A Contrastive Study of Intransitive and Transive Paired Verbs in Japanese and Eskimo

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Fundamental research was done for setting up a schema of classifying verbs in Yupik Eskimo (Southwest Alaska) and Japanese by Miyaoka through the analysis of data obtained in the Eskimo fieldwork and by Hayatsu through the analysis of her collected material in Japanese as well as the Eskimo fieldwork data.They confirmed that, albeit the important difference in verbal morphology in both the languages concerned, the 'relative' transitive verbs in Japanese and the 'non-agentive' binominal verbs in Eskimo share certain sytactico-semantic characteristics.Based upon this understanding, Hayatsu demonstrated that the opposition between 'agentive' and non-agentive verbs is highly relevant to different formations of Eskimo instrumental nouns with the derivational suffix -cuun/-ssuun.Miyaoka demonstrated that the causative suffix -vkar-/-cec- in Eskimo has merely the valency increase without connotation of causativity in certain constructions, one of which corresponds syntactically to what Hayatsu termed 'causative of possessor subject' in Japanese.