AGENTIVE ADVERBIALS IN JAPANESE

Abstract

This corpus-based research is concerned with pragmasemantic features of Japanese adverbial modifiers relating to the category of Voice. On the one hand, they disambiguate fuzzier zones of grammatical morphology (Active-Passive-Causative), either closing on the prototypic agentivity (quite like the reflexives), or distantiating from it towards de-agentive and causative meanings. Differential semes include nature of event (such as beneficiality for agent) and power relations between participants, namely measure and motives of force and resistance. This ensues in pragmatic features of evaluation and speech act specialization, mostly in directive and expressive utterances.

Keywords

• japanese language
• adverbial modification
• agentivity
• voice
• semantics
• pragmatics
• японский язык
• адвербиальная модификация
• агентивность
• залог
• семантика
• прагматика