Grammaticalization in Japanese

要旨

Abstract This article considers the history of grammaticalisation in the Japanese language. It explains that Japanese has been a strictly head-final subject-object-verb order (SOV) language with nominative-accusative alignment, and with frequent omission of argument noun phrases, throughout its documented history. The first type of contact-induced grammaticalisation includes the rise of complex postpositions. In the spoken language there are only few genuine examples of grammatical influence due to language contact.

主題