Nanyang Technological University

Crosslingual corpus-based analysis of English and Japanese Verbs

Final Year Project
Name: Sandra Soh Xue Ying
Supervisor: Associate Professor Francis Bond
Date of Submission: 17 November 20140

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to:






Associate Professor Francis Bond, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) for his insightful and patient guidance, as well as his kindwords
My Japanese teachers who have passed on the knowledge of Japanese to me
Hideka Wada, for her kind advice and discussion on translation issues
My friends and family for their constant encouragements and support

1

TABLE OF CONTENTSTABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................. 3
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................................. 4
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................... 5
2.1 Contrastive Linguistics and Translation ............................................................................................. 5
2.2 Translation divergences ...................................................................................................................... 6
2.3 Verbs in English.................................................................................................................................. 7
2.4 Verbs in Japanese ................................................................................................................................ 9
2.5 Comparisons between Japanese compound verbs and English phrasal verbs .................................. 12
CHAPTER THREE: AIMS AND HYPOTHESIS ..................................................................................... 13
CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................... 15
4.1 Resources .......................................................................................................................................... 15
4.2 Tagging Multiword Expressions in WordNet ................................................................................... 16
4.3 Annotating relationships shared between words ............................................................................... 16
4.4 Tagging Issues .................................................................................................................................. 20
4.4.1 Polite forms ................................................................................................................................ 20
4.4.2 Poor Translations ....................................................................................................................... 20
4.4.3 Unexpected discoveries in corpus – concepts that were not linked ........................................... 22
4.4.4 Tagging polysemous words ....................................................................................................... 23
CHAPTER FIVE: RESULTS AND ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 24
CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................. 28
6.1 Analysis of zero matches in the corpora ........................................................................................... 28
6.2 Analysis of shifts in POS .................................................................................................................. 28
6.3 Analysis of single English verbs and Japanese compound verbs ..................................................... 31
6.4 Analysis of English phrasal verbs and single Japanese verbs ........................................................... 32
6.5 Analysis of English phrasal verbs and Japanese compound verbs.................................................... 33
6.5.1 Double Translations ................................................................................................................... 34
6.5.2 Analysis of adverbs in PVs in relation to V2s in VVs................................................................ 36
6.5.3 Analysis of particles in PVs in relation to V2s in VVs............................................................... 36
CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 40
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 41
2

TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS

Abbr.

Name

Ex.

NOM
ACC
DAT
TOP
ADN
FOC
QUO
FIL
COP
HON

nominative
accusative
dativetopic
adnominal
focus
quotative
filler(at the end of sentences)
copulahonorifics

-ga が
-o を
-ni に/e へ
-wa は
-no の
-mo も
-to と
-no の
-desu です-go/o ご・お

ST
TT
SL
TL
FSID
TSID

source texttranslated text
source language
target language
sentence ID in source text
sentence ID in translated text

PV
VV
phrE
phrJ
singleEsingleEnglish phrasal verbs
Japanese compound verbs
English idiomatic expressions
Japanese idiomatic expressions
Single English verbs
Single Japanese verbs

POS
MWE

part-of-speech
multiword expression

3

ABSTRACTThis study looked into divergences and correspondences that occurred in the translation of English verbs
to Japanese verbs. A quantitative and qualitative approach was adopted in this study to analyze the
distribution of different types of verbs in English and Japanese, based on the parallel NTU Multilingual
Corpus (NTU-MC). Verb types examined include English phrasal verbs, Japanese compound verbs, aswell as idiomatic verbal expressions and single verbs in English and Japanese. English phrasal verbs andJapanese compound verbs were hypothesized to be correlated. Using a Chi-square test, they were provento be translation correspondences of each other. Other patterns of translation divergences were also
detected, such as lexical gaps and lexical deviations. These divergences were attributed to translation style,but more so on differences in the language systems, such as the system of honorifics in Japanese, of
which a similar system is not found in English. Findings from this study can shed some light concerningtranslation issues of English phrasal verbs into Japanese, and also for learners of either language tounderstand the semantic behaviours of English phrasal verbs and Japanese compound verbs.

4

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

Meaning and concepts are encoded differently in each language system. One method to discover such
similarities and differences of two or more languages is through contrastive analysis or systematiccomparison of the language systems. This comparison is useful in a theoretical sense, as well as in an
applied perspective in lexicography and translation. Translation can be used as a means of establishingcross-linguistic relationships, and these relationships can be reinforced with the help of a multilingual
corpus by comparing paired source and target language expressions. Comparisons of translated texts canalso help to shed light on how meaning is marked similarly or differently in different language systems.

CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Contrastive Linguistics and Translation

Current contrastive linguistic studies have been found to use parallel corpora to compare between
language systems and study corresponding linguistic phenomena in the languages compared (Johansson,
2007, Granger, 2003). A study conducted by Xu and Li (2014) examined English translations of Chinese
splittable compounds in a Chinese-English parallel corpus, and studied differences in semantic andgrammatical properties of their translation counterparts. In their discussion, they discovered variations in
the rendering of argument structures and grammatical properties in the English translation, and there wasa tendency for generalized meanings in Chinese verbs to be made specific in English, and for implicit
arguments to be expressed overtly in the target language (abbr. TL) (Xu and Li, 2014: 99). This has given
insights on how structurally divergent constructions in the TL can arise from the translational processes
involved.
Castejon (2012) looked into translations of English gerunds into Spanish by incorporating a corpus-based
approach in her study. She managed to establish that the Spanish infinitive is a formal correspondence, orin her paper, noted as “established equivalence” (Castejon, 2012: 128). Another equivalent translation
was the Spanish that-clause, which was employed in different contexts. She also found the Spanish
substantiative to be a non-corresponding translation counterpart of English gerunds, and she attributed
this to another translation technique, known as TRANSPOSITION, which denotes a shift in word category5

(Molina and Hurtado Albir, 2002). The English-Spanish parallel corpus was an example of a source witha collection of contexts in which these translation correspondences would occur.
Malá (2013) investigated the translations of English copula verbs into Czech. Due to a lack offunctionally similar copula verbs in Czech, it was found that there were a variety of Czech divergent
counterparts bearing meanings that were similarly conveyed in English. The semantic meanings conveyed
in the counterparts were found to coincide with those of the English verbs, and distinctions between typesof translation correspondences could be made with respect to particular copula verbs.
Denturck (2012) in particular focused on two translation techniques, EXPLICITATION andIMPLICITATION to examine how it applies to the translation causal connectives in French and Dutch.
EXPLICITATION refers to the addition of information in the translated text (TT) where meaning in thesource language (SL) is not explicitly stated, whereas in IMPLICITATION, meaning which is madeexplicit in the source text (ST) becomes implied in the target language (TL) (Molina and Hurtado Albir,
2002). In a bi-parallel comparison between these two languages, she found that translation shifts due to
EXPLICITATION is more common in translations from French to Dutch, as she uncovered more causal

conjunctions in Dutch, replacing non-causal constructions in French (Denturck, 2012: 224). Moreover,this trend was similarly reflected in Dutch-French translations, where French translations included causal
constructions in cases where the ST did not have causal markers. Evaluating the types of translation
techniques used in the translation process thus reveals how translation shifts come about. Translation
techniques can thereby account for the appearance of varied translation counterparts of a particularconstruction in the ST.
The above studies have pointed out translation features such as EXPLICITATION commonly exhibited inTTs. We would like to identify translation features that exemplify translations shifts in our study.
Presently, no corpus-based studies have focused on contrastive analysis between English and Japaneseverbs. This study will take a corpus-based approach to examine how verbs are translated between an
Indo-European language and an Asian language, specifically English and Japanese.
2.2 Translation divergences
In translation, maintaining the main essence of the ST is necessary for an effective conveyance of
meaning in the TT. Over the past decade or so, computational linguists have been revisiting this issue on
differences in the representation of meaning in the TL and the SL (Laviosa, 2002). In fact, translation
deviations occur more frequently than it is thought, and direct correspondences are exceptional cases tothe norm (Cyrus, 2006). Bonnie Dorr was influential in her work of translation divergences. She saw
6translation divergences in terms of differences in the structure of sentences of the ST and TT, in theconveyance of the same information (Dorr, 1993). She points out seven kinds of syntactic divergences
commonly found in pairs of translated sentences: conflational, structural, thematic, categorical,
demotional, promotional and lexical (Dorr, 1992/1993).
On the other hand, Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995), as well as Catford (1965) founded a new term“translation shift” to describe the notion of semantic deviation, in contrast to the concept of “translationequivalence”. A shift is said to be derived from a “departure(s) from formal correspondence” (Catford
1965: 73) in the ST and the TT. Formal correspondents refer to sentences in their respective ST and TTs
belonging to the same categorical places. Translation equivalents are two texts which hold the relationthat one is an exact translation of the other. Where a shift occurs, the translation equivalents have failed to
be formal correspondents.
In view of translation discrepancies present in STs and TTs, many contrastive linguists haveacknowledged that translation divergences can occur at a lexical, grammatical, or at a structural level(Catford, 1965; Baker, 1992). The following displays the circumstances in which translation shifts takeplace:
1. When a translation equivalent does not have the same synthetic structure as the ST, there issynthetic deviation (Dorr, 1993)
2. When the SL and TL lexicalize a similar concept with a different word or phrase, there is lexicaldeviation (Marello,1989; Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958/1995)
3. When the translation equivalent is not able to reproduce all the connotations expressed by a wordfrom the SL, there are differences in connotation (Brown, Mendes & Natali, 1995)
4. When the denotation of a word from the SL partially overlaps with the denotation of thetranslation equivalent, there are denotation differences (Lo Cascio, Boraschi, & Corda, 1995)
2.3 Verbs in English
2.3.1 Idiomatic expressions in English
Compositional phrases are said to be grammatically constructed, while idiomatic ones have idiosyncratic
semantic and syntactic qualities which characterizes them to be part of the lexicon (Jackendoff, 2002). An
idiomatic example would be make up your mind where its meaning of “to decide” is not derived from its
components, make up and mind. In contrast, walk down the aisle is compositional in meaning, as it ispredictable from its parts. In this view, there is a need for these two to be distinguished, as idiomatic
phrases are unpredictable and thus need to be stored in the lexicon, while compositional ones need notstored (Snider and Arnon, 2012).
7

From a translational viewpoint, idiomatic expression or proverbs may be reworded into a different phrase,as they cannot be translated word for word. This is where OBLIQUE TRANSLATION occurs (Molina andHurtado Albir, 2002). On the other hand, a correspondence of the idiomatic phrase that is structurally
similar may exist in the TL. We would like to discover the possibilities of this occurring in Japanesetranslations of English texts as well.
In this study, we will look at multi-word expressions (word syntactically constructed linearly in asequence) that are idiomatic, to help us identify phrases that can be potentially translated as a whole.
2.3.2 English phrasal verbs
A phrasal verb is generally defined as the combination of a verb and a preposition or a particle of an
adverbial nature, (Vlad, 1998; Olteanu , 2012), and is taken to be a single lexical item.
Three possible combinations or syntactic categorizations of phrasal verbs are identified by Courtney,
1983:
1. Verb + adverb
2. Verb + preposition
3. Verb + adverb + preposition
Although it has been debated that phrasal verbs are to be viewed as idiomatic (Biber, Stig, Leech, Conrad,& Finegan, 1999: 403; Fraser, 1976), others have also given recognition to literal phrasal verbs as well
(Claridge, 2000: 47; Bolinger, 1971: 16, 112–114). 1(i) demonstrates the literal meaning and 1(ii) shows
the idiomatic meaning phrasal verbs can have.
(1) (i)He took up the coin from the floor.
(ii)He cleaned up his desk.
Example 1(i) demonstrates a literal phrasal verb that has a verb that specifies movement in space and aparticle that expresses spatial information (Kilby, 1984). The example demonstrates the regular use of up
as it denotes the directional upward movement, of the action indicated by the verb took. In 1(ii), the useof up has aspectual meaning, where up sets a “natural limit on the action” (Kilby, 1984: 105). In our paper,
we will examine how this function of a particle contributes to the regular meaning of a phrasal verb.

8

2.4 Verbs in JapaneseJapanese is classified as an agglutinative language (Shibatani, 1990), where grammatical inflections are
performed on the base form of verbs.
Politeness is conjugated on verbs, and depending on the type of affix used, they represent different levelsof politeness. Polite affixes include –masu forms 食 べ ま す tabemasu “to eat”, while honorificconjugations consist of the form “お+ stem verb+ なる” (as in お待ちになる omachi ni naru “to wait”
from the base form 待つ matsu “to wait”), and humble forms follow the pattern “お+ stem +する” (as in

お待ちにする omachi ni suru “to wait”). Not limited to these structures, Japanese has a complex
honorific system marking the hierarchical difference between referents (Paik, Ohtake, Bond andYamamoto, 2004), and gathering pragmatic information to construe the social relationship between
referents in annotation is a challenging task (Nariyama, Nakaiwa and Siegel, 2005). Since English does
not have a similar honorific system, there is a possibility for translation mismatches to occur in theprocessing and translation of Japanese honorifics.
A large proportion of Japanese verbs is said to be from Chinese loanwords (Shibatani, 1990), and theseverbs follow the periphrastic form noun + する suru “to do”. Termed as サ変 sahen verbs, theseborrowed Chinese characters behave as verbal nouns which can be employed as standalone nouns in thelexicon. This grammatical behavior of verbal nouns has been observed to contribute to syntactic shifts inthe translation of English verbs in the corpora (Gao, 2012). As suru “to do” works as a derivational suffix
that changes word-class membership of the predicated it attaches to (Backhouse, 1993), sahen verbs areable to function equally and freely as nouns or verbs. Hence, we will observe if sahen verbs contributes toshifts in translation as well.
2.4.1 Idiomatic expressions in JapaneseJapanese verb phrases also vary on a semantic continuum. However, for those that are idiosyncratic, it isnecessary that they are acknowledged, as they express a single concept. These opaque expressions areusually expressed in the syntactic forms noun +を+verb or noun +が+verb, where を wo, the accusative
marker and が ga, the nominative marker are vital in our delineation of phrases in Japanese. An exampleof the former is 匙を投げる saji wo nageru “to throw a spoon, i.e. to give up (something)” (Backhouse,
1993: 86) and 気がする ki ga suru “to have a certain feeling”. We will examine idiosyncratic phrases
marked with wo and ga in our paper.

92.4.2 Japanese Compound verbs
A Japanese compound verb (VV) is formed by the “concatenation of two or more verbs which function asa single multiword verb” (Breen & Baldwin, 2009: 35). As several types of VVs exist, we will narrow
down our focus to examine VVs comprising of native Japanese verbs, which have a “non-finite verb stem”
in first position (V1) and a “verb with tense” in the second position (V2) (Hokari, Kumagami and Akimoto,2012: 156), in the manner following the combination of 打つ utsu “to hit” and 込む komu “to plunge into”
to create 駆け込む uchikomu “to drive in (a nail); to devote oneself to something”.
VVs can be differentiated into two types: syntactic and lexical VVs (Uchiyama, Baldwin & Ishizaki,2005). Martin (1975), Tsujimura (1996), Hokari et al. (2012) identified two main differences between thesyntactic and lexical types: their semantic behaviours and productivity. Syntactic types are semanticallytransparent and have meanings which can be deduced from its constituents, while lexical types can besemantically opaque. V2s in syntactic VVs are able to compound freely with other verbs, while V2s inlexical types are fairly restricted in use (Hokari et al., 2012).
Their productivity can be explained with their constituent structures as depicted below. Figure 1 and 2
show that the type of V2 determines the type of VV it will be, and in turn affects their syntactic formation.
The same V1 is able is combine with a different V2 to produce either a lexical or syntactic compound.

10

VP

V

*NP-o

ビールを

V1

V2

飲み

切れる

nomi

kireru“drink”“finish”

biru-o“beer”

Figure 1: Lexical Compound Verb

VP2

VP1

V2

V1

始める

ビールを

飲み

hajimeru

biru-onomi“begin”“beer”“drink”*NP-oFigure 2: Syntactic Compound Verb
(adapted from Tamaoka, Lim, & Hiromu, 2004, pp.234, figure 1)*NP-o refers to the noun phrase case-marked in the accusative11

Hashimoto and Bond (2005) summarize the difference between syntactic and lexical in terms of
productivity, compositionality, transitivity and semantics.
Properties

Syntactic

LexicalProductivity

Highly productive

Less productive

Compositionality

Compositional

Varying

degreescompositionality,ofothersarehighly lexicalized
Transitivity

Transitivity of V1 is carried over V1, V2, or both can contribute toto the transitivity of the entire the transitivity of the entire verb
VV

Semantics

Embedding of V2’s semantics on Various
V1

kinds

of

semantic

composition

Table 3: Comparison between Syntactic and Lexical VVs

2.5 Comparisons between Japanese compound verbs and English phrasal verbs
In Hokari, Kumagami, and Akimoto’s study (2012), translation correspondences of Japanese VVs in
English, Korean and Chinese were examined. Formal correspondences of VVs were said to be few inEnglish in terms of their syntactic realizations, where combinations of two English verbs into a single
compound such as stir-fry is uncommon (Hokari et al., 2012: 159). Although similarities in syntactic
patterns and grammatical properties of English phrasal verbs (PV) and Japanese VVs were not analyzed,
their study pointed out semantic commonalities between PVs and VVs, specifically verb-particle
combinations.
Other studies have analyzed semantic features of Japanese verbs, and traced translation patterns thatdefine semantic relationships of Japanese and English verbs in a variety of contexts. Uchiyama, Baldwin
and Ishizaki, S. (2005) considered the similarities in semantic properties that PVs and VVs share based on
the usage of the particle in the PV, and V2 in the VV in a given context. Acknowledging that both English
particles and Japanese V2 verbs can potentially express the semantic component of path in a motion event,Uchiyama et al. (2005) captured 3 broad semantic categories to classify the types of V 2s: spatial,
aspectual, and adverbial. This classification system effectively shows the polysemous behaviour thatcertain V2s may have, and thus captures the variations of their verbal patterns manifested in various
12syntactic combinations. Borrowing an illustration from Uchiyama et al. (2005), the V2 上がる agaru “goup” is highly polysemous, similar to “up” in English as well, as it serves all three functions, in ゆであがる yudeagaru “to finish boiling” (aspectual), 飛び上がる tobiagaru ”to jump up” (spatial), and 振るえ上がる furueagaru “be terrified”. Such predictions of V2 usage in context helps to disambiguate VVs insemantic processing.
Targeting Japanese motion verbs, Uchiyama and Ishizaki (2001) studied the combination of Japanesemotion verbs that produce Japanese compound motion verbs. They looked into the semantic components
and five “lexicalization patterns” of the constituents in the VV, which includes motion, path, figure,ground and manner/cause (Uchiyama and Ishizaki, 2001: 2). V1 and V2 combinations can be organizedaccording to permutations of these five patterns as shown in the study1. By delineating different types ofverbal constituents, their productive patterns can be predicted. Identifying semantic relations between theconstituents of the VV were found to aid translations of VVs into English.
Thus, it appears that studies on translations of English phrasal verbs and Japanese compound verbs havebeen limited to Japanese-English translations. Studies above were also based on word lexicons and wordlists, which, in contrast to a translated text, have a smaller sample size and variety of VVs. As few studies
have conducted an analysis based on English-Japanese translations, this study aims to examinetranslations of English phrasal verbs into Japanese compound verbs, and how semantic meaning ofEnglish PVs is rendered in Japanese equivalents.

CHAPTER THREE
3.1 Aims and hypotheses
We have seen the similarities that both English phrasal verbs and Japanese compound verbs share, and wewould like to explore the correlation between them which can become a potential strategy in achievingtranslational equivalence. Not restricted to these types, we would like to see how translation shifts apply
across various types of verbs in English and Japanese, by following patterns in English to Japanesetranslations. Our research questions are as follows:
1. What are the corresponding patterns of translation, as well as translation divergences, between English
verbs and their Japanese counterparts?

1

For more information on lexicalization patterns and combinations of verbs of varying lexicalization patterns, see
Uchiyama, K., & Ishizaki, S. (2001). A study of translation rules for the Japanese compound motion verbs.
Proceedings of the AFNLP PACLING 2001.

13

2. How can these patterns observed in the relation between English phrasal verbs and Japanesetranslations be accounted for from cross-linguistic and translational perspectives?
Presently, no English-Japanese parallel corpus based study has been found to conduct a cross-comparison
study on verbs. Hence, this study will focus on four main types of verbs: English phrasal verbs, Japanesecompound verbs, idiomatic expressions and single verbs in both Japanese and English.
Considering syntactic correspondence at the lexical level, the following hypotheses are proposed:i.

English phrasal verbs would be most frequently matched to Japanese compound verbs,
followed by Japanese idiomatic expressions and single verbs respectively.

ii.

English idiomatic expressions would be most frequently matched to Japanese idiomatic
expressions, followed by Japanese compound verbs and single verbs respectively.

iii.

English single verbs would be most frequently matched to Japanese single verbs, followed by
Japanese compound verbs and idiomatic expressions respectively.

14

CHAPTER FOURMETHODOLOGY
4.1 Resources
WordNetFounded and created by Fellbaum in 1998, the Princeton WordNet (PWN) of English is a large lexical
database that classifies nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs into sets of cognitive synonyms known as
synsets. Each synset represents a distinct concept, and is linked to another by semantic and lexical
associations (Fellbaum, 2005). Thus, their conceptual relationships can be built on synonymy, hyponymy,
antonymy and so forth. Verbs in our study will only be considered for synonymy and antonymy, as we
focus on the semantic closeness of the English verb and its translated counterpart.
Moreover, WordNet captures polysemous features of some verbs, and even specifies the type of sentence
structure in which a particular verb sense can appear in (Clerk, Colleman, Willems, 2013). It enables us tosee how units of meaning are manifested across various contexts in the languages compared. WordNet isalso a rich resource to retrieve similar lexical features among synsets, which would be helpful in ourcomparison between verb types in English and Japanese, especially to trace a trend of a particular verb
type falling under a specific semantic category, such as verbs of motion.
Published in 2008, the Japanese WordNet also follows a structure similar to that of PWN, where synsets
are organized in the same hierarchical manner, based on lexical relations among words. Current work isdone to ensure that JWN matches with the synsets and lexical structures of the PWN (Isahara, Bond,
Uchimoto, Utiyama and Kanzaki, 2008), for better linkage of concepts across languages.
CorpusFor this study, we looked at a fiction short story, named “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” that ispart of the Sherlock Holmes series, authored by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). The texts were paralleled
and aligned in the NTU Multilingual Corpus. The texts had to be aligned sentence by sentence before they
were automatically tokenized and given part-of-speech (POS) and lemma tags. Thereafter, verbs were
tagged manually with senses obtained from the respective WordNets. As the two texts had been tagged byother annotators previously, the links between verbs from the source language and target language werechecked thoroughly, and the mistakes in sense-tagging are further elaborated below.

154.2 Tagging Multiword Expressions in WordNet
New work was done in this study on MWEs. Multiword expressions (MWE) are defined to be“idiosyncratic interpretations that cross word boundaries (or spaces)” (Sag et al., 2002: 2). As one concept
can be expressed by a group of words, it is necessary to form a single expression to represent a particulardistinct concept. In this study, MWEs are examined in terms of compounds or idiomatic phrases. Verb
compounds here refer to English phrasal verbs (PV) and Japanese compound verbs (VV). An example ofa PV includes jut out, which was initially recognized in the system as two individual words. However, as
the concept of jut out is lexicalized, and its meaning differs from its single components jut and out, asingle MWE was created and tagged to one synset, in this case 02713372-v, denoting “extend out or
project in space”, and finally concluding with the comment “PV”.
The same tagging procedure is performed for VVs. 突き出す tsukidasu “to stick out” is in fact a derived
form from two verbs 突く tsuku “to stab” and 出す dasu “to come out”, thus a MWE has to be formed
for these two verbs. However, as found in many cases, the Japanese WordNet has yet to create distinct
synsets for VVs, thus they are either tagged with the closest English equivalents in the English WordNet,or given meanings in the comment section. For 突き出す, no suitable synset could be found, thus it wasgiven the comment “to stick out”, followed by “VV”.
Phrases in English and Japanese which are commented with “phrE” and “phrJ” respectively, had lexemes
grouped in the same manner. We ensured that their POS was tagged for “verb” by ensuring that a verb
heads the idiomatic phrase, such as in make up my mind. Japanese phrases such as 音を立てる

oto wotateru “to make a noise” or 気が済む kigasumu “to feel good” have the ACC marker を wo and the NOM
marker が ga to indicate the verb followed up behind, which determines the entire phrase to be a verb.
Meanings were also manually keyed in, in the comment section if no suitable synset was found to fit thesense of the phrase.

4.3 Annotating relationships shared between words
For all tagged data, the program runs on an automatic linking system which links the SL and TL words ineach sentence pair in the following circumstances:
1. Both words share the same synset e.g. think and 思う omou “to think”, both tagged with the same
synset, 00631737-v, defined as “expect, believe or suppose”
16

2. The two words share a hyponymy relationship e.g. chat, 01038666-v, which denotes “talksocially without exchanging too much information”, is a hyponym of 話す hanasu, 00964694-v,
defined as “to carry a conversation”
Following the tagging guidelines used in Mok (2012) (cited in Gao, 2012), we used the following
symbols to denote the relationship between the source words and target words in the corpora.
i.

“=” for matched pairs with the same synsets

Each concept pair that shares the same synset is matched with the link”=”. In the ST, wait has the synset
02637938-v, defined as “stay in one place and anticipate or expect something”. Similarly, the equivalentverb 待つ matsu “to wait” in the TT has the same synset 02637938-v. Thus, the pair was tagged with thelink”=”.
This link type is also used in linking English verbs with the equivalent サ変 sahen Japanese verbs (a noun
treated as a verb in usage), which takes the form “NOUN + する suru”. For example, marry is tagged withthe synset 02488834-v with the meaning “take in marriage”. In Japanese, the concept is translated into thesame synset 02488834-v. A multiword expression (MWE) lemma is first created for the sahen verb 結婚

する kekkon suru, “to marry”, to join the noun 結婚 and the verb する together, before it is tagged as awhole to the synset. Thereafter, we linked both concepts with the symbol “=”.

ii.

“~” for those which share similar meanings or a non-hyponymy relationship and those with
POS gaps

For pairs with concepts which are non-identical but similar, they are linked with “~”. Synonymous pairs
are thus indicated by “~”. This symbol, however, does not define direct hyponymy in verb pairs, andsimilar concepts are linked regardless of the presence of a hyponymy relation. An example includes
prevent tagged with synset 02452885-v, of the definition “keep from happening or arising”, but 妨げる
samatageru “to prevent” had the sense 02450505-v meaning “stop (someone or something) from doing
something or being in a certain state”. These two words are not related by hyponymy in WordNet; theyexpress similar concepts, as both refer to the act of prohibiting the occurrence of something. Therefore
these two words were linked with “~”.

17

Additionally, word pairs with POS gaps were given the symbol “~”. This included satisfy, with the synset
01816431-v meaning “make happy or satisfied”, and its Japanese counterpart 満 足 manzoku“satisfaction”, a noun tagged with 07531255-n, defined as “the contentment one feels when one has
fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation”. Pairs like these showing a lexical shift were linked with “~”.
“:” for similar not lexicalized meanings

iii.

We used this link “:” in tagging where the concept shared between words is not fully lexicalized in either
language. This is especially so for ST and TT words which are not semantically close, yet one word is atranslated correspondent of the other.
(2)…a face which spoke her joy
喜び

に

顔

を

輝かせて

yorokobi

ni

kao

wo

kagayakasete

joy

DAT

face

ACC

shining“face beaming with joy”
FSID 10311 TSID 10375 NTU-MC
As above, we can observe the connection between the individual concepts. Although it is apparent that 輝

く kagayaku “to shine” is the Japanese translational correspondent of speak, it cannot be said that they aresemantically related or similar, because generally they do not express the same concept lexically.
However, to show that they are related contextually to a certain degree, they are linked with “:”.
iv.

“!” for direct antonyms

For words with opposite meanings, their relationship is represented with the “!” symbol. A pair that
demonstrates antonymy would be the lemma come and the Japanese translation 行く iku “to go”.
v.

“#” for weak antonyms

More commonly found than direct antonyms, weak antonyms in the corpora were represented with thesymbol “#”. The example below shows an English phrasal verb that was interestingly translated into an
equivalent Japanese compound verb.

18

(3)…taking in every detail of the apartment
この

部屋

の

どんな

細部

も

見逃さなかった

kono

heya

no

donna

saibu

mo

minogasa-nakatta

this

room

ADN

what

detailFOC

did not overlook“did not miss any detail of the room”
FSID 10189 TSID 10236 NTU-MC
In the TT, the Japanese compound verb 見逃す minogasu ”to overlook” was tagged with the synset
02166361-v, defined as “look past; fail to notice”, which had a sense somewhat opposite from take in,tagged with 01539063-v defined as “take in; also metaphorically”. Synset 01539063-v did not explain
take in well, but it holds the meaning of absorbing visual information and processing it. 見逃す however
does not encompass the sense of cognitive processing at a deeper level, unlike take in, so we deemed thepair as weak antonyms and linked as “#”.
A 95% level of confidence was given to every lemma that was tagged manually. Table 4 briefly
summarizes the types of link symbols used to represent the relationship between word pairs. In our study,translational shifts are represented by the symbols “~”, “:”, “!”, and “#”.
SymbolRelationship=Same synset~

Similar or related meaning, including different POS:

Translation equivalent but not clearly linked
lexically!

Direct antonym#

Weak antonym
Table 4: Symbols used to indicate relationships between words

19

4.4 Tagging Issues
4.4.1 Polite forms
Some Japanese honorific verbs were identified in the TT and those that were purely polite forms inthemselves (i.e. not inflected for polite forms) were tagged manually and given the comment, “polite” inthe comment section.
(4)You know me, then?
では、私

の

こと

を

ご存知なの

で？

dewa,

watashi no

koto

wo

gozonji nano

de

so,

1SG

POSS matter ACC

HON-know FIL

COP“so, you know me then?”
FSID 10073 TSID 10047 NTU-MCAs opposed to 知る shiru “to know” which is the non-polite form in Japanese, ご存知 gozonji “to know”
is employed by the speaker in his/her inquiry to an addressee of a higher status, on whether the addressee
is informed on something. As the core semantic meaning still remains, but additional information onsocial status is indexed in the word itself, the words “know” and ご存知 gozonji “to know” were linked
with “~”.
4.4.2 Poor Translations
Special cases of loose translations were detected in the TT, and these were omitted from the overall data
set. This could be a misinterpretation on the translator’s part, and this is also a manifestation of translation
problems based on the ability of the translator. One of the cases that was observed is shown in (5) below
where there is a literal translation of a metaphorical English phrase into Japanese. It exemplifies thewrong use of EXPLICITATION, a translation technique used to convey original information in an explicit
manner:20

(5)… he shut himself up in his house and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels
with whoever might cross his path.

(a)

義父

は 家

の

中

に

閉じこもって、

gifu

wa ie

no nakanitojikomotte,

stepfather

TOP house ADN

ほとんど出てきませんでした。’

hardlycome out-NEG-COP- PST

hotondodetekimasendeshita.

within LOC

shut in“stepfather keeps himself in the house, and rarely comes out”(b) [ ] 私道を

shidou wo

personal path ACC

渡ろう

とする人と

激しい

watarou

to suru hito to hageshii

kenka wocross

to do person

argues ACC

strongly

喧嘩をするのです。
suru no desu.

to do FIL COP“he will argue with anyone who crosses his personal path”

FSID 10081 TSID 10107 NTU-MC
As above, “cross his path” would be an idiomatic phrase that would mean to meet or encounter someone
unexpectedly in this situation. However, the phrase was literally interpreted to mean the physical action ofcrossing into the lane of the other person, as in 私道を渡ろう shidou wo watarou lit. “cross over(his)private road”. Thus, since the original meaning of the phrase was not reflected in the translated
Japanese sentence, we decided to leave the two phrases unlinked and excluded them from our analysis.
21

4.4.3 Unexpected discoveries in corpus – concepts that were not linked
Another common occurrence includes the appearance of a corresponding verb in the TT where the word
is not present in the original text. This means that an additional Japanese verb is added into the translation
although the verb equivalent does not exist in the ST. Often times, they are a repeated verb (verb in ST istranslated twice) or an extra verb inserted to convey additional information. The following example
illustrates the first scenario.
(6)…went out to Calcutta, where, by his professional skill and his force of character, heestablished a large practice.
カルカッタへ 行って 開業し、 技量と押しの強さでkarukatta e

kaigyou shi, giryou tooshi no tsuyosa deestablish

force of character COP

itte

Calcutta DAT go

skill and

大いに繁盛しました。
ooi ni hanjouu shimashita
greatly flourished“He went to Calcutta to set up his practice, and with his ability and force of character, hisbusiness flourished”
FSID 10071 TSID 10093 NTU-MC
As above, the final expression 大いに繁盛しました ooi ni hanjoushimashita “greatly flourished”was
additionally inserted to support the argument in the ST of establishing “a large practice”. However,“establish… a practice” was translated into one verb 開業する kaigyou suru “open business”, and theadjective “large” by 大い later on in the sentence. The sense of a flourishing business was implied from“a large practice” and was made explicit in the additional Japanese verb 繁盛 するat the end. As we

did not want to overlap words in annotation, we did not tag such extra translated verbs with theverb/phrase where the implied meaning was interpreted from.
Another type of Japanese verbs that were not tagged includes those that are employed as adjectives thatmodify clauses. They behave as participles in the TT, and they always precede a modified noun in theclause.
22

(7)…like those of some hunted animal.
狩られる

動物の

ようだった。

karareru

doubutsu no

you data.

being hunted

animal ADN

seems COP

“like a hunted animal”
FSID 10031 TSID 10040 NTU-MC
Although its form remains a verb, 狩られる karareru “to be hunted” modifies the following noun 動物
doubutsu “animal”, thus making it an adjective. Thus, participles in the TT will be ignored and left
unlinked.
4.4.4 Tagging polysemous words
Certain ST words with vague meanings were found to be translated with another ambiguous word. We
encountered a few with such ambiguity, such as the example below.
(8) But I am now sleeping in the middle one (room).
でも、私は、の部屋で寝起きしています.

demo, watashiwa, ima wa

mannaka noheya deneoki shiteimasu.

but

middle AND

room COP

sleep and wake up

I TOP

今は

now TOP真中“but, as for me, I sleep and wake up in the middle room”
FSID 10332 TSID 10400 NTU-MC“sleep” and 寝起き neoki “awake” are fundamentally two antonyms in concepts. However, both arecontextualized to mean “to stay/use the room to sleep and wake up in” in both languages. Therefore, we
decided upon the implied meaning, and tagged both concepts with the same synset 02637202-v 'dwell' as
they do convey the same implications in the respective SL and TL. We then linked the two with “~” astheir basic meanings are different.

23

CHAPTER FIVERESULTS AND ANALYSIS
With the words tagged to their concepts and linked, we proceeded to count the number of verbs that werelinked in the corpus. Out of 1665 verbs in total in the ST, 869 were tagged with synsets. This means that
52.2% of the English verbs were linked, and this number also represented the linking of verbs to words ofa different POS in the TT. The unlinked verbs could be accounted for by the light verbs and auxiliary
verbs in English which hold little semantic content and were excluded from the analysis. On the other
hand, out of a total of 1211 Japanese verbs in the TT, 248 verbs were not linked. This could be attributed
to the translation of English words to Japanese verbs of a different POS, where these English words thatwere not verbs were not linked since a unidirectional analysis of parallel corpora is performed here, andour focus is on shifts in POS in the translation of English verbs to their Japanese counterparts.
After tabulating the number of linked concepts in the TT and their POS tags, links that represented a shift
in word class in the translation process were presented in Table 5 below. The figures demonstrate alllinked English verbs except for those linked with “=”.Those that had the link “=” represented pairs ofexact correspondences, and were thus excluded.

POS Gap

Total Number of Matches%

Verb-Verb

367

93.10

Verb-Noun

19

4.82

Verb-Adjective

6

1.52

Verb-Adverb

2

0.51

394

100.00

Total

Table 5: Cross lingual matches of POS relations across words

From the table above, the highest percentage of matches came from linked concepts sharing the same
POS, which is to say that 93.1% of translation shifts in our corpora had occurred between SL and TL
words of the same word class. It is apparent that English verbs are mostly translated into Japanese verbs,
although they are not exact correspondences of each other. The next highest percentage of syntactic
mismatches occurred between English verbs and Japanese nouns (4.82%). However, mismatches between
verb-adjective and verb-adverb do not occur frequently.
24

As for verb-verb matches in the corpora, Table 6 depicts the association by link types between thematched verb pairs of various verb types, namely, PV,VV, phrE,phrJ, singleE,singleJ. Of the total numberof verb-verb matches, more than half of the pairs (55.87%) were tagged with “=”, which represents thatthey are exact correspondents of each other. The next significant shared relationship between the pairs
would be represented by “~” (25.50%), where there exists a semantic dissimilarity between them.
Following up closely is the link type “:” (18.15%), where the pairs do not share a similar lexicalized
concept. Direct and weak antonyms were however few in the corpora. In total, there were 843 pairs oflinked verbs in the corpora.

Matched verb- =

~

:

#

!

Total

pairs/Link type
PV-VV

18

9

3

1

-

31

PV-phrJ

1

4

2

-

-

7

PV-singleJ

13

23

13

-

-

49

phrE-VV

7

-

1

-

-

8

phrE-phrJ

4

2

1

-

-

7

phrE-singleJ

1

1

5

-

-

7

singleE-VV

28

26

14

-

singleE-phrJ

10

9

-

-

-

19

singleE-singleJ

388

141

114

1

3

647

Total

471

215

153

2

3

843

%

55.87

25.50

18.15

0.24

0.36

100

68

Table 6: Cross-matches of various verb types in the corpora and their link types

As predicted for PVs, the PV-VV pair were linked with “=” the most (18), which manifests that they areformal correspondences of each other, and there was a lesser number of PV-singleJ pairs similarly linked
with “=” (13), showing that they are less similar conceptually. On the contrary, there were very few PVphrJ pairs uncovered in total.
PV-singleJ were interestingly found to be mostly tagged with “~” (23), which was against our predictions
that the most number of “~” linked pairs would be from PV-phrJ pairs (4). Hence, with respect to cases of
non-correspondences in translation (as represented by “~” and “:”), PV-singleJ dominated in nominal

25

figures. This disproved the prediction that PV-phrJ pair to be the second most commonly tagged pair withthese links types.
Similarly for single verbs, the number of singleE-singleJ pairs were found to be linked with “=” the most(388), followed by singleE-VV (28) pairs and lastly singleE-phrJ pairs (10), which means there is arelatively high number of formal correspondences for singleE-singleJ pairs. However, even forconceptually dissimilar verbs linked with either “~”or “:”, the singleE-singleJ matches (141 and 114)
were the highest compared to singleE-VV (26 and 14) matches and singleE-phrJ (9 and 0) matches.
An interesting trend was spotted for singleE-VV (28 and 26) pairs and PV-singleJ (13 and 23) pairs, thatthey have a relatively high number of “=” and “~” link types for each of these pairs. These figures
exceeded expectations, and they were tested for random occurrence in the Chi square test below.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find a trend for matches with English phrases, as there were too few
data collected from the corpora. We thus rejected the second hypothesis (refer to section 3 part ii) on
translations from English idiomatic expressions to Japanese idiomatic expressions, and proceeded tofocus our discussion on the other hypotheses.
With the remaining two hypotheses, we thus tested whether the remaining SL verb types, PV and singleE,
had an effect on the distribution of the corresponding TL verb types, VV and singleJ, by applying the Chi
square test. The Chi square test is a statistical hypothesis test that depicts the situation where the null
hypothesis is true, and the sampling distribution of a test statistic follows a Chi-square distribution (Jenset,
2008). By showing that the distribution of our observed data does not follow a Chi square distribution, we
can then determine that variations in our data are not due to random variation, and thus reject null
hypothesis in favour of the alternative hypothesis.
In order to determine that the patterns of verb translations are not due to chance, we used a Chi-square teston the data we collected. Earlier in the literature review, we predicted that particular verb types in the SL
would be related to the type of verb constructions found in the TL (i.e. a specific verb type contained in
the ST would influence the type of verb to be constructed in the TT). Verbs in English are divided into
three groups: phrasal verbs, idiomatic phrases and single verbs, while verbs in Japanese are categorizedaccording to the following three types: compound verbs, idiomatic phrases and single verbs. In this study,
the dependent variable is the verb correspondences found in the TT, and the independent variable is theverb type employed in the ST. Therefore, the Chi-square test is suitable as a correlation test since the data
is nominal and variables measured are organized into non-overlapping categories.

26

English/JapaneseVV

SingleJ

Total

PV

31

49

80

(9.96)(70.04)68

647(89.04)(625.96)99

696

SingleE

Total

715

795

Table 7: Summary of expected frequencies of each verb type

The Chi-square test shows that there is an influence of the verb types in English on the translations of thecorresponding verb types in Japanese (χ2 = 56.423, p<0.001)2 . Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.
As shown above, the observed frequencies for PV-singleJ matches (49) and singleE-VV matches (68) did
not reach the figures of expected frequencies calculated (70.04 and 89.04 respectively). This means that
despite the relatively high nominal numbers tabulated for these matches, they point to chance occurrence,
i.e. matches were contingent on random relations.
In contrast, PV-VV matches (31) and singleE-singleJ matches (647) have both exceeded the calculated
expected figures (9.96 and 625.96 respectively), thus the data seem to indicate that they are parallel
realizations of each other in the ST and TT. Specifically for English PVs and Japanese VVs, further
investigations would be conducted in this paper to examine their common underlying semantic structuresthat has established the pair to correspondences of each other.

2*p-value is the value of significance at which the null hypothesis should be rejected, and in this case, p<0.05 is the standardized
p-value in the humanities and social sciences (Jenset, 2008, Litosseliti, 2010). Here, p<0.001 shows that the results are highly
significant.

27

CHAPTER SIXDISCUSSION
6.1 Analysis of zero matches in the corpora
It was observed that a fair number of ST verbs (796) did not have a lexical equivalent in the TT, i.e. theconcept was not represented at all in the TT. One possibility to account for this is the difference inrealization of grammatical functions, where a phrase can be condensed into a less dense construction
using verb conjugations in Japanese. The following shows synthetic correspondence (Malá, 2013), where
the meaning of the ST verb is represented with a grammatical inflection in Japanese.
(9) I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case as I did tothat of your friend.
マダム、お友達にしてあげた くらいのことは、喜んでさせていただきますよ。

madamu, otomodachi ni shite agetakurai

no koto wa, yorokonde saseteitadakimasu yo.

madam,

like

ADN thing TOP, happy to have the privilege to dofriend DAT

to give“Madam, as I have offered the same to your friend, I am happy to have the privilege (to devote
the same care to you).
FSID 10057 TSID 10073 NTU-MC
The meaning of devoted is incorporated into the Japanese verb 喜ぶ yorokobu “to be pleased” which isinflected with the polite causative suffix させていただく sasete itadaku “to have the privilege of doing”.
This inflection is commonly used in Japanese to refer to an act of offering a service to another person.
Although sasete itadaku is actually a derived form of する suru “to do” (a light verb) but functions as anhonorific suffix, it is not a lexical equivalent and was left unlinked in the corpora. Politeness in Japaneseis one problem significant in the area of translation divergences.
6.2 Analysis of shifts in POS
Translation shifts observed in this study highlighted typological differences in the distribution of
linguistic features in the representation of concepts. Findings on translation shifts support those of Gao(2012), who also found the highest number of POS shifts between verbs and nouns, followed by verbadjective and verb-adverb pairs (Gao, 2012: 27, table 9). Language influences on categorical shifts (asmentioned in Dorr (1992/1993)), or TRANSPOSITION (as termed by Vinay and Darbelnet, 1958) in
English-Japanese translations can account for such shifts.

28

The POS category that English verbs were found to be commonly translated to was the noun category (19,
4.82%). The example below shows how the same concept can be realized differently in the two languages.
(10) Why, what do you mean?
まあ、それは いったいどういう意味ですか？

maa,sore wa ittaidouiu

imi desu ka

well,that TOP on earth

whatmeaning QUOT‘Goodness, what is the meaning of that?’
FSID 10195 TSID 10243 NTU-MC
The above example shows a difference in lexical construction in expression of the concept “mean”.
Constructions between languages are said to differ when they do not share either the same formal orfunctional features in the expression of a particular concept (Serbina, 2013). The concept of mean in the
SL here is expressed as a verb, given the synset 00955148-v, defined as “mean or intend to express orconvey”, but was translated into a different form, a noun, 意味 imi “meaning”, linked with synset
06601327-n denoting “the message that is intended or expressed or signified”. The difference in formal
construction here demonstrates a lack of a formal correspondent in the TL.
Another case of nominalization of the SL verb is exemplified below, and this phenomenon could be
attributed to the lack of an equivalent verb of the same transitivity in the TL.
(11) Dr. Grimesby Roylott's chamber was larger than that of his step-daughter, but was as plainly
furnished.
グリムズビー・ロイロット博士の部屋は、

gurimuzubi roirotto professor

ADN room TOP, stepsister’s daughter’s room

大きかったが、家具は同様に質素なものだった。

bigger thansame DAT

simple thing FIL COP

furniture TOP

義理の娘の部屋より“Grimesby roylott’s room was bigger than that of his step-daughter, but (his) furniture wassimilarly simple.”
FSID 10386 TSID 10457 NTU-MC
29

Here, the translator employed a noun, 家具 kagu “furniture” in Japanese, to express the same concept of“equipped with furniture” as conveyed in the original verb furnished. However, in the English context, theverb furnished refers to the state of the room being equipped with furniture. In contrast, in the Japanesetranslation, the focus of description falls on “furniture” itself, and not the room. In the TT, the use of the
topic marker は wa, which always follows after a noun, has placed this focus on “furniture”.
Moreover, the positioning of the topic marker twice -- first after the noun 部屋 heya “room” and thenafter “furniture” -- sets up a semantic contrast between the state of the room and the state of the furniture.
This grammatical construction for contrast between two topics is unique to Japanese, and は wa creates
an obligation for the topic in the clause-initial position to be a noun, not a verb, as verbs in Japanesecannot be interpreted as topics (Vermeulen, 2009). Thus, the syntactic construction sets up a need for theuse of a noun. Moreover, although a verb equivalent of furnished, which is 備えつける sonaetsukeru ”toinstall/furnish”, is available in Japanese, it is not used as it is transitive and is not congruous with theintransitive furnished. Therefore, in adapting the Japanese translation to TL grammatical norms, it led tothe change in lexical realization in the TT.
Besides verb-noun matches, there were a few ST verbs found to be translated into adjectives (6, 1.52%) in
the TT. Interesting cases included an English verb that was translated into an adjective part of a fixed
expression in the TL.
(12) …you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which suits you
best.
とはいえ、ご都合のよろしいときに 実費をご負担して頂いても結構

towaie,tokini jippi wo

gofutan shite itadaitemo

kekko

gotsugou no yoroshii

nonetheless, POL convenient

time DAT expenses ACC

POL bear

fine

ですよ。
desuyo.
COP“Nonetheless, you can defray the costs at any time convenient”
FSID 10058 TSID 10075 NTU-MC

30

Perhaps in favour of conventionalized TL features in translation, the verb suit was observed to be adapted
for a frequently used expression in Japanese, 都 合 の よ ろ し い tsugou no yoroshii “convenient”.
Although the two concepts are not related lexically, taking the entire proposition into account “time whichsuits you” would make for a better interpretation that supports the translation into the Japanese adjectival
phrase of “convenient”. Both the English verb and the Japanese adjective よろしい yoroshii in this casewould then share the same concept of “be satisfactory to (somebody)”. Therefore, the POS shift here isundertaken by the translator to cater to the TL audience, and NORMALIZATION, which refers to theapproach of conforming to the language patterns of the TL (Baker, 1996: 176 - 177), has facilitated amore natural translation in the TT.
Due to limited data gathered for verb-adverb shifts (2, 0.51%), further studies is recommended to explain
the relationship between the English verbs and Japanese adjectives and adverbs respectively.
6.3 Analysis of single English verbs and Japanese compound verbs
Many single English verbs were found to be matched with VVs in the corpora (68 in total). For verbs thatare semantically ambiguous, translations into VVs are found to explicate the implied meaning of the ST
verb. EXPLICITATION is a technique used by the translator where implicit information in the ST is madeexplicit in the TT (Baker, 1996: 180).
(13)… you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.
あなたは

人間の心の、

様々な邪悪さを見通せる方とanata waningen no kokoro no,samazama na jaakusa wo

mitooseru kata to

you TOP

human ADN heart ADN many wickedness ACC

see through person QUO

伺っています。
ukagatteimasu
heard“(I heard that) You can see the manifold wickedness of the human heart.”
FSID 10062 TSID 10082 NTU-MC

31

The meaning of see here is made literal with 見通す mitoosu “to see through”, where the impliedmeaning in see is “predict through perception” and that is done with the addition of 通す toosu “to passthrough” to explicate the overall meaning of examining below the surface. The verb toosu here thus helps
to amplify the sense of 見る miru “to see” as well.
Yet, EXPLICITATION is known to produce redundant information in the TT. EXPLICITATION can bedone by the translator unconsciously (Olohan, 2004: 94), but here we would like to suggest that it can be
due in part to language effects, or lexical expressions in the specific language. It is typical in Japanese toconflate the semantic factors of motion and path in motion verbs (Uchiyama and Ishizaki, 2001), and thiscan thus account for the frequent translation of single motion verbs in English into VVs in the corpus here.
An alternative example include jump (up from the floor) and 飛び上がる tobiagaru, formed from 飛ぶ
tobu “to fly” and 上がる agaru “up”. The V2 here reinforces the degree to which the action denoted by
V1 is carried out.
6.4 Analysis of English phrasal verbs and single Japanese verbs
SIMPLIFICATION has occurred in cases where the phrasal verbs are conflated into a single verb inJapanese. SIMPLIFICATION can mean the reduction in the length of constructions and/or condensing
complex information (Olohan, 2004).
This is illustrated with the PV come out, which has the motion verb “come” and the particle projecting thedirection of “come” which is outwards. Japanese, however, is said to be a verb-framing language which
incorporates the semantic component of path into verbs (Talmy, 1991, 2000). Thus, the corresponding
verb of come out in Japanese is 出る deru, which expresses the same meaning of “come out”.
Translations of other PVs simply show the redundancy of the particle which contributes little semantic
meaning to the whole, and thus is not reflected in the corresponding translated word. Such pairs were
found to be linked with “=” and were thus semantically equivalent, since the meaning of the PV was fully
conveyed in the single Japanese verb.

32

(14) The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn.
三つの

部屋の

窓は、

芝生へと

開きます。

mitsu noheya nomado wa,

shibafu he toakimasu.

Three ADN

rooms ADN

window TOP

lawn DAT

open“the windows of the three rooms open out to the lawn”
FSID 10105 TSID 10140 NTU-MC
The directional particle へ (pronounced /he/) which specifies the motion towards a specified target isparallel to the English particle out here in the PV open out. Therefore, in Japanese, there is no need for
additional marking of direction in the verb itself.
However, in parallel with English phrasal verbs with metaphorical meanings which can be substituted forsingle verbs, these PVs can also be replaced with a single Japanese verb in translation. This is anotherillustration of explication in the TT as well. In the ST, go on was used to mean “to continue”, and 続く
tsudzuku “to continue” was the corresponding word used in the translation to explicate this literal sense of
go on.
6.5 Analysis of English phrasal verbs and Japanese compound verbs
In this section, combinations of matched PVs and VVs in the corpora, as well as their semantic
commonalities will be discussed.
Following past classifications of ambiguous V2s into three semantic classes, namely: aspectual, spatial
and adverbial (Uchiyama, Baldwin, Ishizaki, 2005: 6; Uchiyama and Ishizaki, 2001, para. 2.2), our study
will examine, where possible, the manifestation of such semantic properties in V 2s. As most PVs found in
the data belonged mostly to the semantic class of verbs of motion, we will also deduce generalizations ofpatterns based on this group of PVs and their corresponding VVs.
Congruence between the main verb of the PV and V1, as well as the particle and V2 was found in cases
where the PV and its corresponding VV share common semantic components. In particular, a PV
containing a motion verb with a particle expressing a spatial factor is found to be paralleled with acongruent motion verb in V1 position, and another motion verb in V2 position depicting the same spatial
feature expressed by the particle. This is further supported from the findings that these verbs were33

commonly marked with the “=” symbol which denotes that they are correspondences of each other, andare thus semantically similar.
A case in point would be the phrasal verb take out that was directly translated into 取り出す toridasu “totake out” in the TT. Both the PV and the VV in this case demonstrate semantic transparency, i.e. themeaning is apparent and is predictable from its parts. Their structures can thereby be broken down as
such: The motion indicated by the verb take is modified by the particle out which conveys the change inlocation from an interior place to an exterior place (Neagu, 2007). Similarly in the translation equivalent,

出す dasu “to put out” modifies the manner in which the action of 取る toru “to take” is done. Here, inboth languages, the second component in the PV or VV has marked spatial properties on the motion
expressed by the main verb. Where there is semantic embedding of the second component on the firstcomponent of the PV or VV, the phrasal verb is considered to be semantically compositional (Jackendoff,
2002), and the VV syntactically compounded (Hashimoto and Bond, 2005: 5; Tamaoka, Lim, Hiromu,
2004: 234).
6.5.1 Double Translations
Interestingly, it was discovered that PVs had translations into both VVs and single verbs.
A case in point would be the phrasal verb caved in that was translated into 崩れ落ちる kuzureochiru “tofall in” in the TT.
(15) … the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin.
屋根は

部分的に

崩れ落ち、

さながら

廃墟を

絵に

yane wabubun teki ni

kuzureochi,

sanagara

haikyo woe niroof TOP

partly DAT

caved in,just likeruins ACC

picture DAT

描いたようだった。
kaita you datta.
drew seems COP“The roof was partly caved in; like a picture of ruin”
FSID 10326 TSID 10393 NTU-MC

34

As above, the phrasal verb cave has the meaning of “collapse”. Its construction is metaphorical in a sensethat it can be understood as a reference to the situation where something above falls inwards anddownwards into a hollow beneath it, such as a cave, and the significance of this meaning has beentransferred into the idiomatic meaning of “collapse”. The meaning of collapse is then exemplified in V1 ofthe VV equivalent: 崩れる in itself means “collapse”, whereas in V2 of the Japanese equivalent, 落ちるochiru “to fall” supports the argument of V1 in portraying the direction of movement to be downwards
towards the ground. Additionally, as they are semantically equivalent, we linked them with “=” to denote
this relationship of correspondence.
Yet, kuzureochiru can be used in a different way, and its meaning can be extended to denote the physicalcollapse of the person, as depicted below.
(16) … but at that moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground.
…そのとき、 姉の膝の力

が抜けて、

床に

sonotiki,

one no hiza no chikara

ga nukete,

toko ni kuzureochimashita.

that timesister’s knees ADN strength

NOM gonefloor DAT collapsed

崩れ落ちました。

“At that time, her knees gave way and she collapsed on the ground”
FSID 10145 TSID 10184 NTU-MC
For the paired sentence above, the translator gave kuzureochiru as the translation equivalent for the single
English verb fall. Other Japanese lexical equivalents could have been chosen, such as another single verb
like 倒れる taoreru “to collapse” to describe the physical fall, but this lexical choice in the translation
ultimately reflects stylistic preferences of the translator. This translation can be considered natural in asense that kuzureochiru sounds natural in this context and can be understood in the same manner byJapanese readers. Since the sense of “fall” in kuzureochiru is also stronger, than in fell, this slightdifference in semantic quality was denoted by the link “~”.

35

6.5.2 Analysis of adverbs in PVs in relation to V2s in VVs
Apart from particles, we discovered that PVs with adverbs were translated into VVs as well.
Example PVVV

進 み 出 る “to step forward  出る deru “to come out”

step forwardiCorresponding translation from adverb

forward”
drive away “to get rid 取り除く”to remove”

ii

away  除く nozoku “to remove”

of”
cast round “to look 見 回 す ”toiiiaround”

look round  回す

mawasu “to turn round”

around”
Table 8: Summary of PVs with adverbs translated into VVs

Example (i) demonstrates a PV that has the main verb conveying the path of movement, and the adverb
encoding directionality. The directional adverb is then translated into a Japanese motion verb encoded for
path, 出る deru “to come out” (Tsujimura, 2002). For such compositional PVs whose meanings can be
broken down into meanings of its constituents, literal translations of the adverb can be carried out toproduce a corresponding V2 in Japanese.
Example (ii) and (iii) depicts collocations whose metaphorical meanings cannot be deduced from its
constituents. The adverbs away and round has its extended meanings translated literally in 除く nozoku“to remove” and 回す mawasu “to turn round” respectively. Here we see the V2 of the VV holding therespective metaphorical meanings of the PV on the whole.
6.5.3 Analysis of particles in PVs in relation to V2s in VVs
An interesting pattern that we discovered was the translation of the particle up into four different verbs inJapanese.
Example PVVV

up translated intoathrow up “kick up”

巻き上げるageru “up”bcreep up “to get near to”

歩み寄るyoru “near”

c

knock

up

“to

wake たたき起こす

okosu “to cause to wake”

someone up”
dspring up “to stand up”

飛び起きる

okiru “to wake /get up”

Table 9: Variations in translations of up

36

Based on the context in the story, example (a) represents a regular use of up, where up indicates spatial
movement upward. Interestingly, where the literal meaning of upward movement is denoted by theparticle up, the same spatial quality is expressed in the Japanese translation equivalent あげる ageru “up”.
We have seen this in the examination of take out previously, where the particle expressing spatial
meaning can be paralleled by a directional verb in Japanese. In this case, in spite of the presence of asemantically corresponding counterpart in Japanese, up and ageru are not syntactically congruent since
the forms belong to different word categories in their respective languages. Thus they can be defined asdivergent correspondences (Johansson, 2007: 23).
Examples (b) and (c) show the alternative uses of up. In b, up defines the “closeness of the target position
to some object” (Kilby, 1984: 105). In terms of cognitive schemas, up here represents a “goal oriented”
field, where the direction of movement is towards a targeted goal; it does not signify a prototypicaldirection of movement upwards (Cook and Stevenson, 2006: 48). In example (c), up demonstrates the“path into the state of activity”, here signifying the upright vertical posture of a person (Cook andStevenson, 2006: 48). In such cases which involves the extended use of the particle metaphorically, we
noticed that if in the translation equivalent does not bear the sense denoted by the English particle, there isa tendency for explication to take place, that is, to “introduce information from the ST that is implicit
from the context or situation” (Molina and Alibir, 2002). Here, the translation equivalent of “up”, あげる
ageru “to go up”, does not include the senses of up in example (b) and (c). A new V2 is then introduced inthe VV to manifest overtly the implicated meanings of up. In b, the sense of close proximity in space isexpressed by the Japanese verb 寄る yoru “to be close to”, while in (c) the meaning of “get up” istransferred into the verb 起こす okosu “to wake someone”.
Similar to extended uses of up in different contexts, 起きる okiru lit. “to wake up” has extended
meanings as well. The literal meaning of okiru which means “to be aroused from sleep” is not implied in

飛び起きる tobiokiru (example (d)). Instead, the meaning of okiru is extended to mean “to move uprightfrom a position of rest”, which is congruent to the meaning of up here: “to get on one’s feet”. In Japanese,
tobiokiru is lexical VV since it is idiomatic and its meaning is not directly derived from its parts: 飛ぶtobu means “to fly” which is unrelated to the meaning of the whole. Example (d) is an instance of a matchof two idiomatic correspondences in English and Japanese.
Examples (c) and (d) illustrate two V2 verbs which form a causative-inchoative pair: 起きる okiru is the
inchoative verb which denotes a change in state in an entity; while 起こす okosu is the causativeinchoative counterpart denoting something causing the change in state of an entity. As noted earlier in37

Hashimoto and Bond (2005) for lexical VVs, the transitivity of VVs can be inherited from V 2 verbs.
According to the theory of TRANSITIVITY HARMONY (Kageyama, 1993), the transitivity of the verb
components limits the type of VV that can be compounded. Hence, this explains why okiru and okosu are
not interchangeable in these two VVs, as it would create an incompatibility of transitivity of the V1 andV2, thereby affecting the transitivity of the entire compound as well. Thus, the pair 叩く tataku “to knock”
and okosu are compatible as they are both transitive, to form an overall transitive VV, while 飛ぶ tobu “tofly” and okiru logically form an intransitive VV.
One noteworthy point here is that the transitivity of the PV is maintained in V 2 of the VV itself: creep up
and yoru is intransitive, while knock up and okosu is transitive. In example (d) as well, 起きる okiru
follows the intransitivity of the verb in the SL spring up. We thus carried out a further investigation on
how transitivity of the PV influences the transitivity of V 2 in VVs, in the translation various particles inPVs, out and in.
ExamplePVVV

out translated intoetook out “to remove”

取り出す

dasu ”to cause to come out”

fdrag out “to lengthen”

生き延びる

nobiru “to extend”

g

shut

in

“to

seclude 閉じこもる

komoru ”to be confined in”

oneself”
hcave in “to collapse”

崩れ落ちる

ochiru ”to drop”

Table 10: Variations in translations of out
Examples (e) shows the regular use of out, which depicts the change in location or the spatial movementfrom one place to another, and because 出す dasu lit. “to take out” manifests the same spatial meaning,out and dasu is another divergent correspondence. However, in (f), we see out translated into another verb

延びる nobiru “to extend”, and this is another case of EXPLICATION, as the extended meaning of out
used to refer to the metaphorical extension of an entity is represented with nobiru. In (g) and (h) both V2s
represent metaphorical extended meanings of in, and as shown in the above translations, the meaning of
in is disambiguated in the V2 as above.
Moreover, all of the above examples also demonstrate the transference of its transitivity to V 2 in the VV
translation equivalents. The transitive PV took out corresponds with the transitive verb dasu, and the restof the intransitive PVs are also translated into intransitive V2s, nobiru, komoru and ochiru. Overall we

38see a high probability for a PV expressing movement to have its transitivity encoded in V2 of the VV
counterpart.

39

CHAPTER SEVENCONCLUSION
In this paper, we have examined translational shifts in a parallel English-Japanese corpus, which canoccur across word classes as well as within the verb class. Translation divergences of verbs can occur due
to the differences in language systems, as well as the translation techniques employed in the translation
process. Comparisons of semantic categories in English and Japanese have allowed us to see how these
two language systems relate to each other.
An interesting phenomenon uncovered in this study was the correlation of English phrasal verbs withJapanese compound verbs. We found that where the counterparts share the same meaning, they are
similar in formal construct, especially for motion verbs. Transitivity of phrasal verbs expressing motion
was discovered to be enacted on V2 of the corresponding VVs. Further research could be performed toinvestigate the relationship of phrasal verbs expressing other semantic categories with the transitivity of
the corresponding VVs.
Our study focused mainly on spatial V2 verbs in VVs, thus future work could be done on aspectual or
adverbial V2 types for a better overview of the relationship between particles in PVs and V2 in VVs.
Nevertheless, our analysis of spatial particles has worked to disambiguate semantic ambiguities in phrasal
verbs as well.
Through the cross-lingual analysis done on English and Japanese verbs, we hope that this can help second
language learners of Japanese to better understand how concepts in English can be represented indifferent ways based on the context. Materials from this study can also be used by other scholars for
future work on translations of English and Japanese verbs.

40

REFERENCES
Backhouse, A.E (1993). The Japanese Language: An Introduction. London: Oxford University Press.
Baker, Mona (1992) In Other Words: a Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge.
Baker, M. (1996). Corpus-based translation studies: The challenges that lie ahead. In H. Somers(Ed.), Terminology, LSP and translation. Studies in language engineering in honour of Juan
C. Sager (pp. 175–186). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Biber, D., Stig J., Leech G., Conrad S., & Finegan E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written
English. London: Longman.
Bolinger, D. (1971) The Phrasal Verb in English. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Breen, J., & Baldwin, T. (2009). Corpus-based Extraction of Japanese Compound Verbs. In Proceedingsof the 2009 Australasian Language Technology Workshop,(ALTW 2009): 35-43.
Brown, V., Mendes, E., & Natali, G. (1995). False friends and bugs and bugbears. Zanichelli, Bologna.
Castejón, M. A. G. (2012). Contrastive analysis and translation study from a corpus linguistics
perspective. IJES, International Journal of English Studies, 12(2): 111-132.
Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation (Vol. 74). London: Oxford University Press.
Claridge, C. (2000). Multi-word Verbs in Early Modern English: A Corpus-based Study. Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Clerck, D.B., Colleman, T., & Willems, D. (2013). Introduction: A multifaceted approach to verb classes.
Linguistics, 51(4), 663-680.
Cook and Stevenson, S. (2006). Classifying particle semantics in English verb-particle constructions. In
Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: Identifying and Exploiting Underlying
Properties, (pp 45–53). Sydney, Australia.
Courtney, R. (1983). Longman dictionary of phrasal verbs. England: Longman.
Cyrus, L. (2006). Building a resource for studying translation shifts. In Proceedings of LREC 2006Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Genoa, Italy, (pp 1240-1245).
Denturck, K. (2012). Explicitation vs. Implicitation: A Bidirectional Corpus-Based Analysis of Causal
Connectives in French and Dutch Translations. Across Languages and Cultures, 13 (2): 211–227.
Dorr, B.J. (1992/1993). The Use of Lexical Semantics in Interlingual Machine Translation. MachineTranslation, 7: 135-193.
Dorr, B.J. (1993). Machine Translation: A View from the Lexicon. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Doyle, A.C. (1892). The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London, England: George Newnes Ltd.

41

Fellbaum, C. (2005). WordNet and wordnets. In Brown, K. et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of Language andLinguistics (2nd edition.), pp. 665-670. Oxford: Elsevier
Frazer, B. (1976). The verb-particle combination in English. New York: Academic Press.
Gao, E.H. (2012). Crosslingual comparison of linguistic phenomenon in English, Japanese and Chinese.
(Final Year Project). Retrieved from DR-NTU: http://hdl.handle.net/10220/9431
Granger, S. (2003). The Corpus Approach: A Common Way Forward for Contrastive Linguistics andTranslation Studies? In Granger S., Lerot J. and Petch-Tyson, S. (eds.). Corpus-based Approaches toContrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies. (pp. 17-29). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Hokari, T., Kumagami, M. & Akimoto, T.(2012).The Production of Japanese Verb-Verb Compounds byEnglish, Chinese, and Korean Speakers: A Corpus Study. 九州大学言語学論集, 33: 155-175.
Hashimoto, C. and Bond, F. (2005). A Computational Treatment of V-V Compounds in Japanese.
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 143-156.
Isahara, H., Bond, F., Uchimoto, K., Utiyama, M. & Kanzaki, K. (2008). Development of the Japanese
WordNet. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008),
Marrakesh, Morocco.
Jackendoff, R. (2002). English Particle Constructions, the Lexicon, and the Autonomy of Syntax. In
Nicole Dehé, Ray Jackendoff, Andrew McIntyre and Silke Urban (eds.). Verb-Particle Explorations. (pp.
67-94). Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Johansson, S. (2007). Seeing through Multilingual Corpora: On the use of corpora in contrastive studies(Vol. 26). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jenset, G.B. (2008). Basic Statistics for Corpus Linguistics. Retrieved from:http://www.researchgate.net/publication/265965333_Basic_statistics_for_corpus_linguistics
Kageyama, T. (1993). Bunpô-to Gokêsê. (Grammar and Word Formation) Tokyo: Hituzi.
Kilby, D. (1984). Descriptive Syntax and the English Verb. Great Britain: Croom Helm.
Laviosa, S. (2002). Corpus-based translation studies: theory, findings, applications (Vol. 17).
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Litosseliti, L. (2010). Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum
Lo Cascio, V., Boraschi, P., & Corda, A. (1995). Correspondence between senses and translationequivalents: automatic reversal of a bilingual dictionary. In Translation and Meaning. Part 3 of theProceedings of the 2nd International Maastricht-Lodz Duo Colloquium on ‘Translation and Meaning’,(pp. 221-231). Maastricht.
Martin, S. E. (1975). A Reference Grammar of Japanese. Japan: Tuttle.
Marello, C. (1989). Dizionari bilingui: con schede sui dizionari italiani per francese, inglese, spagnolo,
tedesco (Volume 6). Zanichelli, Bologna.
42

Malá, M. (2013). Translation counterparts as markers of meaning: The case of copular verbs in a parallel
English–Czech corpus. Languages in Contrast, 13(2): 170-192.
Molina, L. and Hurtado Albir, A. (2002). Translation techniques revisited: A dynamic and functionalist
approach. Meta: Journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators' Journal, 47(4): 498-512.
Nariyama, S., Nakaiwa, H., & Siegel, M. (2005). Annotating honorifics denoting social ranking ofreferents. In Proceedings of LINC the 6th international workshop on linguistically interpreted corpora,(LINC-05): 91-100.
Neagu, M. (2007). English verb particles and their acquisition: A cognitive approach. Revista española delingüística aplicada, (20), 121-138.
Olteanu, A.R. (2012). A Holistic Approach to Phrasal Verbs. Retreived 23 September, 2014, from:http://lectura.bibliotecadigitala.ro/Olteanu_Adriana/A_holistic_approach_to_phrasal_verbs.pdf
Olohan, M. (2004). Introducing corpora in translation studies. Routledge.
Paik, K., Ohtake, K., Bond, F., and Yamamoto, K. (2004). Source Language Effect on Translating Korean
Honorifics. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing andComputational Linguistics, (CICLing-2004), LNCS 2945: 334-337.
Sag, I.A., Baldwin T., Bond F., Copestake A. and Flickinger D. (2002). Multiword Expressions: A Pain in
the Neck for NLP. In Lecture Notes In Computer Science, 2276: 1-15.
Serbina T. (2013) Construction Shifts in Translations. Constructions and Frames, 5(2): 168–191.
Shibatani, M. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press.
Snider, N., & Arnon, I. (2012). A unified lexicon and grammar? Compositional and non-compositional
phrases in the lexicon. In S. Gries & D. Divjak (Eds.). Frequency effects in language representation. (pp.
127-163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Talmy L. (1991). Path to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480-519.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring (Vol 2).
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tamaoka, K., Lim, H., Hiromu, S. (2004). Entropy and Redundancy of Japanese Lexical and Syntactic
Compound Verbs. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 11(3): 233–250
Tsujimura, N. (1996). An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics. Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.
Tsujimura, N. (2002). Motion and path in the acquisition of Japanese intransitive verbs. In Proceedings ofStanford University Child Language Forum, 21-30.

43

Uchiyama, K., & Ishizaki, S. (2001). A study of translation rules for the Japanese compound motion
verbs. Proceedings of the AFNLP PACLING 2001.
Uchiyama, K., Baldwin, T., & Ishizaki, S. (2005). Disambiguating Japanese compound verbs. Computer
Speech & Language, 19(4): 497-512.
Vermeulen, R. (2009). Topics, contrast and contrastive topics in Japanese. In MIT Working Papers in
Linguistics 58: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (pp. 361-372).
Vinay, J., & Darbelnet, J. (1995). Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology forTranslation. (J.C. Sager & M. Hamel, Trans.). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Original
work publish 1958).
Vlad, Eduard. (1998) English Group Grammar. Constanta: Tipografia Universitatii Ovidius.
Xu, J., and Li, X. (2014). Structural and semantic non-correspondences between Chinese splittablecompounds and their English translations: A Chinese-English parallel corpus-based study. Corpus
Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 10(1): 79-101.

44