On Japanese Desiderative Constructions

On Japanese Desiderative Constructions * Akira Ohtani ab and Mark Steedman a aSchool of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK bFaculty of Informatics, Osaka Gakuin University, 2-36-1 Kishibe-minami, Suita, Osaka 564-8511, Japan {aotani, steedman}@inf.ed.ac.uk Abstract. This paper describes desiderative constructions in Japanese with the main focus on ta(i) ‘want’ desideratives. In spite of the morphological one-word status, desiderative constructions have been claimed to have a complex structure at some abstract level of representation. We claim that there are two types of desideratives, and that their predicates have different lexical representations within the framework of Combinatory Categorial Grammar. Building on the proposed analysis, we also discuss the difference between the two types of desideratives in terms of adverbial modification and passivizability. Keywords: Japanese Desideratives, Ta(i) ‘want’ Morpheme and Particle, Adverbial Modification, Passivizability, Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) 1. Introduction Ranging across a number of differing expressions in differing languages, there are various constructions described as complex predicates. Japanese also abounds in such predicates, which consist of a stem verb or gerundive expression followed by another morpheme. Passives and causatives, for example, have been a focus of attention in many linguistic studies. However, only few attempts have so far been made at desideratives by comparison. In this paper we conduct a detailed examination of desiderative constructions in Japanese with the main focus on the suffix, ta(i) ‘want’. Ta(i) ‘want’ is suffixed to a stem verb and forms an adjective as exemplified in (1): The active counter part for (1) is the following (2): As shown in (1), the object argument of the stem verb can be marked with either nominative ga or accusative wo, though the stem verb originally marks its object by only accusative as in (2). * We are indebted to two anonymous PACLIC reviewers and Paul Crook for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Our thanks also go to Mr. Yoshiyasu Shirai, the president of Osaka Gakuin University. All remaining inadequacies are our own. Copyright 2008 by Akira Ohtani and Mark Steedman 290 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, pages 290–301 We call the type with nominative object ga-desiderative, and the type with accusative object wo-desiderative. One question here is why the object of desiderative construction can be marked with either nominative or accusative. Under the previous approaches based on series of transformations or movements, the desideratives have been claimed to have different complex structures at some abstract level of derivation or representation. However, there are some data that cannot be accounted for in terms of the only structural distinction. In this paper we discuss the syntactic and semantic properties of desideratives with the main focus on ta(i) ‘want’, show the lexical representation of the suffix, and answer to the question. 2. Previous Analyses and Adverbial Modification Kuno treats ta(i) as a sentential predicate (Kuno 1973) and then as a ‘transitive’ Deep Structure predicate (Kuno 1983). The latter predicate, for example, creates a biclausal control-type …

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