Abstract
Along with the growing number of studies taking a construction approach to phrasal and clausal phenomena, applications of Construction Grammar to morphology has highlighted its importance in analyzing human language. In this chapter, we will illustrate that the construction morphology approach is most insightful in analyzing four word formation phenomena in Japanese: innovative verbs, hypocoristic formation, intensified mimetic adverbs, and innovative prenominal noun modification. They exhibit that a set of properties jointly belong to the construction in which they appear. These properties individually or collectively do not follow from general or Japanese-specific morpho(phono)logical principles. In each case, the properties that pertain to its form, meaning, and usage are better captured holistically belonging to the construction itself. The construction morphology approach offers the conceptual framework and methodological tools for analyzing them.
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- 1.
Innovative verbs can also be formed around mimetic words, whose categorial status is often indeterminate. Examples include nikoru ‘smile’, chibiru ‘stint’, pakuru ‘swindle’, and guzuru ‘grizzle’. In this chapter we will focus on innovative verbs that are denominal although the analysis presented here applies to mimetic-based innovative verbs as well. For more details, see Tsujimura and Davis (2011).
- 2.
Higashikokubaru has an additional meaning, ‘to show up no matter how busy he is or even when he is not invited.’ This meaning is supposed to reflect Governor Higashikokubaru’s personal traits. It is of note that a trip to Miyazaki and an uninvited appearance may not inherently share anything common but both emerge as actual usages because they mirror some aspect related to Higashikokubaru.
- 3.
The construction schema in (6) may not seem to account for sutabaru, which is paradigmatically related to sutaabakkusu in (1), because the long vowel /aa/ is shortened in the verb form. Another example is found in guuguru ↔ guguru ‘to conduct a Google search’ and jakuujii ‘jacuzzi’ ↔ jakujiru ‘to use jacuzzi’. As we noted in Tsujimura and Davis (2011: 804), this reflects a tendency that the last two moras of an innovative verb root does not consist of a long vowel. This tendency may lead to a modification that the last C in the […[(C)V(C)V’]k-r]Vroot portion of the schema should always surface rather than be optional.
- 4.
The suffix –tyan appears in kinship terms like (o-)too-tyan ‘father’, (o-)kaa-tyan ‘mother’, (o-)nii-tyan ‘older brother’, (o-)nee-tyan ‘older sister’, (o-)jii-tyan ‘grandfather’, (o-)baa-tyan ‘grandmother’, o-ji-tyan ‘uncle’, and o-ba-tyan ‘aunt’ although these forms have corresponding terms with –san instead of –tyan. Additionally, there are words like bot-tyan ‘small boy, someone’s son’, ojoo-tyan ‘small girl’, and aka-tyan ‘baby’, also sharing the same suffix. However, these words are different from truncated hypocoristics in Japanese to be discussed in this section in that they do not involve a truncation process.
- 5.
When first names consist of two moras, truncation does not take place, yielding hypocoristic counterparts with –tyan, as in Mari ➔ mari-tyan, Rika ➔ rika-tyan, and Jun ➔ jun-tyan. The degree of endearment in these hypocoristics in comparison with truncated longer names is not clear to us. This is similar to the observation made by Booij and Audring (2017) that monosyllabic English names that do not have a correspondence to a longer form (e.g. Paul) lack a sense of endearment.
- 6.
The only exceptions that we are aware of are cases in which the truncation results in three moras that contain a geminate consonant. Examples include Akiko ➔ akko-tyan, Tokuko ➔ tokko-tyan, Yoshiko ➔ okko-tyan, and Motoko ➔ mokko-tyan. As these examples suggest, many of the original first names of three-mora hypocoristics have high vowels /i, u/ between voiceless consonants, resulting in their devoicing. The environment for high vowel devoicing seems to correspond to the geminate consonant in these examples. As for cases like Motoko ➔ mokko-tyan, while the full name does not have any high vowel, Vance (2008) notes that non-high vowels often become devoiced between voiceless consonants although it happens much less consistently than with high vowels. In light of the fact that the second vowel of Motoko meets the environment of vowel devoicing, the three-mora hypocoristic form with a geminate consonant may be seen as phonologically derived from the suffixing of –tyan to the full name.
- 7.
A consonant serving as the second mora of a truncated hypocoristic is always realized uniformly as homorganic to the following consonant, but this constraint does not need to be stipulated in the formal representation of the construction because non-homorganic consonant clusters are not allowed in Japanese.
- 8.
Possible exceptions exist but mostly in very casual speech. For instance, [nn] (in HL pitch) [nnn] [in LHL pitch] can be used for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ respectively; and ppoi ‘like [X]’ and tte iu ka ‘or should I say’, are considered elliptical, assuming that full nouns and statements precede the initial geminates.
- 9.
As Poser (1990) observes, these hypocoristics may have varying degrees of acceptability among different speakers.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
The concept of mora augmentation may be originated from Kuroda (1979), who called C0 “a mora consonant.”
- 14.
See Audring and Booij (2016) for the role of coercion effects in Construction Morphology.
- 15.
In a similar vein, the second example in (22c), otona-na machi, has a narrow interpretation: it refers to Ginza as a shopping area filled with exclusive, high-end stores. The “property” reading of otona ‘adult’ in this case seems quite stretched from the conventional denotation of the noun otona, but the exact nature of the connection between an aspect of otona in the context of Ginza as a shopping site is left up to language users to determine. That is, such flexibility and subjectivity of interpretations of the prenominal N modifiers is part of the N-na N construction that distinguishes it from the N-no N pattern.
- 16.
Other examples like those in (22) include suupaa-hiiroo-na sekai (super-hero-na world), toogarashi-na aitsu (red pepper-na guy), and enka-na aitsu (enka [traditional-style Japanese popular songs]-na guy), among others, each of which calls for a specific interpretation that is appropriate for a particular context and situation, although it is possible to assign a more general “property” interpretation.
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Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Geert Booij not only for inviting us to contribute to this volume but also for providing us with a number of insightful comments. We are particularly indebted to him for his guidance to improve the content of this article and to help us to better understand the specific mechanisms of Construction Morphology. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for useful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
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Tsujimura, N., Davis, S. (2018). Japanese Word Formation in Construction Morphology. In: Booij, G. (eds) The Construction of Words. Studies in Morphology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74394-3_14
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