In this paper, we trace from a constructionist perspective the diachronic development of the Chinese scalar additive coordinators meaning roughly ‘let alone’ derived from a prohibitive expression ‘don’t say’. We argue that a construction schema formed by the combination of a prohibitive marker… read more
This paper compares Japanese and Korean noun-modifying clause constructions (NMCCs) in terms of the extent to which they accommodate ‘main clause phenomena’. Specifically, Japanese NMCCs allow for address-politeness suffixes to occur, and for quoted speech to be manifested with minimal linking… read more
In this paper, we argue that the Neg-Raising Phenomenon (NRP) is a product of grammaticalization. Support of this argument comes from similarities to epistemic parentheticals which are themselves derived through grammaticalization. Both epistemic parentheticals and NRP have a hedging function of… read more
This paper presents a functional-typological analysis of three linguistic manifestations of modality-related phenomena in Japanese. When compared with English, German, and Korean, Japanese is characterized by a modal system that encodes event, epistemic, and evidential modalities, and a relatively… read more
This paper presents a contrastive analysis of Japanese and Korean nominalized constructions, i.e. (I) Head Internal Relatives (HIRs) and (II) Sentence-final nominalized constructions. Japanese HIRs are shown to manifest a greater degree of cross-constructional extension than their Korean… read more
The paper examines the grammaticalization patterns of sentential nominalizers in Japanese and compares them with those found in Korean. The analysis of the nominalization system of Japanese illustrates the multifunctional character of such forms and the existence of differential degrees of… read more
The tripartite distinction of subordinate clauses, i.e. relative, complement, and adverbial clause, is arguably motivated by the differing type of conceptual asymmetry between matrix clause and subordinate clause events encoded by each clause type. The three types of subordinate clauses are also… read more
This paper presents a “relativized” assessment of the analyses on subjectification and intersubjectification in Japanese presented in the four case studies (this issue), particularly through a comparison with Korean which shows remarkable similarity to Japanese in terms of morpho-syntactic… read more
It has been suggested that a core–oblique distinction is not manifested in the grammatical structures of languages like Japanese and Korean, wherein both core and oblique arguments are marked by so-called case-marking particles. This study argues, based on elicitation data from Japanese and Korean… read more