Process, Telicity, and Event Cancellability in Japanese:
A Questionnaire Study
Natsuno Aoki and Kentaro Nakatani
Konan University
It is known that the telic events in Japanese transitive verbs can often be cancelled,
as in an example like moyasi-ta-kedo moe-nakat-ta „I burnt it but it didn‟t burn.‟(Ikegami, 1985; Kageyama, 1996; Tsujimura, 2003; etc.). By examining such aphenomenon, Tsujimura (2003) argues that the result states of Japanese transitive verbs,
especially the ones that alternates with intransitive inchoative counterparts, are notlexically encoded, but rather conversationally implicated.
Questions, however, remain. First, Tsujimura (2003) points out that “speakers‟
judgments may vary”; then one can ask if the “cancellability” phenomenon pointed out
in the literature is real.
Second, the cancellability judgments seem to vary with the choice of the object NPof the transitive verb (cf. Ikegami, 1985). For example, (1b) below seems to bedegraded compared to (1a), even though both sentences contain the same pair oftransitive and intransitive verbs.
(1) a. riidaa-ga minna-no iken-o matome-ta ga, saisyuuteki-ni matomara-nakat-ta.
leader-Nom everybody-Gen opinion-Acc put_together-Past although,in_the_end hold_together-Neg-Past„The leader harmonized opinions, but failed in the end.‟b. Tanaka-san-ga sono syoodan-o matome-ta ga, kekkyoku matomara-nakat-ta.
Tanaka-Mr.-Nom that business_deal-Acc put_together-Past although,in_the_end hold_together-Neg-Past„Mr. Tanaka finalized the business deal, but failed in the end.‟
The apparent contrast here seems to stem from the strength of the process component:(1a) is more or less compatible with a durative temporal adverb like 1-jikan-ni watat-te‘for 1 hour‟, while (1b) is not. This shows that the transitive predicate in (1a) denotes anaccomplishment, while the one in (1b) denotes an achievement (Vendler, 1967). If thisis the case, the existence of the process component is actually a crucial factor in theacceptability of cancellation (cf. Ikegami, 1985).
Finally, Tsujimura (1993) states that the cancellability phenomenon is “particularlycommon with transitive and intransitive verb pairs that enter into the causativealternation.” However, no empirical evidence is provided by her or by other researchers
as far as we know.
We address these issues through a questionnaire study, where participants wereasked to judge the acceptability of cancellation. To deal with the first question, weincluded most of the representative examples in Tsujimura (2003). Concerning thesecond question, we designed the questionnaire so that most verbs in the materials could
be divided into either an accomplishment or an achievement verb. If the processcomponent is crucial, then there would be a main effect of this factor. We also included
6 sets of sentences like rensyuumondai-o toi-ta „solved the exercise‟ vs. gokai-o toi-ta„resolved misunderstanding‟ and the one in (1), in order to test the influence of thedirect objects. To address the third question, we included items with non-alternatingtransitive verbs.
Methods
Seventy native speakers of Japanese participated. All the test sentences consistedof the first conjunct containing a transitive verb and the second one containing a
predicate cancelling the event in the first half. There were 41 sentences in total. The
stimuli were pseudo-randomized. The participants were asked to judge the naturalnessof the sequence in each item on a 5-level scale, where 5 in the scale corresponds to “themost natural” and 1 to “the most unnatural”.
Results and Discussions
In the analysis, the 1-to-5 scale was converted to the 0-to-10 scale. Regarding
Tsujimura‟s examples, it turned out that these examples were not rated particularly high(hiyasi-ta „cooled‟: 6.93; ire-ta „put‟: 6.89; kawakasi-ta „dried‟: 5.39; tokasi-ta „melted‟:
5.00; ake-ta „opened‟: 3.64; ugokasi-ta „moved‟: 3.53), compared to perfectly
acceptable control items such as okut-ta „sent‟: 9.57. It should be noted that the worse
examples do not fit well with durative temporal adverbs. Across all the items, there wasa main effect of the achievement vs. accomplishment factor (3.95 vs. 6.70;
F1(1,69)=290.0, p<.001; F2(1,26)=22.4, p<.001). Additionally, we found that theobjects of transitive verbs could affect the acceptability in all of the sets like (1).
Regarding the non-alternating verbs, the results greatly varied: some were cancellable(syuurisi-ta „repaired‟: 8.00; dassyokusi-ta „bleached‟: 7.89), while others were not(mitasi-ta „fill‟: 1.96).
Conclusion
Overall, our results show that the process component is crucial in determining theacceptability of cancellation: (i) the cancellability of alternating transitive verbs varies
according to the strength of the process component; (ii) the main effect of theachievement vs. accomplishment factor and the attested influences from direct objects
also point to the same conclusion; (iii) the distinction between alternating verbs andnon-alternating ones does not seem important, whereas the existence of the processcomponent does.

References
Ikegami, Y. 1985. „„Activity‟ – „accomplishment‟ – „achievement‟: A Language thatCan‟t Say „I burned it, but it didn't burn' and one that can‟.‟ in A. Makkai & A. K. Melby(eds.) Linguistics and Philosophy. / Kageyama, T. 1996. Dooshi Imiron. / Tsujimura, N.
2003. „Event Cancellation and Telicity.‟ In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 12. / Vendler, Z.
1967. Linguistics in Philosophy.