Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation and Purpose
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categorize nouns and the world.
Finally, as the list of Japanese classifiers ( “classifiers” will be abbreviated as
“Cs” in the following chapters) is determined, it will also be helpful for discussions in language teaching and second language acquisition for Taiwanese learners.
1.1 Motivation and Purpose
1.1.1 The Cs identified in previous studies
From the traditional view point, the definitions of numeral Cs are inconsistent and vague, and the number of Japanese Cs estimated by separate studies varies.
In linguistic studies, Sanches (1977) listed 55 Cs, Denny(1979) listed only 20 Cs, Matsumoto (1991,1993) listed 32 Cs, and Downing (1983, 1984, 1996) listed over 150 Japanese Cs.
From grammar books and dictionaries, Iida listed 550 counters, while the NHK dictionary listed 257 counters. In addition, in grammar books written in Chinese, 顧 (2004) listed 115 Cs whereas 錢 (2011) listed only 53 Cs.
The numbers of possible Japanese Cs in previous works are between 20 and over 500. This indicates that the definition of Cs needs to be well-defined and re-examined to accurately identify true Japanese Cs.
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1.1.2 Linguistic discussions about classifiers
Despite the fact that the disputable definition of Japanese Cs provides a research gap worth analyzing, there is another reason to show that it is important to identify true Japanese numeral Cs – if classifiers are not clearly defined and separated from other syntactic elements, the results of some syntactic tests or semantic predictions will be affected.
Previous studies investigating Japanese numeral Cs and Japanese syntax focus more on analyzing the syntactic structures of Cs. According to Watanabe (2006) and Philip (2006, 2007), the structures of Japanese numeral Cs are shown in example (1):
(1) a. 学生 三 人 が バナナ お 食べた。1 gakusei san nin ga banana o tabeta student 3 C NOM banana ACC ate
“Three students ate banana.”
b. 三 人 学生 が バナナ お 食べた。
(predominant in old Japanese, 42.8%)
san nin gakusei ga banana o tabeta 3 C student NOM banana ACC ate
“Three students ate banana.”
1 Examples shown in this thesis are presented in four lines to denote the differences. The first line shows the characters using the kanzi(漢字) system, the second line shows the spelling in Japanese, the third line presents the glossaries, and the fourth line displays the English translation.
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c. 学生 が 三 人 バナナ お 食べた。
gakusei ga san nin banana o tabeta student NOM 3 C banana ACC ate
“Three students ate banana.”
d. 学生 の 三 人 が バナナ お 食べた。
gakusei no san nin ga banana o tabeta student GEN 3 C NOM banana ACC ate
“Three students ate banana.”
e. 三 人 の 学生 が バナナ お 食べた。
(predominant in modern Japanese, 45.8%)
2san nin no gakusei ga banana o tabeta 3 C GEN student NOM banana ACC ate “Three students ate banana.”
The morpheme with the Chinese character “人” in the spelling of にん /nin/ is a noun in Chinese, but it is a [+human] C in Japanese. The issues of the famous
“floating quantifiers” (Miyagawa, 2006) and the structural differences in examples (1a) to (1e) are not essentially related to the main focus of this paper, so they are not
discussed in detail. Also note that Alan (1995) suggested that in modern Japanese,
2 The statistics is based on Downing and Noonan eds.(1995; 209) in which a total of 208 samples were studied and the most frequent C structure in old and modern Japanese is found.
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[Num CL-の N] is the predominant construction. This factor may affect the syntactic test process in Chapter 3.
Many studies claimed that Japanese Cs are modifiers of the following verb phrase (abbreviated as “VP”), and three proves show that Japanese numeral Cs are modifiers of VP. However, this is possibly because of the inconsistent definitions and the elements taken in syntactic tests whose results satisfy this prediction.
First of all, in example (1c) above, some elements, such as “昨日” (“yesterday”) can be inserted between the NP and C, as shown in the following example (2) .
Sentence (2a) does not prove that Cs are modifiers of NP or VP. However, in sentence (2b), if “昨日” is inserted between “学生” and “三人”, then it seems like the numeral
“三” (さん, /san/, “three”) and C “人” are much closer to the following VP (バナナお 食べ, “ate banana”) than the preceding NP (学生, “students”). Therefore, 周 (2009)
and Kuno (1973) suggested that Japanese Cs are not modifiers of the NP (student) but modifiers of the VP (ate banana). Furthermore, Nakanishi (2003) even claimed that Cs are modifiers of both the NP (student) and the VP (ate banana). He suggested that the C is “subject to constraints in both the VP and NP domains” based on his own
terminology.
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(2) a. [昨日] [学生 が] [三 人] [バナナ お 食べ-た]。
kinou gakusei ga san nin banana o tabe-ta yesterday student NOM 3 C banana ACC eat-past tense
“Three students ate banana yesterday.
b. [学生 が] [昨日] [三 人] [バナナ お 食べ-た]。
gakusei ga kinou san nin banana o tabe-ta student NOM yesterday 3 C banana ACC eat-past tense
“Three students ate banana yesterday.”
This viewpoint is worth re-examining because the syntactic position of “昨日”
can be changed to the beginning of this sentence. If “昨日” is not inserted between NP and C, as shown in example (2a), then this proof is invalid.
In addition to the second proof addressing that Cs are modifiers of VP, it is relevant to the definition of the Cs. Philip (2006) compared two possible meanings of a sentence in example (3). He suggested that the event C “発” (with the spelling of hatsu /hatsɯ/, はつ) is used to count the event “shot”, but not the noun object
“pistol”, based on the fact that the meaning of this sentence is not “there were three pistols”, but “there were three pistol shots (three shooting event)”. Therefore, he claimed that the C “発” modifies the VP (うたれた, “shot”), but not the NP (ピスト ル, “pistol”).
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(3) ピストル が そこ で 三 発 うたれ-た。
pisutoru ga soko de san patsu utare-ta
pistol NOM there at 3 C shoot-past tense
“There were three pistol shots.” (C 発 counted the VP shooting event)
*”There were three pistols.” *( C 発 counted the NP pistol)
However, it is because of the inaccurate definition of Cs that led to the “C is the modifier of VP” prediction. In the later chapter, a more conscientious definition of C will be provided. Cs can be viewed as profilers that sometimes focus on some specific features of an NP, but not on the whole characteristics of NP. As a matter of fact, this second proof indicates that it is unclear whether Cs modify VP.
The final proof is relevant to Cs and measure words (abbreviated as “M” in this thesis) identification. Example (4) shows the revised sentences of Nakanishi (2003).
Nakanishi provided the example to verify his point that C/M phrases are sometimes modifiers of NPs, and other times they are modifiers of both VPs and NPs. He provided the term “split classifiers/ measure phrases” to explain the behavior of examples (2b), (3), (4a) and (4b), which the C/M phrases are separated away from the NP by elements like “yesterday” or prepositional phrases (abbreviated as “PP”).
He suggested that these “split classifiers/ measure phrases” should be the modifiers of the adjacent VPs. With the same VP (spilled) in both (4a) and (4b), only
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sentence (4a) is grammatical. (4b) is ungrammatical because the slot after numeral
“三” (“three”) is not a C or M like “度” (it means “degree”). In other words, if (4a) is a grammatical sentence, then the element following numeral “三” would definitely be
a C or M. As a result, Nakanishi suggested that a C/M phrase may coerce not only an NP (水, meaning “water”) but also a VP (溢れた, meaning “spilled”).
(4) a. [水 が] [机 の 上 で] [三 杯] [溢れ-た]。3
mizu ga tukue no ue de san bai kobore-ta water NOM table GEN on POS 3 M-cup spill-past tense
“Three cups of water was spilled on the table.”
b. *[水 が] [机 の 上 で] [三 度] [溢れ-た]。
mizu ga tukue no ue de san do kobore-ta water NOM table GEN on POS 3 degree spill-past tense “*Three degree of water was spilled on the table.”4
For his “non-split classifiers/ measure phrases” idea, in examples (1a), (1b), (1d), and (1e), the C/M phrases are contiguous with the NP. He suggested that they could only modify the adjacent NP, so the C/M could be a modifier of both NP and
VP.
3 In the original example, (4a) is 水が 机の上で 三リットル こぼれた (Three liters of water spilled on the table). The comparison of (4a) and (4b) is not sufficient to prove his point on slit classifier/ measure phrases, because “liter” and “degree” are not classifiers or measure words.
4 The word “度” with the spelling of /du/ could be degrees or times of events. In example (4b), if the meaning of 度 is for counting times, then it is a classifier and the sentence will be grammatical.
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However, what satisfies his hypothesis (that Cs are modifiers of VP) is the difference in the properties of the C/M and non-C/M elements, but not the syntactic structure itself. The reason which made (4a) grammatical and (4b) ungrammatical is due to the semantic differences between the M “杯” and unit of measurement “度” . Also, the same prediction could be made based on his “non-split classifier/ measure word phrases” idea.
Consider examples taken from Google Search in (5a) and the made-up sentence (5b), it is very clear that for Philip’s “non-split C/M phrases”, (5b) is still a
semantically-illness sentence because the morpheme after the numeral “三” is not a C or M. The main reason that makes (4a) and (5a) grammatical is whether the syntactic elements that the author chose to do the tests are C/M or not.
(5) a. 三 杯 水 が 溢れて、…。
san pai mize ga koborete 3 M-cup water NOM spilled “Three cups of water spilled, and…”
b. *三 度 水 が 溢れた。
san do mize ga koboreta 3 degree water NOM spilled “*Three degree of water spilled”