The Handbook of Japanese Contrastive Linguistics is a unique publication that brings together insights from three traditions-Japanese linguistics, linguistic typology and contrastive linguistics-and makes important contributions to deepening our understanding of various phenomena in Japanese as well other languages of the globe. Its primary goal is to uncover principled similarities and differences between Japanese and other languages of the globe and thereby shed new light on the universal as well as language-particular properties of Japanese. The issues addressed by the papers in this volume cover a wide spectrum of phenomena ranging from lexical to syntactic and discourse levels. The authors of the chapters, leading scholars in their respective field of research, present the state-of-the-art research from their respected field.

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.

This collection of papers is the first book ever published in English that presents detailed analyses of valency and transitivity alternations in Japanese from multifaceted standpoints: morphology, semantics, syntax, dialects, history, acquisition, and language typology.

This volume is the first to present a detailed survey of the systems of verb-verb complexes in Asian languages from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Many Asian languages share, to a greater or lesser extent, a unique class of compound verbs consisting of a main verb and a quasi-auxiliary verb known as a 'vector' or 'explicator'. These quasi-auxiliary verbs exhibit unique grammatical behaviour that suggests that they have an intermediate status between full lexical verbs and wholly reduced auxiliaries. They are also semantically unique, in that when they are combined with main verbs, they can convey a rich variety of functional meanings beyond the traditional notions of tense, aspect, and modality, such as manner and intensity of action, benefaction for speaker or hearer, and polite or derogatory styles in speech. In this book, leading specialists in a range of Asian languages offer an in-depth analysis of the long-standing questions relating to the diachrony and geographical distribution of verb-verb complexes. The findings have implications for the general understanding of the grammaticalization of verb categories, complex predicate formation, aktionsart and event semantics, the morphology-syntax-semantics interface, areal linguistics, and typology.

This collection of papers is the first book ever published in English that presents detailed analyses of valency and transitivity alternations in Japanese from multifaceted standpoints: morphology, semantics, syntax, dialects, history, acquisition, and language typology.