Diachronic changes in Japanese compound verbs:
A perspective from Construction Morphology
Kiyoko Toratani (York University)
Aoki (2013) discusses the diachronic development of Japanese verb-verb (V1-V2) compound
verbs (e.g. osi-iru push-enter ‘force into’), postulating that they originally had a complex phrasal
structure (1) where the V1’s phrase was followed by the V2, but gradually developed into a
compound structure (2).
(1)
(2)
[
VP [
VP
VP
[arguments + V1 (non-finite linking form)] [V2]]
arguments + [V1 V2]]
(Aoki 2013: 220)
(Aoki 2013: 223)
As Aoki (2013) is theoretically neutral, it remains to be explored how his insights can be
understood in light of morphological theories. This paper is an attempt to reinterpret Aoki (2013)
in terms of Construction Morphology (Booij 2010) drawing on an Old Japanese (OJ) dictionary
(Miyakoshi et al. 2003). Assuming that a head-position-based inheritance hierarchy (Toratani
2015, cf. Booij 2010: 70) captures the organization of present-day compound verbs, with its root
node diverging according to the position of the semantic head, i.e. which component, V1 or V2,
provides the core meaning of the compound, I consider to what extent such a representation
reflects the distribution of compound verbs in the diachrony. While these verbs have the same
types of compounds as the present-day ones, they contain more constructional (sub)schema types,
implying their organization or composition may have differed.
Compound verbs in the past had left (V1)-headed (e.g. (3)) and right (V2)-headed (e.g.
(4)) types, similar to compound verbs today.
(3)
(4)
iki-wataru go-cross ‘go/reach all over the place’ (OJ and present-day): here the V1 (iki‘go’) provides the core meaning, and the V2 -wataru ‘all over the place’ is an affixoid.
uti-anzu hit-worry ‘worry’ (OJ) and uti-ateru hit-strike ‘strike’ (present-day): here, the V2
provides the core meaning, and the V1 uti- ‘hit’ is an affix adding no semantic content.
Yet for those verbs whose components express literal meanings, we see a major shift in the
position of the semantic head, from left/double-headed to right, i.e. the representation in (2),
originated in (1), implies compounds in the past had the V1-semantic-head structure (Aoki 2013),
or possibly a double-headed structure, but present-day compounds arguably take the V2semantic-head structure (Kageyama 2013). The diachronic data also contain V1-affixoids (e.g.
ari- in ari-tatu exist-stand ‘stand continuously’ where the V1 expresses an aspectual meaning),
which are absent in the present-day compounds. In addition, they contain verbs that can appear at
a different position in the inheritance hierarchy, while the present-day compounds seem to have a
more principal position: e.g. V2 nahosu ‘fix’ (OJ) can express a literal meaning (sasi-nahosu
point-fix ‘fix’) and a bleached meaning as a V2-affixoid (tori-nahosu ‘take again’) but its
present-day counterpart naosu ‘fix’ is primarily used as a V2-affixoid.
This paper examines diachronic data of Japanese compound verbs within the framework
of Construction Morphology (Booij 2010). It argues that considering compounds in light of the
inheritance hierarchy allows us to detail the changes taking place over time; the hierarchical
representation, in turn, proves useful to visually characterize the changes.
References
Aoki, Hirofumi. 2013. The historical change of compound verbs. In New Explorations into the
Mysteries of Compound Verbs, Taro Kageyama (ed.), 215-241. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
Booij, Geert. 2010. Construction Morphology. Oxford: OUP.
Kageyama, Taro. 2013. A new system of lexical compound verbs. In New Explorations into the
Mysteries of Compound Verbs, Taro Kageyama (ed), 215-241. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
Miyakoshi, Masaru, Sakurai Mitsuru, Ishi Masami and Oda Masaru. Eds. 2003. Zen-yaku kogo
ziten [Old Japanese dictionary with translation], 3rd edition. Tokyo: Obunsha.
Toratani, Kiyoko. 2015. Organizational structure of lexical compound verbs in Japanese: A
Construction Morphology account. ms. York University.