Chapter published in:
Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. Whitman
Edited by Kunio Nishiyama, Hideki Kishimoto and Edith Aldridge
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 250] 2018
► pp. 23–44

Chapter 2
The syntactic status of by-phrases in Korean and Japanese

| Korea Soongsil Cyber University

Traditional analyses of Japanese syntax make a distinction between ni passives and ni yotte passives depending on the type of by-phrases. These two patterns of passives correspond semantically to HI passives and CI passives in Korean respectively in that the subject in ni passives and HI passives typically bears an Affectee role whereas the subject in ni yotte passives and CI passives is not constrained by this semantic requirement. Despite the superficial similarities between Japanese and Korean passives, however, the by-phrases behave like arguments in both types of Korean passives whereas their Japanese counterparts demonstrate adjunct-like properties in ni yotte passives. While unveiling what mechanism operates in generating each type of passive construction, this chapter investigates the syntactic status of by-phrases and the origin that triggers the affectedness constraint observed in these East Asian languages.

Keywords: passive, Korean, Japanese, by-phrase, affectedness constraint, implicit argument, thematic structure, ontological salience
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Two types of passives in Korean and Japanese
    • 2.1Korean passives and an Agent-oriented adverb
    • 2.2Idiosyncrasies of HI passives
    • 2.3Japanese passives and their Korean counterparts
  • 3.The syntactic status of by-phrases
    • 3.1Thematic properties of ey uyhay-phrases
    • 3.2 Thematic properties of eykey-phrases
    • 3.3 Thematic properties of ni-phrases
    • 3.4 Thematic properties of ni yotte-phrases
  • 4.The origin of the affectedness constraint in Japanese
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.250.03par
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