Features of Monoclausality and Polyclausality in Japanese Benefactives: A Corpus Study

Abstract

Typological status of complex converb constructions in Japanese is not currently well-defined. Japanese language researchers have no common opinion regarding their syntactic and functional unity. In this article we use corpus data to study such constructions with auxiliary verbs yaru, ageru, kureru, kudasaru, morau and itadaku and reveal features of monoclausality and biclausality with them. In the first part of the article, we overview the preexisting research on this topic, and then we apply the tests of morphological and syntactic independency that can be validated using corpus data. To test morphological independency, we check if focus particles such as mo ‘too’ can be placed between the parts of benefactive construction. For syntactic independency we use such tests as replacing a main verb with soo suru ‘to do so’ and checking the implementation of locality condition for shika ‘except’ when the negation marker is added to a main verb or to an auxiliary. According to our data, parts of all the six types of Japanese benefactive constructions demonstrate morphological independency (except for contracted colloquial forms). As for their syntactic properties, benefactives demonstrate both monoclausality and biclausality features. However, the parallel with direct and indirect passive constructions that exists in preceding research does not find endorsement in our data.