Interaction Of Derivational Morphology And Syntax In Japanese And English

Interaction of Derivational Morphology and Syntax in Japanese and English

Originally published in 1986, this book discusses how the proper boundary between the lexicon and syntax should be defined and examines various word formation processes in Japanese and English which involve some interaction of morphology and syntax. It also questions the plausibility of the lexicalist hypothesis as a theory of universal grammar. It proposes a rule typology approach to the syntax/lexicon dichotomy and looks at deverbal nominals and compounds in English and Japanese and discusses their similarities and differences. In particular the important role argument structure plays in morphological derivations is analysed.

Interaction of Derivational Morphology and Syntax in Japanese and English

Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.