Glottometrics 10, 2005, 73-81

Predicting Attachment of the Light Verb –suru
to Japanese Two-kanji Compound Words Using Four Aspects 1
Katsuo Tamaoka 2
Hiroshima University,Japan
Chizuko Matsuoka 3
Keimyung University,Korea
Hiromu Sakai 4
Hiroshima University, Japan
Shogo Makioka 5
Osaka Prefecture University, Japan
Abstract. In the Japanese language, the light verb –suru can be attached to various two-kanji compound words containing a verb-like feature (or aspects) to allow them to be used as a verb. Using alarge sample of the 2,000 two-kanji compound words, encompassing a little less than 80 percent of thetotal two-kanji compound words printed in 14 years of Asahi Newspaper issues, the present study
investigates how much the light verb attachment is predicted by four aspects: inchoative, durative,
telic and stative. A binary logistic regression analysis indicates that all four aspects are significant
predictors. Among them, the telic aspect shows an overwhelmingly high predictive power. The
quantitative theory type III analysis further demonstrates that, in contrast to the stative aspect, theinchoative, durative and telic aspects share a similar semantic feature of time series. Nevertheless,since the telic aspect overlaps not only the time series feature of the inchoative and durative aspects,
but also the stative aspect, it is the most effective single predictor for light verb attachment, showing
an extremely high prediction rate of 93.64 percent (751 cases out of 802) with errors of 6.36 percent(51 cases out of 802). These errors include 8 words with the telic aspect, 11 words with no telic aspect,and 32 words with none of the four aspects.

Keywords: light verb -suru, aspect, verb-likeness, two kanji-compound words, binary logistic
regression analysis, Hayashi’s Quantitative Theory Type III
1. Purpose and approach to the light verb attachment
In the Japanese language, many nouns can be used as a verb by simply adding the light verb –suru 6 as in 発表する ‘to announce’ created by a noun 発表 meaning ‘announcement’ plus
1

The present research was supported by a grant-in-aid for scientific research (Category B) from the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (#17320064).
2
Address correspondence to: Katsuo Tamaoka, International Student Center, Hiroshima University 1-1, 1-chome,
Higashihiroshima, Japan 739-8524. E-mail: ktamaoka@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.
3
Chizuko Matsuoka, College of International Studies, Department of Japanese Studies, Keimyung University,
1000 Singdang-Dong, Dalseo-Gu, Daegu, 704-701, Korea. E-mail: chizuko@kmu.ac.kr.
4
Hiromu Sakai, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University 1-1, 1-chome, Higashihiroshima, Japan
739-8524. E-mail: hsakai@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.
5
Shogo Makioka, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University 1-1, Gakuen-cho, Sakai,
Osaka 599-8531. E-mail:makioka@hs.osakafu-u.ac.jp.
6
In the present study, using the theoretical framework of generative grammar, the term light verb is used for

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K. Tamaoka, Ch. Matsuoka, H. Sakai, Sh. Makioka

the light verb –suru. Because the light verb itself does not have a specific meaning, themeaning of the noun determines the meaning of the compounded verb, as in the verb ‘to announce’ from the noun ‘announcement’. However, the light verb cannot be attached to all
Japanese nouns. It is assumed that some specific meanings possessed by nouns must determine whether or not the light verb can be attached to them. In this regard, Iida (1987) and Itoand Sugioka (2002) propose that nouns can be classified according to their verb-like features.
Furthermore, Grimshaw (1990) pointed out that the degree of verb-liken features can bemeasured in terms of the aspectual properties of nouns. Thus, the present study investigates
the aspectual properties of nouns which decide the light verb attachment.
Linguistic testing using suffix attachment was applied nouns to determine which aspects
related to time the nouns possessed (Iida, 1987; Shibatani & Kageyama, 1988). For example,
a suffix 中 meaning ‘during’ can be added to the end of a word 建設 meaning ‘construction’,to produce 建設中 ‘during construction’. Since this suffix-based derivation is possible, thisword is judged to have the durative aspect. Likewise, a suffix 後 meaning ‘after’ can be added
to the same word to form 建設後 ‘after construction’, implying that this word contains thetelic aspect. Using this type of linguistic testing, it is possible to judge whether nouns containverb-like features. In addition to the durative and telic aspects, Kageyama (1996) proposes
two more aspects, inchoative and stative. Matsuoka (2004, 2005) elaborates on these two
additional aspects: inchoative (e.g., 販 売 ‘sale’, 輸 入 ‘importation’) and stative ( 存 在‘existence’, 占領 ‘occupation’). The present study approaches this investigation by asking to7what degree the light-verb attachment to two-kanji compound words can be predicted bythese four aspects: inchoative, durative, telic and stative.
2. Selection of two-kanji compound words for investigation of light verb attachment
Using the Asahi Newspaper printed from 1985 to 1998, Amano and Kondo (2000) created alarge lexical database (not corpus) of word printed-frequencies in the seventh volume of theirseries. The CD-ROM version of the lexical database (Amano & Kondo, 2003) is available
through the Sanseido Web-site of www.sanseido-publ.co.jp/publ/ntt_database.html. This
database contains 341,771 morphemic units for type frequency and 287,792,797 morphemes
for token frequency. The frequency index of Amano and Kondo (2000) is the lexical database(not the corpus) which stored printed-frequency counts for lexical items appearing in the
Asahi Newspaper. In this database, various inflections in a single verb or a single adjective
were counted as a single lexical item using an infinitive form. For example, a verb kaku ‘towrite’ (書く) which is classified as the consonant-stem verbs (五段活用) inflects as kaka(nai),kaki(masu), kaku, kake(ba), kake and kakoo. In the database, all these inflections werecounted together as a single lexical item represented by the finite form (終止形) of the sameword, kaku. The characteristics of this database may cause some problems in some lingustic
studies. However, the present study only requires only the printed-frequencies of two-kanji
the.–suru attachment to a noun, contrasting with other verbs called heavy verbs.
7
Although these aspects are often found among Sino-Japanese two-kanji compound words (e.g.運転する
meaning ‘to drive’, derived from a noun ‘drive’ plus the light verb –suru), it extends to originally Japanesewords (such as おしゃべりする meaning ‘to chat’, derived from a noun ‘chatting’ plus –suru) and evenalphabetic-loan words (such as デザインする meaning ‘to design’, derived from a noun ‘design’ plus –suru )(Matsuoka, 2004, 2005). However, the present study only focuses on the most commonly suffixed two-kanji
compound words.

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compound words, so that the database of Amano and Kondo (2000, 2003) is sufficient for our
purposes.
In the database of Amano and Kondo (2000, 2003), the light verb –suru is recorded
separately from two-kanji compound words. For example, 散歩する meaning ‘take a walk’ iscomposed of two parts. A two-kanji compound word such as 散歩 meaning ‘a walk’ cannot
be a verb by itself. However, with the attachment of the light verb –suru (written in hiragana
as する), this word can function as a verb in a sentence like 公園を散歩した meaning ‘[I]took a walk in the park’ (the subject ‘I’ is an empty subject). In Amano and Kondo’s database,the printed-frequency of 散歩 is 2,537. The light verb is classified as a verb ending (動詞語尾) which naturally appears very frequently, 1,374,420 times, including every word thatincorparates a light verb. Thus, all two-kanji compound words (selected by taking thecategory of ‘general nouns’ and excluding the category of ‘proper nouns’) were easily chosenfrom the database, for a total of 41,140 types and 43,348,553 tokens.
To have a manageable sample of two-kanji compound words, 2,000 items were selectedfrom the top-ranking items in token frequency. However, 30 items incoroproating kanji
numerals, such as 第一 meaning ‘the number one’‚ 十月 meaning ‘October’, were excluded
from the present study. For this reason, 30 items were added from a ranking of the 2001st to
2030th in order to obtain 2,000 two-kanji compound words. As shown in Table 1, the 30
excluded items represent about 0.07% of the total type frequency of two-kanji compoundwords and 1.00% (435,416 instances) of the total token frequency. As a result of this sampling procedure, the desired number of 2,000 compound words was reached. These compoundwords represent only 4.86% of the total 41,140 two-kanji compound general noun types foundin 14 years of the Asahi Newspaper. However, the same 2,000 compounds represent 78.62%(frequency 34,078,508) of a total of 43,348,553 tokens, as shown in Table 1. Since the 2,000
compounds encompass a little less than 80 percent of the total two-kanji compound words
printed in the Asahi Newspaper, this sample of 2,000 compounds meets the requirements ofmeaningful investigation into light verb attachment.

3. Coding of aspects (Ｘ1 to Ｘ4) and light verb attachment (Y)Each two-kanji compound word was coded as 1 if it is possible to attach a light verb to it, andcoded as 0 if this is not possible. For example, a light verb is not attached to a compound
word 社会 meaning ‘society’, so this word was coded as 0. In other words, a verb 社会する,
a compound of ‘society’ plus –suru, does not exist in the Japanese language. Another compound word 計画 meaning ‘a plan’ can have a light verb attached (a compound of ‘a plan’
plus –suru and becomes ‘to plan’), so this word was coded as 1. In this coding procedure, 802
out of the selected 2,000 two-kanji compound words (40.10%) were coded as 1.

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K. Tamaoka, Ch. Matsuoka, H. Sakai, Sh. Makioka

The same process was used to code the existence of each of the four aspects in the 2,000
compounds. For instance, a compound word 交渉 meaning ‘negotiation’, to which the lightverb can be added to form 交渉する meaning ‘to negotiate’, contains the inchoative aspect inits meaning. It can be easily understood that a combination of two compound words 交渉開始 (‘negotiation’ plus ‘beginning’) can be created. Thus, this word is coded 1 for the inchoative aspect. Likewise, this word also includes the durative aspect since a suffix of 中 can be
attached to 交渉, as in 交渉中 meaning ‘during negotiation’. This word is also coded 1 forthe durative aspect. Similarly, a compound word 交渉終了 meaning ‘completion of negotiation’ can be created by compounding together ‘negotiation’ and ‘completion’. Furthermore, the suffix ‘after’ 後 can be attached to this word as 交渉後 ‘after negotiation’. Thus, it
is judged that the compound word ‘negotiation’ contains the telic aspect in its meaning andreceives a 1 code for this aspect. However, the word ‘negotiation’ does not have the stative
aspect as does, for example, the word 健康, ‘health’. Thus, ‘negotiation’ is given 0 for this
aspect. In sum, the word 交渉 is coded 1 for the inchoative aspect, 1 for the durative aspect, 1
for the telic aspect and 0 for the stative aspect. Values consist of only 1 if nouns contain an
aspect or 0 when they do not contain an aspect. Variables to which 0 or 1 values are assigned
are commonly referred to as dummy variables. In the present study, the four aspects weredeemed X1 for telic, X2 for durative, X3 for stative, and X4 for inchoative.

4. Percentages of light verb attachments predicted by the four aspects
Once the presence or absence of the four aspectual properties of a two-kanji compound word
has been calculated, it is possible to see to what extent these features predict whether or not
the light verb is attached; that is, the simple predicted percentage of light verb attachment may
be estimated.

None of the four aspects was assigned to 32 of the two-kanji compound words to which thelight verb was attached. Examples of these were 生活 /seikatu/ ‘living’, 意味 /imi/ ‘meaning’and 平均 /heikiN/ ‘average’. These two-kanji compound words can be used as a verb with anattachment of –suru as 生活する ‘to live’, 意味する ‘to mean’ and 平均する ‘to average’.
Although these words do not have any semantic features described by the four aspects, theAttachment of –suru to two-kanji words

77

light verb –suru is attached to them. In this sense, these 32 words were considered as
prediction errors by the four aspects. The error rate of this kind was 3.99 percent (32 out of802).
As shown in Table 2, 203 two-kanji compound words were judged to have the inchoative
aspect, of which the light verb could be attached to 202 words, or 99.51%. Only one noun
possessing inchoative aspect, 戦争 ‘war’, does not combine with the light verb, i.e. the form
8
戦争する does not occur . It is noteworthy, however, that it is possible to add –suru if thisword has the accusative case marker –o, as in 戦争をする [vp NP(‘war’)-o V]. The light verb
can be attached to 802 types out of 2,000; of these 802 types, the inchoative aspect only
occurs with 202 types, or 25.19 percent.
Similarly, 497 two-kanji compound words were judged to have the durative aspect. Out ofthese 497, the light verb can be attached to 483 words, or 97.18%. This is 60.22% of the totalof 802 types to which the light verb can be attached.
The highest prediction was provided by the telic aspect. A large group of 759 words contain this aspect. The light verb can be attached to 751 words, or 98.95%. This is 93.64% of the
802 words. Only 8 words do not have the light verb attachment.
The last aspect, stative, is seen with only 74 words. The light verb can be attached to 68 ofthese (i.e. 91.89% prediction). However, this accounts for just 8.48% of the 802 words towhich the light verb can be attached.
In sum, as far as a simple cross-tabulation of the four aspects and light verb attachmentshows, the telic aspect seems to be the best predictor, at more than 90% of the 2,000 selectedcompound words. Since the cross-tabulation in Table 2 only indicates a simple prediction ofeach aspect, a further analysis was conducted to estimate the predictive value of all four
aspects together for attachment of the light verb. It should be also noted that the light verb
was attached to 32 two-kanji compound words corresponding to none of the four aspects.
5. Data analyses
Two different analyses were conducted for binomial data of the four aspects and light verb
attachment. First, a binary logistic regression analysis was used for the selected 2,000 twokanji compound words. Second, Hayashi’s Quantification Theory Type III was used toestimate the similarity of the four aspects.
5.1 Binary logistic regression analysis
Using SPSS 11.0J for Windows - Regression Models with the same version of Base System, abinary logistic regression analysis was conducted to predict the light verb attachment (Ｙ)from the four aspects (X1 = telic, X2 = durative, X3 = stative, X4 = inchoative) among theselected 2,000 two-kanji compound words, including the aforementioned 32 cases with noneof the four aspects. The results, reported in Table 3, give the following regression equation:
Log2(Y) = - 3.47 + 6.93X1 + 2.90 X2 + 2.81X3 + 3.74X4 .

8

A combined form of the compound word ‘war’ plus the light verb as 戦争する may be used in colloquial
speech, however it is not often accepted in writing. Thus, in this study, this word is judged not to have the lightverb attachment.

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K. Tamaoka, Ch. Matsuoka, H. Sakai, Sh. Makioka

The determination coefficient (or variable explained by this equation) using Nagelkerke R2 ishigh at 0.913, indicating that the four aspects have a high predictive power. All four aspects
are significant predictors as shown in Table 3.

As expected from the cross-tabulation in Table 2, the aspect with the highest predictive
value is the telic aspect, having a Wald value of 312.32 (p < .00001). The durative aspect isthe second strongest predictor, having a Wald value of 40.07 (p < .00001). The third strongest
is the stative aspect with a Wald value of 15.07 (p < .0001). The least predictive variable isthe inchoative aspect with a Wald value of 8.51 (p < .01). 770 words out of the 802 nouns towhich the light verb can be added contain at least one of the four aspects, while 32 words do
not have any of these aspects. This represents a 96.01% prediction rate for light verb
attachment. Among them, the single telic aspect can predict the light verb attachment in
93.64% of cases (751 words out of 802 light-verb attached words) with errors of 6.36 percent(51 cases out of 802). These error cases include 8 words with the telic aspect, 11 words withno telic aspect, and 32 with none of the four aspects. This very small error rate is the result of
the overwhelming predictive power of the telic aspect, as shown by its very large Wald valueof 312.32 and a very high estimated odds ratio of 1025.79.

The question which then arises is, how does the single variable of telic aspect predict lightverb attachment so powerfully? The clue is in the overlap of these four aspects. As previously
discussed, 759 two-kanji compound words had the telic aspect in their meanings. Among

Attachment of –suru to two-kanji words

79

these, the light verb was attached to the 751 words. Only eight words containing telic aspect
9(e.g., 葬儀 ‘funeral’, 犯行 ‘crime’, 軍縮 ‘disarmament’ ) cannot be directly combined withthe light verb. Table 4 shows that, surprisingly, the 759 words with telic aspect include 198
out of 203 words with inchoative aspect (97.54%), 473 out of 497 words with durative aspect(95.17%), and even 65 words out of 74 with stative aspect (87.84%). Since the 751 words
with telic aspect to which the light verb can be attached constitute 93.64% of the 802 words towhich the light verb can be attached, this specific aspectual property by itself covers a great
majority of the words which allow light verb attachment.
5.2 Hayashi’s Quantification Theory Type III
Hayashi’s Quantification Theory Type III, of which model was created by Tokio Hayashi, isapplied for investigating similarities of variables X1 to X4 with 0 and 1 binary data. The
present study used the package created by a Japanese company of called Esumi produced
software for the use of Hayashi’s Quantification Theory Type I to Type III. Before making astrong prediction of the light verb attachment by the single aspect telic, Hayashi’s Quantification Theory Type III was applied to estimate the similarity of the four aspects, by binary dataof the four aspects using the 794 words which have at least one of the four aspects. The resultis shown in Table 5. Three meaningful axes were found. The first axis has a high Eigenvalueof 0.480 with a high 53.6 percent of variability explained. The second axis has a reasonably
high Eigenvalue of 0.261 with 29.1 percent of variability explained. The third axis has arather low Eigenvalue of 0.156 with 17.3 percent of variability explained. The first andsecond axes together achieve an extremely high 83.6 percent of variability explained. Figure 1
depicts these two axes.

Three aspects – telic, durative and inchoative – seem to lie roughly within the small range
between 0.00 and -0.02 of the first axis (the Y-axis in Figure 1). The locations of these three
aspects close to the Y-axis may suggest that they, unlike the stative aspect, share a single
property which will be referred to here as time series since these aspects refer to a sequential
series of initiation, duration and ending. A word like 放送 meaning ‘a broadcast’ has an initiation point to start the ‘broadcast’, and continues during the ‘broadcast’ until the end of the9

Combined forms of these compound words may be used in colloquial speech, so that some cases of the lightverb attachments may be acceptable. However, since the present study utilized the linguistic testing and intuition
based mostly on written forms, a conservative position was adopted when determining whether or not the lightverb could be attached.

80

K. Tamaoka, Ch. Matsuoka, H. Sakai, Sh. Makioka‘broadcast’. Thus, a single noun ‘broadcast’ can contain all the time series of the inchoative,
durative and telic aspects. As such, the time series of the three aspects on the Y-axis, which
provide nouns with a verb-like feature, can co-exist or exist independently in a single lexical
item. Nevertheless, as indicated by the binary logistic regression analysis, of the three it is thetelic aspect that is seen to be the dominant semantic feature in terms of making possible theattachment of a light verb. In addition, the stative aspect, which is plotted in a location apartfrom the other aspects, is also largely included in the telic aspect as shown in Table 4.

6. Conclusion – The most effective prediction for the light verb attachment
The present study investigated a unique linguistic characteristic of the light verb –suru which
derives a verb form a noun when it is suffixed to that noun. However, the light verb cannot be
attached to every noun, so the present study examined the four aspectual properties of nouns(Matsuoka, 2004, 2005) which may possibly determine light verb attachment. After investigating these four aspects in a large sample of 2,000 two-kanji compound words, a binary
logistic regression analysis indicates that the dominant feature is the telic aspect. This single
aspect can predict the light verb attachment of 93.64% of the 802 cases among the 2,000
words. In contrast, there are only 8 items (out of 759 two-kanji compound words containing
the telic aspect) to which the light verb cannot be attached. This implies an error rate of
1.00% of the 802 words. In addition, 11 words were given the telic aspect although the lightverb is not attached to them. These 11 words constituted 1.38% of the total. There were the
32 cases with none of the four aspects but the light verb was attached to these words. All

Attachment of –suru to two-kanji words

81

these cases together, the final error rate of the telic aspect predicting the light verb attachment
resulted in 6.36 percent (51 cases out of 802). Again, it should be kept in mind that these
2,000 compound types cover a little less than 80% of the total two-kanji compound word
tokens printed in the Asahi Newspaper. Therefore, the most effective approach to find thelight verb attachment is simply as follows. If a word’s meaning includes the telic aspect, thenthere is an extremely high probability that the light verb can be attached to that word. In thissense, the two-kanji compound words with the telic aspect were unmarked cases whereas
others could be regarded as marked cases. The present study has produced clear statisticalevidence of the importance of the telic aspect for light verb attachment. Finally, it should be
noted that the linguistic judgments to determine the light verb attachment and aspects in thepresent study were made subjectively by the authors, so that we expect some slightdifferences depending on the person who makes the decisions. In this aspect, a study on interevaluator reliability should be conducted in future research.
References
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Statistic packages used for the present study
SPSS 11.oJ for Windows – Base System
SPSS 11.oJ for Windows – Regression Model
Esumi Excel - Suuryooka Riron [Quantification Theory] Version 1.0