DOI:10.30842/alp230657371721137
Solomkina N. A. Yaponskiye benefaktivnyye
konstruktsii i kategoriya inversiva. Acta Linguistica
Petropolitana. 2021. 17(2): 184–204.
In this article, we examine Japanese benefactive constructions
with auxiliary verbs yaru, ageru,
kureru, and kudasaru with a view to their deictic
properties. Some recent works describe the contrast between
yaru / ageru / sashiageru ‘to give from the speaker’s
domain’ and kureru / kudasaru ‘to give towards the
speaker’s domain’ using the term “direct / inverse alignment”.
Our goal is to compare the actual usage of Japanese benefactive
constructions with the canonical direct / inverse systems and with
more broadly taken systems with direct / inverse alignment. This
paper proceeds from the assumption that Japanese benefactives are
quite distinct from the canonical direct / inverse systems. More
importantly, even the person hierarchies used for describing direct
/ inverse alignment can be quite difficult to apply in their case
due to the strong impact of the speaker’s empathy.
The paper pursues two goals: a theoretical (to find a most
precise model to describe the actual usage) and a descriptive one
(to analyze relevant examples from corpus data). In the theoretical
part, we compare Japanese benefactive constructions with two
general descriptions of direct / inverse systems. We show that,
despite some similarities, Japanese benefactives also demonstrate
distinct divergence from these. In the empirical part, we analyze
corpus data with regard to their compliance with the direct /
inverse alignment. Though only individual examples from our sample
demonstrate incongruency of yaru / ageru and kureru /
kudasaru with direct and inverse alignment respectively, these
and similar examples from other sources need special attention. The
choice of an auxiliary verb in Japanese benefactive constructions
does not fully fit in the person / animacy hierarchy (direct /
inverse alignment) system. The most adequate and brief description
of participants’ possible grammatical person can only be provided
in terms of “empathy” and “empathy hierarchy” (a hierarchy of
psychological proximity). This solution actually makes the
person/animacy hierarchy superfluous.
Keywords
Japanese, benefactive constructions, corpus
linguistics, direct-inverse systems, person hierarchy,
directionality
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