Extensibility in Japanese Noun Modification

EXTENSIBILITY IN JAPANESE NOUN MODIFICATION Minako NAKAY ASU Department of English Language and Literature, Kagoshima Women's College, Hayato, Kagoshima, Japan Email: nakayasu@kwc-u.ac.jp ABSTRACT This paper discusses the relationship between the modifying clause and the modified noun in Japanese. In some cases the closeness between them is weaker than in the prototypical case, whereas in others the modification is actually impossible. Within the framework of Matsumoto [I], who applied Frame Semantics to Japanese clausal noun modification, we analyze what conditions make the modification possible. We propose that the degree of linkage between modifier and modified extends from impossibly distant to acceptably close, where the Relational Frame is evoked. This type of phenomenon can be found in various dimensions: space, time, and the cause-and-effect relation. The degree of extensibility is determined by the world-view of the speaker, the tense/aspect choice in the clause, the aspectual character of the noun, and so on. 1. INTRODUCTION Noun modification in Japanese has a strong hold on linguists' interest, since it has such a diverse types of expression. The most influential work in the field would be Teramura [2], who sees Japanese clausal noun modification as having a dichotomy between Uti no Kankei (Inner Relationship) and Soto no Kankei (Outer Relationship), depending on whether there is a clause-internal gap which has the same reference as the head noun or not. Matsumoto [1], introducing the Frame Semantics developed by Fillmore [3], analyzes noun-modifying clauses into three types according to which element(s) evoke(s) the frame: the predicate in the modifying clause (Clause Host Type), the modified head noun (Noun Host Type), or both of them (Clause Noun Host Type). These studies, however, have concentrated on sharply classifying the expressions and therefore have not been able to capture the real nature of noun modification. Consider the following examples, where the clause kimi o mituketa modifies a noun: (1) a. [[kimi o mituketa] kooen] you ACC found park `the park in which ( ) found you' b. ?[[kimi o mituketa] matu] you ACC found pine.tree `the pine tree at which ( ) found you' Although the relation holding between the clause and the noun is that of the situation and the location where it occurs (LOCATIVE reading), kooen 'park' is perfectly grammatical in (la), whereas in (lb) matu 'pine tree' sounds awkward. In the latter case, however, there is instead a slight possibility of NOMINATIVE reading 'the pine tree found you.' More interestingly, adding a phrase such as omoide no `full of memory' to the noun makes the pine tree example more acceptable: (2) [[kimi o mituketa] omoide no matu] you ACC found memory GEN pine.tree `the pine tree full of memory at which ( ) found you' An examination of this phenomenon will provide us a helpful key to the essence of modification, the relation between the modifier and the modified. What seems to be most relevant here is the degree of closeness which the two have to each other. What does this "closeness," then, mean in modification, and …

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