The syntax and semantics of the passive structure in Japanese

Abstract

This dissertation aims at investigating the passive structures in Japanese. In this study, passivization is defined to have three core properties – (i) the subject of the active sentence becomes a less prominent grammatical relation in the corresponding passive; (ii) a non-subject argument of the active sentence receives prominence in the passive sentence; and (iii) there is morphological change to the verb (Tallerman, 2020). The investigation is conducted from two perspectives, which are the syntactic perspective and the semantic perspective. Syntactically, structures in Japanese which have been claimed to be ‘passive’ in the literature (e.g. Iwashita, 2007; Toyota, 2011) are examined. I conclude that, while (i) the direct passive, (ii) the possessive passive, (iii) the indirect passive, and (iv) the ni-yotte passive are four types of passive structures in Japanese, the ‘honorific passive’ and the ‘potential passive’ are not. By comparing the properties which each of these passive types has, the four passive types can be considered to be different points of a spectrum. Semantically, the notion of adversity is investigated. In the literature, adversative meanings are said to be associated with the indirect passive only (e.g. Iwashita, 2007; Kanzaki, 1985). However, by analyzing the four types of passive, I present evidence showing that adversity may indeed associate with all of these four passive types. Besides, the meaning of the verb plays a role in determining whether the passive sentence has an overall adversative meaning or not.