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Detail of contribution

Auteur: Shin-ichiro SANO

Titre:
Modeling the Sequential Changes of Verbal Inflections in Japanese Potential Form


Abstract/Résumé: In Japanese, a series of morphological changes that reorganizes the verbal inflectional paradigm is currently underway. The changes in potential forms serially render three innovative processes named potential verb, ra-Deletion, and re-Insertion, respectively. In this research, I model the mechanism that governs these sequential changes in potential forms in a unified manner, using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (hereafter CSJ). BACKGROUND: The verbs in Japanese are traditionally classified into two types according to the stem-ending: one type is called consonant verb that ends with a consonant; the other type is called vowel verb that ends with a vowel (Bloch 1946). Before the Muromachi era (the 16th century), the potential form for the consonant verb was comprised of the verb stem and the potential suffix are, as in ik-are- ‘can go’; the potential form for the vowel verb was comprised of the verb stem and the potential suffix rare, as in mi-rare- ‘can see.’ These two types of verb stems have undergone distinct changes. CHANGES: The first change, motivated by semantic disambiguation, affected consonant verbs, and renders the suffix e by deletion of the segments ar from are, yielding the potential verb such as ik-e- and nom-e- (Shibuya 1993). The second change (ra-Deletion), mainly motivated by analogical leveling (Paul 1890/1970), in turn affected vowel verbs, and renders the suffix re by deletion of the segments ra from rare, yielding the potential forms such as mi-re- and tabe-re- (Matsuda 1993, Ito and Mester 2004). The third change (re-Insertion), motivated by semantic disambiguation, affected consonant verbs, and renders the suffix ere by insertion of the segments re to e, yielding the potential forms such as ik-ere- and nom-ere-. Re-Insertion subsequently diffused to vowel verbs motivated by analogical leveling, and renders the suffix rere by insertion of the segments re to re, yielding the potential forms such as mi-rere- and tabe-rere-. MODELING: The results of the quantitative analysis using CSJ show that the changes in potential form proceed in the following order: potential verb, ra-Deletion, re-Insertion (in consonant verbs), re-Insertion (in vowel verbs), which is consistent with the claims of previous studies. Furthermore, based on the chronological order of these changes, we can argue that the initial change in consonant verbs is motivated by the semantic disambiguation; the subsequent change in vowel verbs is triggered by the analogical leveling for the optimization of the conjugation paradigm, and it reorganizes the expanded discrepancy between potential forms of consonant verbs and vowel verbs caused by the preceding change. I propose that this two-step process is the core mechanism of the changes in potential forms.