Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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Subjectivity and the ‘Accusative’ –te aru Construction in Japanese
NERIDA JARKEY
University of Sydney
nerida.jarkey@asia.usyd.edu.au

1. Introduction
There are a number of perfect constructions in Japanese, each involving different
combinations of situation type and viewpoint aspect (Smith 1997, Shirai 2000). Viewpoint
aspect markers that can express perfect meaning in Japanese include the widely discussed–te iru and –te aru forms.
The –te aru form of verbs, like the more common and widely discussed –te iru form, ismade up of the –te (gerundive) form of the verb plus an auxiliary derived from the verb ‘tobe / have’. All –te aru clauses involve purposeful action of some kind (Matsumoto
1990:273), and nearly all contain transitive verb roots.
Again, like the –te iru form, -te aru can be used to express both resultative meaning, andperfect meaning in the more general sense (Nedjalkov & Jaxontov 1988: 15-17; Hasegawa
1996: 91-99):
(1)

Sugu
waki nikaidanga
atte,kami ga
immediately side LOC
staircase NOM be-GER,
paper NOM
hatte ari,heya nozumen tojuuninnonastick.uptr-TE ARU-CONT
room GENlayout andresident GEN
namegakaite aru.
NOM write-TE ARU‘Immediately to the side there is a staircase, and a paper stuck up, and the layoutof the rooms and the names of the residents are written (on it).’ (Cheers to the
Chairwoman!: 838)

(2)

Taroo wa,umaretekono kata, jibun notabeta-koto-no-aru
Taro TOP
be.born-GER until.now selfGEN
eat-EXP.PERF
sakanawa,
minna nooto
ninamae okakitsukete aru.
fish
TOP
all
notebook LOC name ACC write.down-TE ARU‘Ever since he was born, Taro has written down in a notebook all the names of the
fish he has eaten.’ (The Tale of Taro: High School Life: 84)

In example (1), the –te aru forms of haru ‘stick s.t. up’ and kaku ‘write’ both function as
resultatives: in each case they show the resultant state of the Undergoer, kami ‘paper’ andheya no zumen to juunin no na ‘the layout of the rooms and names of the residents’respectively.

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Notice that, in this resultative use of the –te aru form, the Undergoer is marked with thenominative particle ga. When occurring with the transitive verb alone, the Undergoer ofthe verb haru ‘stick s.t. up’ or kaku ‘write’ would be marked with the accusative particle o:(1’)

a. kami oharu
paper ACC stick.up‘stick up paper’
b. heya no
zumen tojuuninnonaokaku
room GEN layout andresident GEN name ACC write‘write the layout of the rooms and the names of the residents’

The fact that the Undergoer in Examples like (1) is marked nominatively rather thanaccusatively, and the fact that the Actor cannot appear at all in sentences like these, has led
a number of scholars to refer to this use of the –te aru form as the ‘intransitivizing’
resultative (e.g. Martin 1975, Miyagawa 1988), or the ‘valency changing’ –te aru form
(Hasegawa 1996: 86). In this paper, this construction will be referred to simply as thenominative –te aru construction.
In example (2), the –te aru form of the verb kakitsukeru ‘write down’ is functioning as aperfect rather than a resultative. The focus in this sentence is not on the resultant state of
the Undergoer, namae ‘the names (of the fish)’, but on the continuing relevance of theaction of the Actor, Taroo ‘Taro’.
Notice also that, in this perfect use of the –te aru form, the canonical case-marking patternoccurs: the Undergoer (namae ‘names’ in this case) is marked with the accusative particleo, just as it would be if it occurred with the transitive verb alone:(2’)

namae okakitsukeru
name ACC write.down‘write down the names’

For this reason, along with the fact that the Actor can and often does appear in thesentence, the perfect use of the –te aru construction has been called the ‘valency
maintaining’ –te aru form (Hasegawa 1996: 86). It will be referred to here simply as theaccusative –te aru construction. It is this accusative –te aru construction, exemplified in(2) above, that will be the focus of the current paper.

2. The Data for the Study
To facilitate the investigation of this construction, I looked at both nominative andaccusative uses of the –te aru construction in modern and contemporary Japanese novels. I
limited my investigation to examples in which the Undergoer appears, and is marked byeither the nominative or the accusative particle. That is, I did not include cases in which
the Undergoer is elided, topicalized, etc.
In my initial investigation, I found far more examples of the nominative use of the –te aru
form than the accusative: 52 examples as opposed to seven, in nine different novels. For
this reason I did a follow-up study in which I concentrated on collecting examples of theProceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

3accusative construction. This yielded a total of 31 examples of the target structure from 17
novels.
Table 1. The Data for the Study

Authors

Novels

Accusative Use

Nominative Use

Initial Study

5

9

7

52

Follow-up
Study

8

8

24

not examined

TOTAL

13

17

31

52

3. The Basic Uses of the Two Constructions
Although all –te aru constructions in the data involve purposeful action of some kind, thissemantic feature is somewhat backgrounded in the nominative use. The data show that the
principal function of this use of the construction is descriptive or scene setting. This is
illustrated in Example (1) above. This kind of –te aru construction tends to appear atpoints in a story when the author is describing a new scene, and the way things arearranged there.
When the accusative –te aru construction is used, however, the focus is very much on the
purpose of the action, and there is a strong sense that the action is done in preparation forthat purpose. The precise purpose of the action is clear in every example of thisconstruction in the data. Of the 31 examples, 16 actually contain some overt reference topurpose in the same sentence, as in Example (3):(3). . . aubeki hito ni
meet OBLIG person DAT
sumaseru yoo
yotei
finishin.order schedule
no
da.

ai,
sumaseru beki koto omeet-CONT finish
OBLIG thing ACCobisshiri-to kunde atta
ACC
tightly
construct-TE ARU-PASTNMZR COP‘ . . . in order to see the people I should see, and finish the things I should finish, (I)have packed my schedule tightly.’ (A Momentary Summer: 11)
The fact that the accusative use of –te aru has this strong sense of purpose, while thenominative use does not, can clearly be attributed to the higher transitivity of theaccusative construction. Recall that this construction exhibits canonical transitive casemarking as opposed to the intransitive case-marking pattern of the nominative
construction. Jacobsen (1992: 49) claims that intention / purpose is one of the key features
related to canonical transitive marking in Japanese; this claim is supported by the work of
Jarkey (1999: 214-219) and by the findings of the present study.

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4. The Subjectivity of the Accusative –te aru Construction: Previous Observations
Another important difference that has been noted between the nominative and accusative
uses of the –te aru form is in relation to the perspective of the constructions and the personof the Actor involved. Sugimura (1996) observes that, in the case of the nominative –tearu construction, the speaker/writer takes the point of view of an observer, and describes
something about the scene that s/he has discovered - that has come about as the result of
someone’s action. A situation in which the speaker/writer discovers something that hascome about as the result of his/her own action is difficult to imagine, so the Actor in thisstructure tends to be a third person, according to Sugimura1. In the accusative –te aru
construction, on the other hand, Sugimura says that the speaker describes the effectivenessof his/her own act, or that of an ‘in group’ member – someone with whom s/he feels
affinity in that particular context. Other scholars who have noted this difference between
the person of the Actor in the two types of –te aru construction include Morita (1977),
Teramura (1984), and Masuoka (1987).
Hasegawa (1996: 95-96) observes precisely the same difference between the accusative–te aru construction and another, more common perfect construction in Japanese, the –te
iru perfect. Hasegawa maintains that the “crucial” difference between these two perfect
constructions is that those with –te aru describe the situation subjectively, whereas thosewith –te iru describe it objectively:(4)a. Sono otoko wa
Tanakani
that
man TOP
TanakaDAT‘That guy has given Tanaka a bribe.’
b. Watashi

wa

ISG

TOP

Tanakani
TanakaDAT‘I’ve given Tanaka a bribe2.’

wairo obribe ACC

wairo obribe ACC

watashite #aru / iru.
give-TE ARU/IRU

watashite aru / #iru.
give-TE ARU/IRU

According to Hasegawa, -te aru is not natural in example (4a). because the Actor, sono
otoko ‘that guy’, is clearly not an ‘insider’ – not someone with whom the speaker
identifies. In this case, Hasegawa suggests, the more objective –te iru construction is thenatural way to express the perfect. In example (4b), on the other hand, Hasegawa says thatthe use of the accusative –te aru construction is more natural than –te iru, because theActor is the first person, watashi ‘I’.

5. Subjectivity and the Accusative –te aru Construction in this Study
My investigation of authentic examples of the accusative –te aru construction lends some
support to the claim that this construction is used subjectively.

1

Recall that the Actor never, in fact, appears in this construction. Nevertheless, because the construction
involves a transitive verb root, there is clearly a sense that an Actor is responsible for the situation or state
described.
2
The use of –te iru in this sentence is, actually, perfectly acceptable, but only with an alternativeinterpretation which involves an imperfective rather than a perfect interpretation: ‘I regularly give Tanaka
bribes (these days)’.

Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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Table 2. Frequency of Actor Type in –te aru Perfect in the Data ExaminedType ofActor

1st Person

Insider /Protagonist

OutsiderUnknown
3rd Person

TOTAL

Frequency

13

11

3

4

31

First person Actors are quite common in examples of the construction found in the data.
From the total of 31 examples of this construction, 13 (nearly one third) had Actors of thistype. In some examples, the first person Actor is mentioned explicitly, as in (5). In mostcases it is understood from the context.
(5)

Watashi

wa

ISG

TOP

shibaraku gaikoku otenten-to-suru tsumori defor.a.whileoverseas ACC roam.around intention withkane nojunbi
oshite atta.
money GEN preparation ACC do-TE ARU-PAST‘With the intention of travelling around overseas for a while, I have done myfinancial preparations.’ (A Momentary Summer: 267)

Third person Actors also occur commonly in the data – something that may seem tocontradict the claim that this construction is fundamentally subjective. However, a closer
examination of these Actors reveals that the majority - 11 of the 19 - involve third person
Actors who are ‘in group’ members in some sense.
A very common type of ‘in group’ Actor in the genre investigated is, of course, theprotagonist of the story. The writer of a third person narrative tends to take an ‘insider’
stance when reporting the actions of the protagonist. For example:(6)

Sono tame ni, daidokoro nomadoowazawazathatreason for kitchenGENwindow ACC intentionallyakehanatte aru.
throw.open-TE ARU‘For that reason, (she) has intentionally thrown open the kitchen window.’(Cheers to the Chairwoman!: 101)

In this case, the one who has thrown open the window is the protagonist, a woman who
has just received news of her husband’s promotion, and who wants to make sure that all
her neighbours will hear her discussing it.
The other type of third person ‘insider’ that occurs in the data are ‘in group’ members of
the narrator him/herself in first person accounts, or ‘in group’ members of the protagonist
in third person accounts. Very frequently these insiders are family members:

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otooto notegami ni
wa,mada chokkimokite
brother GEN letter LOC TOP
yet
waistcoat even wear-GER
inai yoo-na koto okaite arimashita
keredomo.
be-NEG likefact
ACC
write-TE ARU-POL-PAST but‘In my younger brother’s letter, (he) had written things like the fact that he hadn’t
yet worn even a waistcoat, but . . .’ (Snow Country: 6)3

In examples like these with a third person Undergoer, it is often possible to substitute thenominative particle ga for the accusative particle o, with no effect on the felicity of thesentence at all; this is certainly the case in both of the examples above, at least when theyoccur out of context4. Native speakers of Japanese to whom I have spoken about thisalternation report that, if the nominative particle were to be used, the sentences would tend
to sound more objective, to focus more on description than on purpose.
The interest in this paper, however, is not so much on what can occur, but on what actually
does occur in the data examined. In this data there were no examples of the nominative –tearu construction in sentences like these, in which there is clear reference to a situation
brought about by the purposeful or preparatory action of an ‘in group’ Actor. As
mentioned, however, there were 11 examples of the accusative –te aru construction of thistype.
As illustrated above, the clear majority of examples of the accusative –te aru construction
involve an ‘in group’ Actor of one kind or another, and thus could be said to convey a
subjective perspective on the situation described. However, there are three examples in thedata in which the Actor of an accusative –te aru construction is clearly not an ‘insider’.
Two of these are given here:(8)

yonjuu chikai hidoku kappuku-no-ii yatsu de,
kogai ni jikayoosha
forty near very amply.built fellow COP-TE outside LOC personal.driveromatasete atta
soo
da.
ACC
wait-CAUS-TE ARU-PAST EVID COP‘He was a very amply proportioned fellow in his late thirties, and it seems he had
made his driver wait outside.’ (The Tale of Asunaro: 183)(9)furontodekiku to,sakka gaboku noheya ofront.desk LOC ask
when writer NOM ISG
GENroom ACC
totte aru
toiukoto datta.
reserve-TE ARU QUOT say
NMZR COP-PAST‘When I asked at the front desk, they said that the writer had reserved a room (forme).’ (Sacred Girl: 309)

In example (8), it is clear that the Actor - the one who made his driver wait - is an‘outsider’. The narrator describes him in a way that indicates that this is the first time s/he
has even seen this ‘amply proportioned fellow’. In (9), the context tells us that the Actor
concerned is, again, an ‘outsider’ to the narrator. In this case, we know from the context

3

The purpose of writing this information is not evident from the sentence itself in this case, but is clear fromthe wider context: the younger brother wanted the protagonist to know that it hadn’t really got very cold yet.
4
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point with regard to these two examples, and to examples(10) and (11) below.

Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

7that the Actor is someone the narrator does not know well at all, a writer who lives in anapartment block owned by the narrator’s grandmother.
Notice, however, that in all cases in which the accusative –te aru appears with an‘outsider’ Actor, the situation is reported as something known only indirectly. In (8) theevidential soo da is used, and in (9) the proposition is embedded in reported speech.
Rather than contradicting the idea that this accusative construction has a subjective quality,
these examples actually lend the idea some support. They suggest that, when the Actor ofthis construction is an ‘outsider’, the situation tends not to be reported as the first-handknowledge of the narrator.
The motivation for using the accusative –te aru in these sentences is clearly the sense of‘action in preparation’ that it conveys. In each of these sentences, the action described is
performed with a clear purpose in mind. In (8), the purpose of the ‘amply proportioned
fellow’ is to have his driver waiting on his return; in (9), the writer has reserved the roomso that the narrator can stay in it. While exploiting this sense of ‘action in preparation’, it
seems that the writer overrides any sense of subjectivity that the construction conveys byreporting indirectly these situations involving an ‘out group’ member.
There are, however, four examples in the data that do seem to provide evidence against the
hypothesis that the accusative –te aru construction is subjective in nature. In theseexamples, the Actor is not an insider, and yet no evidential or reported speech is used.
Examples (10) and (11) exemplify this type:(10)

Chotto usugurai noto,bineeru okakete aru
nodea.bit dim
NMZR andvinyl
ACC
hangtr-TE ARU NMZR COP-TE
kizukanakattanoda.
notice-NEG-PAST NMZR COP‘It was a bit dim and (someone) had covered (the corpse) with vinyl, so (Junko)
didn’t notice it.’ (Cheers to the Chairwoman!: 721)

(11)

Nagoya nohodoowa,jitensha-nori notame ni
Nagoya GEN footpath TOP
bicycle-rider GEN reason for
kado onadaraka-na suroopu ni
shite aru.
curb ACC gradual
slope
DAT
make-TE ARU‘On the Nagoya footpaths, (they) have made the curb slope gently for the sake ofbicycle riders.’ (The Tale of Taro: University Life: 785)

In sentence (10), the person who had covered the corpse is unknown, although the context
tells us that it was probably the murderer. In (11), it must have been the Nagoya City
Council, or some such institution, that was responsible for making the curbs slope. In
neither case, however, is the Actor identified or personalized. The Actor in these sentences
is neither ‘insider’ nor ‘outsider’.
It seems, then, that we do need to refine the hypothesis regarding the subjective nature of
the accusative –te aru construction to some extent. Sentences like (10) and (11) above arehighly objective. In this respect, they are actually reminiscent of the nominative –te aru
construction: in these sentences the narrator takes the point of view of an observer, anddescribes something that has come about as the result of someone else’s action (cf.
Sugimura 1996). In fact, as noted above with regard to examples (6) and (7), it would beProceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

8perfectly acceptable to substitute the nominative particle ga for the accusative particle o inboth of these sentences.
The factor that seems to result in the use of the accusative rather than the nominative –tearu construction in these cases is that the focus is not on the resultant state of theUndergoer, but on the purpose for which the actions were done. In the case of example(10), the body was covered so that it would not be noticed. In example (11), the curbs weremade to slope for the safety and convenience of bicycle riders. This strong sense of
purpose associated with the actions in each of these sentences is what distinguishes themfrom nominative –te aru sentences, rather than any sense of subjectivity.
These data suggest that, contrary to the claims of Sugimura (1996) and Hasegawa (1996),
it is not the case that the accusative –te aru construction is completely subjective in natureand confined to first person or ‘insider’ Actors. Nevertheless, the fact that first person and‘insider’ Actors clearly predominate, and the fact that ‘outsider’ Actors only occur inreported contexts, remain to be explained.

6. Explanation of the Predominance of ‘Insider’ Actors with the Accusative –te aru
The explanation proposed in this paper is that both the predominance of ‘insider’ Actors
with this construction, and the restrictions on the occurrence of ‘outsider’ Actors, can be
attributed to a more general feature of the Japanese language. The general feature referred
to is the fact that, in Japanese, it is not normal to directly express someone else’s desires,
emotions, or feelings. Examples that illustrate this point, such as (14a – d), are very
familiar to students and teachers of Japanese:(14 )a. Watashi

wa

ISG

TOP

kameraga
camera NOM

hoshii desu.
want COP-POL‘I want a camera.’b. *Taroowa
kameraga
Taro TOP
camera NOM‘Taro wants a camera.’

hoshii desu.
want COP-POL

c. Taroo wa
kameragahoshii toitte
Taro TOP
camera NOM want QUOT say-GER‘Taro says that he wants a camera.’

imasu.
be-POLd. Taroo wa
kameraohoshi-gatte
imasu.
Taro TOP
camera ACC want-appear-GER be-POL‘Taro looks like he wants a camera.’
Similar kinds of indirect ways are used to report, for example, someone else’s physicalfeelings, emotions, or desire to do something:(15)a. physical feelings: samui ‘be cold’ / samugatte iru ‘appear to be cold’;
itai ‘be hurt’ / itagatte iru ‘appear to be hurt’;b. emotions: kanashii ‘be sad’ / kanashigatte iru ‘appear to be sad’;c. desire to do something: nomitai ‘want to drink’ / nomitagatte iru ‘appear towant to drink’.

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In the case of the –te aru construction, the tendency of the accusative version to be usedwith a subjective perspective can be attributed to the strong emphasis on purposeful actionthat this construction conveys. Just as it is not normal to report the feelings, emotions, anddesires of an ‘out group’ member in Japanese without the use of some kind of evidential orindirect construction, it seems that it is equally inappropriate to report an ‘outsider’s’purposeful or intentional action. This construction can be used in an objective way, todescribe a situation that has come about as the result of the purposeful action of an Actor
that is neither an insider nor an outsider (cf. examples (10) and (11)). However, whenever
the Actor is identified as a known individual, and must therefore be categorized as‘insider’ or ‘outsider’, the strong focus on the purpose of the action in this construction
results in its subjective perspective.

7. Conclusion
This paper has confirmed the observations of previous scholars, showing that theaccusative –te aru differs from the nominative –te aru in that it has a strong focus on
purpose/intention/preparation. This focus is associated in this paper with the canonicaltransitive case marking that occurs in this construction.
The fact that the accusative –te aru construction is very often subjective in nature, with theActor tending to be first person or an ‘insider’ of some kind, is related here to this strong
sense of purpose. It is also related to a more general feature of the Japanese language: thefact that it is not normal to directly express the intentions or feelings of an ‘outsider’ inJapanese. For this reason, when the accusative –te aru is used to express the
purposeful/preparatory action of an outsider, this is expressed indirectly, using anevidential or reported speech.
Contrary to the claims of previous authors, the accusative –te aru can be used in a highly
objective way to describe a scene or a situation, provided that the action that brought thatsituation about is not attributed to either an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’. In this case, theaccusative –te aru differs from the nominative –te aru only in that there is a focus on the
purpose of the action described, rather than on the resultant state of the Undergoer.

References
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Miyagawa S 1988 ‘Predication and numeral quantifier’ in W Poser (ed.) Papers from theSecond International Workshop on Japanese Syntax The Center for the Study ofLanguage and Information Stanford, California.
Morita Y 1977 Kiso nihongo (Basic Japanese) Kadokawa Shoten Tokyo.
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Shirai Y 2000 ‘The semantics of the Japanese imperfective –te iru: An integrative
approach’ Journal of Pragmatics 32: 327-361.
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Appendix
All data discussed in this paper, except where otherwise acknowledged, is from acollection of Japanese novels on CD-ROM:
CD-ROM-ban Shinchô-bunko no 100-satsu (CD-ROM version: 100 books from Shinchôbunko) 1995 Shinchô-sha Tokyo.
The novels examined, and the year in which they were first published, are given below:
Akagawa J 1982 Onna-shachô ni kanpai! (Cheers to the Chairwoman!)Akutagawa R 1916 Imogayu (Yam Gruel)Akutagawa R 1917 Un (Luck)
Akutagawa R 1918 Jashû-mon (The Gate of the Evil Religion)
Akutagawa R 1921 Kôshoku (The Womanizer)
Akutagawa R 1922 Shunkan (Shunkan)Endô S 1966 Chinmoku (Silence)
Inoue H 1970 Bun to Fun (Bun and Fun)
Inoue Y 1954 Asunaro-monogatari (The Tale of Asunaro)
Itsuki H 1968 Kaze ni fukarete (Blow’n in the wind)
Kawabata Y 1935 (revised 1947) Yukiguni (Snow Country)
Kita M 1964 Nire-ke no hitobito (The House of Nire)
Kurahashi Y 1965 Sei-shôjo (Sacred Girl)
Sawaki K 1981 Isshun no natsu (A Momentary Summer)
Shiina M 1985-1987 Shinbashi-karasumori-guchi seishun-hen (The Karasumori Exit at
Shinbashi Station: Blue Spring Time). (First published serially over 18 months)
Sono A 1978 Tarô-monogatari kôkô-hen (The tale of Taro: High School Life)
Sono A 1979 Tarô-monogatari daigaku-hen (The Tale of Taro: University Life)