Corpus–based Research into Derivational Morphology: A Comparative Study of J apanese and E nglish Verbalization (2024)

Abstract: As part of elucidating the syntax-morphology interaction, this study investigates where and how complex verbs are formed in Japanese and English. Focusing on the Japanese verb-forming suffix -ka-suru (e.g. toshi-o gendai-ka-suru ‘modernize city’), relevant verbs are extracted from a large-scale corpus and they receive an in-depth analysis from semantic, morphosyntactic, and functional viewpoints. The properties of -ka-suru and those of its English counterpart are then compared and contrasted. The result reveals three main points: (i) -ka-suru verbs are constantly created in syntactic settings to fulfill the functions of brevity and conceptualization, (ii) while denominal -ize derivatives have several submeanings such as ‘result,’ ‘ornative,’ and ‘agentive,’ -ka-suru equivalents retain the meaning ‘result,’ and (iii) -ka-suru can be combined with compound nouns, but -ize cannot. We will demonstrate that the above features originate in the underlying syntactic structure related to each suffix and their difference, thus supporting the thesis of syntactic word formation. (1) ji-kokumin-o moomai-ka-suru one’s-people-ACC ignorant-change-do ‘make one’s people ignorant’ (2) shinikaketa momiji-o bonsai-ka-suru dying maple-ACC bonsai-change-do ‘turn a dying maple into a bonsai’

## introduction it is widely accepted that derived words are divided into two types: non-compositional/ fixed (e.g. communicate) and compositional/ productive (e.g. hegelianize). derived words of the latter type show not only word attributes but also the phrasal attribute of "free composition." this naturally leads to lively debate on where their formation takes place: lexicalists hold that complex words are made in the lexicon to be inserted into the terminal nodes of a syntactic representation @xcite , while antilexicalists advocate their direct syntactic derivation @xcite . as part of the investigation of the syntaxmorphology relationship, the present study attempts to show where and how -ka-suru derivatives are produced in japanese, exemplified in (1) and (2). they are picked out from balanced corpus of contemporary written japanese (bccwj) foot_0 . the complex suffix -ka-suru consists of two bound forms, -ka and -suru. the verb moomai-kasuru in (1) indicates that the complex suffix -kasuru attaches to an adjective (moomai) to derive a verb which expresses a causative meaning. the example in (2) illustrates the same point: the causative verb bonsai-ka-suru implies that the object's referent is affected in some way and becomes the resulting state indicated by the base noun. this causative construction is lexical in that the relevant verbal expression is derived by the addition of the bound morpheme -ka-suru to an adjective. moreover, the derivatives moomai-kasuru and bonsai-ka-suru are hapax legomena-token frequency 1-of the 105million-word corpus, suggesting that they are constructed online in working memory. verbalization by -ka-sru is therefore judged to be a compositional/productive type of word formation process. although there are a handful of representa-tives of descriptive studies like @xcite , there has been no systematic analysis of -ka-suru verbs. the aim of this study is to make a comprehensive analysis of them. in section 2, we expose the markers accusative and nominative are respectively abbreviated as acc and nom. ## functional properties this section deals with the communicative functions fulfilled by -ka-suru verbalization. what motivates the use of complex words rather than corresponding phrases? two functions are particularly important: brevity and conceptualization. the first function of -ka-suru verbalization is to serve as a device for indicating brevity: concise and sensible use of words (cf. @xcite . in example (3), the action inferred from the preceding context is concisely expressed by the temporally constructed verbs shihei-ka-suru and shitauke-ka-suru. a "brevity effect" thus results from this verbalization, which is not obtained from the related verbose paraphrase kokuzeikyoku-o shihei-no (yoona) jootaini suru 'make ntb (like) private army.' ## productivity productivity is defined as the extent to which a word formation device can give rise to new words @xcite . there are several approaches to quantifying productivity, the most reliable of which is one putting great importance to hapax legomena of a large-scale corpus @xcite . this rests on the view that complex forms that have been observed only once in a large corpus are highly likely to be lexical innovations and hence the capacity of a word formation rule to create neologisms crucially involves the degree to which the rule produces words with extremely low frequency @xcite . @xcite propose a productivity measure: productivity (p)=n1/n, where n1 is the number of hapaxes and n is the total number of tokens. here we revise it so as to place the total number of types (but not tokens) in the denominator; thus, @xmath0: the number of word types). our measure rests on the view that the productivity of a particular process is reflected in the type frequency of the process @xcite . according to the proposed measure, we calculate the productivity value of -ka-suru derivation, based on balanced corpus of contemporary written japanese, a 105-million-word corpus. our bccwj research has attested 130 hapaxes and 516 word types of -ka-suru derivatives, and so its productivity value is 0.252 2 . in our view, the productivity of -ka-suru is defined as the potentiality of creating one new word when four types of -ka-suru verbs are used. it then turns out that -ka-suru verbalization is very productive; when we derive four types of verbs by adding -ka-%2f%2fchunagon.ninjal.ac.jp%2fj_spring_cas_security_c heck. in addition, words may be coined on the spot in the syntactic contexts of comparison and contrast. specifically, a -ka-suru coinage may be constructed when similar activities are compared. in example (6), the verb soo-heishi-ka-suru 'make themselves all soldiers' is created in conjunction with the prior comparable phrase buki-o tori 'take up arms.' a similar observation holds for sentence (7): a series of related activities are conceptualized and lexicalized by four verbs in -ka-suru. among them kooshinrai-ka-suru is a hapax, i.e. an innovated verb. as laid out in section 2, this -kasuru verb is coined to carry out the functions of "brevity" and "conceptualization." the fact thatka-suru final verbs may be coined whenever these functions are required indicates the high creativity of the verb derivation. following the calculation method just presented, the productivity values of english verb-forming processes were calculated, based on the british national corpus (bnc), a 100million-word corpus @xcite . as a result, it turned out that the productivity values of -ize, -ify, -en, and -ate affixations are 0.323, 0.074, 0.035, and 0.058, respectively. the result shows that -ize verbalization is quite productive while the other three verbalizations are not. it is thus confirmed that the english equivalent of -ka-suru for productivity is -ize, and that creative verbalizers such as -ka-suru and -ize exist in japanese and english foot_2 . ## the internal structure of bases this section considers -ka-suru's base from a structural viewpoint. differences can be found between japanese and english regarding the base structures of derived verbs. let us first examine the japanese case. the verbalizer -ka -suru can be attached to compound nouns. a good example of this is the verb phrase nhk-o kyodai-seisakugaisha-ka-suru (nhk-acc huge-productioncompany-change-do 'turn nhk into a huge production company'), where -ka-suru is added to the compound noun kyodai-seisaku-gaisha. -kasuru can also be affixed to a compound vn (koososhuuyaku), as in tatemono-o koosoo-shuuyaku-kasuru (building-acc high.rise-concentrationchange-do 'make buildings taller and more concentrated') 7 . furthermore, a base with which -ka-suru combines may be a prefixed adjective or noun. in the example of osenbushitsu-o mu-gai-ka-suru (pollutant-acc un-harmful-change-do 'make pollutants unharmful'), -ka-suru is suffixed to the adjective mu-gai(-no) which includes the negative prefix mu-. by the same token, -ka-suru adjoins to the noun hi-hanzai with the negative prefix hi-, as consequently they are difficult to appear inside -ka-suru verbs. ## theoretical implications in the generative theories ranging from the standard model to the government-binding theory, an excessive role was given to the lexicon. it stores not only underived words and stems but also word formation rules for deriving complex words from them. each simple word and derived word is inserted into a relevant node of a phrase structure to create a d-structure. the point is that word formation only takes place within the lexicon, hence this approach is called lexicalism. however, theoretical and empirical evidence contrary to lexicalism was pointed out @xcite , leading to the rise of antilexicalism. in antilexical distributed morphology (dm), a major part of word formation is located in syntax. specifically, dm attributes the core characteristics of a complex word to its syntactic structure while entrusting the role of its formal processing to the morphology module. in what follows, we will make an argument for supporting the dm model: after illustrating how the -ka-suru construction is realized syntactically, we will show that the properties of the construction observed above follow straightforwardly from the related underlying structure. given the dm theoretic viewpoint that derivational suffixes are the heads of phrases, the underlying configuration of karera-ga soshiki-o kaisha-ka-suru (they-nom organization-acc company-change-do 'they turn an organization into a company') are constructed by the merging of a root (√kaisha) and category-defining heads like v, n, and p, as depicted in (10) foot_3 . (10 tree diagram (10) exhibits a causative construction, where the surface object soshiki has a predicative relationship with the underlying nominal root √kaisha and the "small clause" is dominated by the causative element -ka. thus, the core meaning of the -ka-suru construction, 'change y into x,' is derived from its underlying structure (cf. §4.1). in section 2, we discussed that -ka-suru expressions are generated in the comparison/ contrast contexts in order to obtain the "brevity" effect (cf. (3)). this context-dependent word formation harmonizes with an approach of deriving -ka-suru expressions from their syntactic structure rather than forming them in the lexicon. it was also observed in section 2 that verbs in -kasuru are produced to conceptualize and name causative actions with resulting states. this lexical function distinguishes between nameworthy expressions such as (4) and nonnameworthy expressions like (5). the structural features of the -ka-suru construction presented above (cf. (10)) are again the source of its lexical propertyconceptualization by naming. because the affix -ka inserted into vn is a categorychange]-do 'make (sth) advanced and complex') (see also example ( 7 )). furthermore, section 3 demonstrated the creativity of -ka-suru affixation: it has the potential to constantly create new expressions on the spot (cf. ( 6 ) and ( 7 )). this is a corollary of the idea that syntactic computation is entirely productive and that the core structure of -ka-suru expressions is constructed at the syntactic level. section 4 clarified the semantic differences between japanese and english verbal suffixes. a notable difference is that denominal -ize derivatives have several submeanings while theirka-suru counterparts retain their prime meaning (cf. what creates the semantic contrast between japanese and english verbal suffixes is their structural difference, especially the difference in the features of the verbalizers. english verbalization structure (11) implies 'to cause the object to be in a certain state'; the verbalizer -ize with the feature [cause] allows the referent of the object to be in several states. such states are represented by the spatial and functional relationships expressed by specific prepositions in under-lying structures. therefore, the reading of 'ornative' can be obtained from essentially the same configuration as (11), with the exception that the feature of p is changed from [into] to @xcite . in japanese, on the contrary, the 9 in english, two verbs are sometimes combined to form a compound verb, as in push-walk her (j. rossner, looking for mr. goodbar, p. 71). japanese also has v-v type compound verbs, as in oki-wasureru (put-forget 'mislay') and mi-otosu nominalizer -ka in (10) has the feature [change], and accordingly the feature of the associated preposition is determined to be @xcite . consequently, denominal -ka-suru verbs can only be interpreted as 'result.' section 5 identified a difference in the size of the bases in japanese and english verbal-ization: -kasuru can be attached to compound nouns and prefixed adjectives/nouns, but its english counterpart cannot. we will show that this contrast is also attributable to the structural difference between -ka-suru and -ize expressions, focusing on the incorporation of compound nouns. as evidenced in (12), english compound nouns cannot be incorporated to form derived verbs. in contrast, the japanese verb-forming suffix -ka-suru can incorporate compound nouns, as in ( 13 ). ## conclusion based on an in-depth analysis of japanese -ka-suru derivatives extracted from a large-scale corpus, we have uncovered their semantic, morphological, and functional properties. specifically, it is revealed that (i) -ka-suru derivation gives rise to the causative meaning 'to bring the object's referent into a certain resulting state,' (ii) it is creative enough to coin a variety of neologisms depending on the context, and (iii) it has the functions of conceptualization and naming. moreover, comparing them with those of -ize verbs, their semantic and morphological differences have been identified. semantically, -kasuru verbs retain the basic meaning of 'result,' while verbs in -ize have several submeanings such as 'ornative' and 'agentive' besides the basic meaning. morphologically, -ka-suru can be attached to larger-sized bases such as compounds or prefixed forms, whereas -ize cannot be attached to them. then we have demonstrated that the characteristics of -ka-suru verbs and the differences of both verbalizations are derived in a unified manner from their underlying syntactic structures. the core meaning, creativity, and naming function of -ka-suru derivation come respectively from its underlying structure, syntactic formation, and the suffix (-ka-suru) that governs a verb phrase. turning to the differences in verbalization between japanese and english, the fact that only -ka-suru verbs retain the meaning of 'result' has its origin in the difference in the underlying representations of the two verbalizations; only the japanese suffix involves the feature @xcite . the second difference regarding the size of the base is deduced from whether the verbalizers are pure category-changers or not, that is, from the difference in features between -suru ([do]) and -ize @xcite ). this study thus provides strong support for the antilexicalist position, which claims that major properties of complex words can be traced back to the syntactic level, with the power to generate infinite set of sentences. how a syntactic output is constructed into a word form awaits further investigation; there is a need for elucidation of the lexical entries of the verbalizer -ka-suru and morphological operations for word make-up.