The Japanese Copula Forms and Functions

by Narahara, Tomiko

• ISBN13: 9780333969205
• ISBN10: 0333969200
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780230504530
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-09
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

In this innovative study, Tomiko Narahara offers a multi-disciplinary description of the Japanese copula, revealing it to be at the interface of morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Most striking is her discovery of the copula's function to express the speaker's knowledge or ignorance about the proposition of the sentence. She provides a new morphological feature analysis to derive this modal function and further proposes a series of unified accounts for a wide range of discourse phenomena.

Author Biography

Tomiko Narahara is at the University of California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
List of Abbreviations	ix
Part I The Concept of the Copula
Introduction to the Japanese Copula	3	(12)
Basic forms and functions	3	(3)
Categorial status	6	(2)
Non-inflective categories in Japanese	8	(2)
Some puzzling phenomena of the Japanese copula	10	(2)
Recent linguistic research on the copula	12	(1)
Organization of the book	13	(2)
The Copula as a Universal Notion	15	(28)
Overview	15	(1)
Definitions of 'copula'	16	(4)
Copula, the all mighty: the philosophical view	20	(8)
Linking function	20	(5)
Chinjutsu as linking in Japanese grammar	25	(3)
Copula or not copula?	28	(7)
Existential function	28	(3)
Identity reading	31	(4)
Copula, the dummy: the modern linguistic view	35	(3)
The copula as a feature carrier	38	(5)
Part II Forms and Functions: The View from Feature Morphology
Grammatical Feature Representation	43	(14)
Labelling inflectional forms	43	(3)
Morphological segmentation	46	(1)
Traditional approaches to inflectional analysis	47	(10)
Irrealis category and the negative form	48	(5)
Adverbial category and the past tense form	53	(4)
Against Non-past Tense Morphology	57	(14)
Outline of present tense marking	57	(3)
Conceptual problems in binary tense marking analysis	60	(4)
Redundancy	61	(1)
Morphological asymmetry	62	(2)
Empirical problems with binary tense marking analysis	64	(7)
Time-less events and states	64	(3)
Forms without a tense morpheme	67	(4)
Categorial Marking Analysis	71	(14)
A solution for the temporal interpretations	71	(2)
Treatment of (r)u-form, i-form and da in the traditional grammar	73	(5)
Overview	73	(1)
The end form	74	(1)
The pre-nominal form	74	(2)
The end and the pre-nominal copula	76	(2)
A proposal: categorial marking analysis	78	(7)
Part III Evolution of Inflectional Morphology
Verb Forms	85	(10)
Evolution of verb categorial forms	86	(4)
Existential verb ari/aru	90	(5)
Adjective Forms	95	(11)
Categorial forms	95	(3)
Copula and adjective formation	98	(8)
Copula Forms	106	(27)
Zo	106	(9)
N-type copulas: nari/naru	115	(12)
Na and no as categorial forms	127	(6)
Part IV Forms and Functions of the Modern Copula
De aru Copula	133	(14)
Overview of the d-type copula	133	(3)
De ar- forms in modern Japanese	136	(5)
Contracted d-type copula forms	141	(2)
Polite forms of the d-type copula	143	(4)
Da	147	(34)
Overview	147	(1)
Past research on da	148	(3)
Copula alternation: da and the zero-copula	151	(26)
The speaker's gender-stylistic copula alternation	151	(5)
Representation of the speaker's knowledge or ignorance	156	(1)
Yes/no questions and the receipt of new information	157	(10)
Embedded interrogative sentences	167	(4)
Sentence final particles	171	(4)
Epistemic modal predicates	175	(2)
Feature analysis of da	177	(2)
Da as a linking verb	179	(2)
Discourse Functions of da and zyanai	181	(22)
Discourse governed copula alternation	181	(14)
Zero-copula as a tone down	181	(10)
Information status and applicability of tone down	191	(4)
The negative copula as an ignorative marker	195	(7)
Concluding remarks	202	(1)
Notes	203	(3)
References	206	(8)
Index	214