is expressed. Hence, the distribution of the recipient role rather than the beneficiary role is crucial for determining the acceptability of the construction. To capture such a multi-dimensional linguistic information, HPSG account will be given. Keywords: yaru-construction, beneficiary, recipient, transfer of possession, multi-dimensional architecture of HPSG 1 Introduction In English, verbs such as bake are used ditransitively (Green, 1974; Oehrle, 1976; Levin, 1993): (1) a. Anna baked a cake (for Ken). b. Anna baked Ken a cake. (1b) can only mean that Anna baked a cake with the intention of giving it to Ken, and this con- struction contributes semantics not attributable to the lexical items involved (Goldberg, 1995). In Japanese, transitive verbs such as yaku ‘bake’ cannot be used ditransitively: (2) a. Anna-wa Anna-TOP (Ken-no-tame-ni) Ken-GEN-benefit-DAT keeki-o cake-ACC yai-ta. bake-PAST ‘Anna baked a cake (for Ken’s benefit).’ b.?*Anna-wa Anna-TOP Ken-ni Ken-DAT keeki-o cake-ACC yai-ta. bake-PAST However, verbs of giving such as ageru in (3) allow the verb yaku to be associated with the con- structional meaning of (1b), which is exemplified in (4). (3) Anna-wa Anna-TOP Ken-ni Ken-DAT keeki-o cake-ACC age-ta. give-PAST ‘Anna gave Ken a book.’ (4) Anna-wa Anna-TOP Ken-ni Ken-DAT keeki-o cake-ACC yaite bake age-ta. give-PAST ‘Anna baked Ken a cake. (Lit.) Anna gave to Ken the benefit of baking a cake for him.’ In (4), the main verb ageru takes the infinitive yaite which occurs adjacent to it. Literally, this construction means something like ‘X (the subject of ageru) gives to Y (the dative object of ageru) the benefit of (X’s) doing something for Y’, and is called the benefactive construction. ⋆ We are indebted to three anonymous PACLIC reviewers, and Pilar Valverde for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper. All remaining inadequacies are our own. This research is partially supported by the Human Communication Research Centre in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and Grant-in- Aid for Scientific Research (C), 21500152 of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Copyright 2010 by Akira Otani and Mark Steedman PACLIC 24 Proceedings 503 In Japanese traditional grammar and in grammars for language learning, the unacceptability of (5) below is explained in terms of the mismatch between the benefactive interpretation construed by the construction and the concerned situation described by the object gomi ‘garbage’ (and the infinitive yaite ‘bake’): (5) *Anna-wa Anna-TOP Ken-ni Ken--DAT gomi-o garbage-ACC yaite incinerate age-ta. give-PAST ‘Intended: Anna gave to Ken the benefit of incinerating garbage for him.’ That is, (Anna’s) baking a cake rather …

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