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Article published In:
Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 3:2 (2017) ► pp.200–231

Morphological relative frequency impedes the use of stylistic variants

Evidence from a corpus of vernacular Japanese

| Kwansei Gakuin University
| Shigakukan University

The sociolinguistic enterprise has demonstrated that speakers manipulate linguistic variants as they construct their speech style. Contrary to this expectation, this study introduces specific cases in which stylistic variation is highly constrained. We examine the verbal negative suffix in Kansai vernacular Japanese. We first demonstrate that this variable indexes speech style. We then show that in a few specific contexts, such as following the verb stem shir- ‘know’, speakers overwhelmingly use a single variant, in this case, shira-n ‘not know’. We point out that the unusual forms such as shira-n all have a high relative frequency compared to the other forms in their paradigms. Complex forms such as the English word insane, which occur more frequently than their parts (in+sane), are difficult to decompose. We claim that this phenomenon also impedes stylistic variation as forms such as shira-n are not readily decomposed into verb stem + negative suffix.

Keywords: morphology, frequency, Japanese, style, verbal negative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Stylistic variation
    • 1.2The pliable nature of language
    • 1.3Speech style and Japanese dialects
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Data source
    • 2.2Independent variables
    • 2.3Quantifying speech style
      • 2.3.1Stative verbs: Iru/oru ‘be, exist’
      • 2.3.2The non-past copula
      • 2.3.3Nasalization of -ru
      • 2.3.4Sentence-final particles and adverbial intensifiers
      • 2.3.5Adjective Ii~ee
    • 2.4The SJ index
    • 2.5The dependent variable: The verbal negative suffix
      • 2.5.1Overview of the verbal negative suffix
      • 2.5.2 suru ‘do’, shiru ‘know’, wakaru ‘understand’, and iru ‘need’
      • 2.5.3Modal obligation
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Verbal negative suffix variant usage: General patterning
    • 3.2Verbal negative suffix variant usage: The specific contexts
  • 4. The common link: Relative frequency
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.16009.hef
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