Case-alternation with Japanese adjectives: A cognitive transitive perspective

The aim of this thesis is to explain the observed case-alternation occurring with the three Japanese predicates suki 'like', kirai 'dislike' and hoshii 'want' from a Cognitive Linguistic standpoint. These three predicates alternately appear in a construction in which the second nominal receives nominative and accusative marking, with the nominative considered to be the 'standard'. The goal of this thesis is to assess whether the observed 'non-standard' accusative marking on these predicates‟ second nominals can be accounted for by appealing to the semantic nuances of the sentences in which they occur. More specifically, the hypothesis tested is that the case-alternation can be explained by the predicate-containing sentences taking on an interpretation more closely resembling the experiential category of 'prototypical transitive event' The findings which emerged from analyzing the various materials (previous research, language corpora, speaker judgments) seem to provide a relatively strong case for the validity of this hypothesis. In particular, transitivity-related factors such as 'event-likeness', 'object affectedness', 'dynamicity', 'volition' and 'object-likeness' had significant explanatory value in accounting for the use of accusative marking on the predicates' second nominals, although the observed effect was more apparent for the suki and kirai predicates. The correlations between the presence of these factors and accusative marking were stronger than those found for previously hypothesized causes. Additionally, the empirical analyses hinted at the existence of a 'semantic split', in which the predicates with accusatively marked second nominals express 'feelings', while those with traditional nominatively marked second nominals express 'preferences'. This seems to suggest that the alternation can, to a large extent, be accounted for by a difference in the meaning that the utterer wishes to convey. The relative success of the hypothesis in accounting for the phenomenon at hand has several important implications. Firstly, it shows the validity of the Cognitive Linguistics approach in accounting for empirical language data, giving particular weight to Ronald W. Langacker‟s definition of transitivity. Furthermore, I believe that this thesis has led to insights related to the use of accusative marking, both in conjunction with the suki, kirai, and hoshii predicates, and in general. These observations may contribute towards developing a new way of instructing non-native speakers to use such marking in a more 'natural' way