Cover not available
Part of
Thetics and Categoricals
Edited by Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss and Yasuhiro Fujinawa
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 262] 2020
► pp. 337–350

B-grade subjects and theticity

| Keio University
This study investigates the linguistic subject in categorical and thetic sentences. In the “subjectless” thetic sentence, as Kuroda (1972) pointed out, we have a nonprototypical subject, a B-grade subject, which is preferably combined in Japanese with the nominative marker ga. By contrasting B-grade subjects in Japanese with their corresponding expressions in German (and other languages), we discover two types of subjects, internal and external. In Japanese, B-grade subjects are realizations of internal subjects, which are verbalized differently in other languages as a subject, as a dummy subject, or an object. Comparing different realization forms of weather expressions crosslinguistically, we suggest that the language-specific realizations of B-grade subjects correspond to three types of thetic judgments: entity-central, event-central, and mixed type of both.
Keywords: subjecthood, thetic judgment, categorical judgment, Japanese, German, topic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Thetic and categorical judgments
  • 3.“B-grade subjects” in Onoe (2017)
  • 4.B-grade-subjects in German?
  • 5.Restriction on the specific indefinite subject
  • 6.Two types of Theticity: Entity-central and event-central
  • 7.Discussion: Crosslinguistic realization forms of the B-grade subjects with examples from weather verbs
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.262.12tan
References (13)
References
Abraham, Werner. 2013. Deutsche Syntax im Sprachenvergleich 3rd edn. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen. 1975. On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In Li (ed.), 3–9.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1975. Towards a universal definition of “subject”. In Li (ed.), 303–333.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Shige-Yuki. 1972/1979. The categorical and the thetic judgment. Evidence from Japanese syntax. Foundations of Language 9: 153–185. (In this paper, the quotations from 1979 are from his anthology The (W)hole of the Doughnut: Syntax and its Boundaries [Studies in Generative Linguistic Analysis 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Original publisher E. Story-Scientia.)Google Scholar
Li, Charles N. (Ed.). 1975). Subject and Topic. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Marty, Anton 1918. Spezielles über den Ausdruck der Urteile und die diesbezüglichen inneren Sprachformen. In Anton Marty: Gesammelte Schriften, 2. Bd., 1. Abt., Josef Eisenmeyer / Alfred Kastil / Oskar Kraus (eds), 223–301. Halle a.S.: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Mikami, Akira. 1972. Gendai-Gohou-Josetsu: Syntax-no-kokoromi (Introduction for modern usages of Japanese: An attempt at syntactic description). Tokyo: Kuroshio.Google Scholar
Ogawa, Akio. 2012. Zur Typologie der Witterungs-, Klima- und daran angrenzenden Prädikate-unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Deutschen und des Japanischen. In Unpersönliche Konstruktionen. Prädikatinsformen functional und sprachübergreifend betrachtet, Angelika Redder, Akio Ogawa & Shinichi Kameyama (eds), 201–212. München: iudicium.Google Scholar
Onoe, Keisuke. 2017. “-wa” to “-ga” wo megutte (discussion on -wa and -ga). Ms. Tokyo.Google Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1987. The thetic/categorical distinction revisited. Linguistics 25: 511–580. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, Robert W. M. Dixon (ed.), 112–171. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Shin. 2020. Thetik/Kategorik als funktionale Kategorie: Funktional- universale Satzstruktur. In Zur Architektur von Thetik und Kategorik Deutsch, Japanisch, Chinesisch und Norwegisch, Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss & Shin Tanaka (eds), 149–168. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Tsunoda, Tasaku. 1992. Sekai-no-Gengo-to-Nihongo (Languages of the World and Japanese). Tokyo: Kuroshio.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Abraham, Werner
2020. From philosophical logic to linguistics. In Thetics and Categoricals [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 262], ► pp. 226 ff. DOI logo
Abraham, Werner
2020. Introduction . In Thetics and Categoricals [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 262], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo

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.