日本語受動文の意味分析

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Basic assumptions made in the present paper are that a passive sentence be considered to be a marked form as against the corresponding active sentence and that the meaning of a marked sentence can be described on the basis of its unmarked counterpart. In order to elucidate the meaning of passives, it is necessary to clarify what is added to the meaning of an active sentence by passivization. Thus, we must concern ourselves with the question of what motivates passivization, i. e., what the functions of passivization are.<BR>Toward that goal, this paper first sets forth the proposal that two types of passives be differentiated: they are here referred to as the 'promotional passive' and the 'demotional passive', where passivization is motivated by the promotion of a non-subject NP to subject position and the demotion of a subject NP to non-subject position, respectively. It is further argued that the principal motivations for the promotions involved in passivization are the foregrounding of affectivity and the characterization of a certain NP. Hence, two subtypes of the promotional passives are distinguished, the 'affective passive' and the 'predicational passive'. On the other hand, the motivation for demotions lies in the backgrounding of an agent NP.
日本言語学会の論文