This study presents apparent-time changes in the morphology of the expression mitai-na ‘similar to’. Based on apparent-time data, we argue that the morphological boundary between mitai and the attributive morpheme -na in the phrase mitai-na has disappeared, and that this complex phrase is now processed as a monomorphemic form. We suggest that relative frequency is the key to understanding the results.
We further supplement our argument with data on the standardization of the adverbial adjective form in the Kansai dialect. Young speakers overwhelmingly use the standard form of adverbials for all adjectives except two: yō ‘a lot, well’ and hayō ‘quickly, early’ (instead of Standard Japanese yoku and hayaku). The three linguistic forms that display unusual behavior (mitai-na and the adverbial forms of yō and hayō) all have a high relative frequency. We conclude that when a complex form occurs more frequently than its components (high relative frequency), then it behaves as a monomorphemic unit. The irregular adverbial forms are leftover from an obsolete system, in the same way that many English irregular past forms are leftover from the Germanic strong verb system. In contrast, the irregular form mitai-na emerged from and competes with the regular inflection paradigm for mitai, illustrating a previously undocumented path for the diachronic emergence of irregular morphology.
Bybee, Joan (2008). Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 216–236). New York; Abingdon: Routledge.
Bybee, Joan (2010). Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Chen, Yu-Hua, & Baker, Paul (2010). Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing. Language Learning and Technology, 14(2), 30–49.
Conklin, Kathy, & Schmitt, Norbert (2012). The processing of formulaic language. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 321, 45–61.
Cowan, Nelson (2010). The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why?Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 51–57.
Durrant, Philip, & Doherty, Alice (2010). Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 6(2), 125–155.
Fratini, Viviana, Acha, Joana, & Laka, Itziar (2014). Frequency and morphological irregularity are independent variables. Evidence from a corpus study of Spanish verbs. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 10(2), 289–314.
Haspelmath, Martin (2008). Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics, 19(1), 1–33.
Hay, Jennifer (2001). Lexical frequency in morphology: Is everything relative?Linguistics, 39(6), 1041–1070.
Heffernan, Kevin (2012). Kansaiben kōpasu no shōkai [An introduction to the Corpus of Kansai Vernacular Japanese
]. Sōgōseisaku Kenkyū, 411, 157–164.
Heffernan, Kevin, & Hiratsuka, Yusuke (in press). Morphological relative frequency impedes the use of stylistic variants: Evidence from a corpus of vernacular Japanese. Asia Pacific Language Variation.
Hoey, Michael (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. Stroud, UK: Taylor & Francis.
Horio, Kei (2014). Wakamono kotoba ni mirareru gengo henka ni kan suru kenkyū [Research on language change in Japanese youth language]. Doctoral dissertation, Kyushu University, Japan. Retrieved October 1, 2016, from [URL]
Horasawa, Shin (2011). Wakamonotachi ga shiyō suru ‘bokashi kotoba’: ‘Kana, mitaina’ to ‘ttekanji’ no goyōronteki kinō [The prgamatic function of the ambigious expressions ‘kana / mitaina’ and ‘ttekanji’ among young people]. Gifu daigaku chiiki kagakubu kenkyū hōkoku, 281, 41–49.
Hoshino, Yuko (2009). Komyunikēshon sutoratejī toshite no in’yō hyōgen: Hatsuwamatsu no ‘mitai-na’ no hyōgen kōka. [Direct quotations as a communication strategy: The expressive functions of utterance-final ‘mitai-na’]. Ningen bunka sōsei kagaku ronsō, 111, 133–142.
Iwasaki, Mariko (2012). ‘Mitai’ no shiteki hensen [On the diachronic change of the expression ‘mitai’]. Okayama Daigaku Daigakuin Shakaibunka Kagaku Kenkyūka Kiyō, 341, 163–182.
Juknevičienė, Rita (2009). Lexical bundles in learner language: Lithuanian learners vs. native speakers. Kalbotyra, 61(3), 61–72.
Kayne, Richard S. (2005). Movement and silence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kuiper, Koenraad (1996). Smooth talkers: The linguistic performance of auctioneers and sportscasters. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Matsutomo, Etsuko, Miyamoto, Jun, & Wakuri, Masako (2007). Essential Japanese expressions includes English, Chinese, and Korean translations. Tokyo: Aruku.
Maeda, Naoko (2004). Bunmatu hyōgen ‘mitaina’ no kinō [The pragmatic function of the sentence-final expression mitai-na]. Gekkan Gengo, 33(10), 54–57.
Meyer, David E., & Schvaneveldt, Roger W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90(2), 227–234.
Michel, Jean-Baptiste, Shen, Yuan Kui, Aiden, Aviva P., Veres, Adrian, Gray, Matthew K., The Google Books Team, …Aiden, Erez L. (2011). Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. Science, 331(6014), 176–2182.
Miller, George A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97.
Ohba, Mihoko (2009). Bunmatsu ni mochiirareru ‘mitai-na’ [On the expression mitai-na used at the end of a sentence]. Nihongo to Nihongo Kyōiku, 371, 43–59.
Pawley, Andrew, & Syder, Frances H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack C. Richards & Richards W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 191–225). London, UK: Longman.
Schmid, Hans-Jörg (2017). A framework for understanding linguistic entrenchment and its psychological foundations. In Hans-Jörg Schmid (Ed.), Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning (pp. 9–35). American Psychology Association and Walter de Gruyter.
Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna (2015). On the ‘holistic’ nature of formulaic language. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 11(2), 285–301.
Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna, Conklin, Kathy, & van Heuven, Walter J. B. (2011). Seeing a phrase “time and again” matters: The role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multiword sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory and Cognition, 37(3), 776–784.
Tomasello, Michael (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, Michael (2009). The usage-based theory of language acquisition. In Edith L. Bavin (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 69–88). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tremblay, Antoine, & Baayen, Harald (2010). Holistic processing of regular four-word sequences: A behavioral and ERP study of the effects of structure, frequency, and probability on immediate free recall. In David Wood (Ed.), Perspectives on formulaic language: Acquisition and communication (pp. 151–173). London, UK: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Tremblay, Antoine, Derwing, Bruce, Libben, Gary, & Westbury, Chris (2011). Processing advantages of lexical bundles: Evidence from self-paced reading and sentence recall tasks. Language Learning, 61(2), 569–613.
Wray, Alison (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wray, Alison (2012). What do we (think we) know about formulaic language? An evaluation of the current state of play. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 321, 231–254.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
FILE‐MURIEL, RICHARD J.
2023. Phonetics, Phonology, and Usage‐Based Approaches. In The Handbook of Usage‐Based Linguistics, ► pp. 107 ff.
Heffernan, Kevin, Yusuke Imanishi & Masaru Honda
2018. Showcasing the interaction of generative and emergent linguistic knowledge with case marker omission in spoken Japanese. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1
2017. Editorial. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 3:2 ► pp. 123 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.