The School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London

Overview

Study

Thesis title:

Secondary predicates in Japanese

Year of Study:

First year

Internal Supervisors

• Peter Sells

I am currently conducting my research on secondary predicates in Japanese. Secondary predicates appear in the resultative and depictive constructions. They can be observed in many languages, but Japanese shows some special properties. First, in most languages including English, the secondary predicate is strictly limited to the category of adjective, whereas Japanese allows not only adjectives but also mimetic (sound-symbolic) words to be secondary predicates. Second, the resultative construction can be divided into two types, strong and weak, depending on the semantic relationship between the main verb and the resultative predicate. English allows both types but Japanese only has the weak type. Third, there are only a few overlaps between the secondary predicates for resultatives and depictives; a predicate can be used either to be resultative or depictive, but very few allow either use. There is no current satisfactory account of these properties of Japanese. Besides the secondary predicates in Japanese, I am also working on those in Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai and Mongolian, which I believe reveals the typological properties of secondary predicates.

PhD Publications

1. Shibagaki, Ryosuke. (to appear). Internal and External Causation in Mandarin Resultatives, in the Proceedings of the 17th International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL17).
2. Shibagaki, Ryosuke. (to appear). Semantic Aspect of Thai Secondary Predicate, in the Proceedings of the 19th Meeting of South East Asian Linguistic Society (SEALS19).
3. Shibagaki, Ryosuke. (to appear). Resultatives and Causation in Cantonese, in the Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cantonese and Yue Dialect (ICCY13).
4. Editorial Work
   Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (#58, 2009) ed. R. Shibagaki and R. Vermeulen, MIT Working Paper in Linguistics. web.mit.edu/mitwpl
5. Shibagaki, Ryosuke. 2009. Affected Roles and Linking in Mandarin Resultatives, in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on East Asian Linguistics (ICEAL2), Simon Frazer University Working Paper in Linguistics Vol.2. www.sfu.ca/gradlings/wp_2.html
6. Shibagaki, Ryosuke 2008. Locality in Argument Structure, Journal of Linguistic and Cultural Studies (JOLCS) Vol.31, p3-37, The Japan Association of Language and Culture, Japan
7. Shibagaki, Ryosuke 2007. Implication of Integrity in Resultative Construction, Journal of Linguistic and Cultural Studies (JOLCS) Vol.29, p153-176, The Japan Association of Language and Culture, Japan