Linguistic Expressions of Changes of State in Japanese: A Quantitative Study of Cognitive Typology

Abstract

As an attempt at a data-oriented cognitive-typological study of language, we present an analysis of the linguistic representations of changes of state in Japanese. The expressions of 12 different changes of state found in BCCWJ are analyzed in a framework also used for the typology of motion-event descriptions (Matsumoto 2017a; see also Talmy 2000). The study reveals that a change of state (or at least the transition of change) is expressed overwhelmingly in the head position of a sentence; very often the transition and the resultant state are expressed together by the main verb. In this respect, Japanese can be said to be a “head change-coding language.” Compared with the expressions of spatial motion, which similarly use the head position to encode path, expressions of state changes encode change very often in the head only, testifying to a greater role of the head for changes of state. There are large variations in the degree to which the head is used, depending on the type of state change, inviting an explanation of what sort of state and change of state are expressed with the use of verbs as opposed to adjectives. Furthermore, the low frequency of “co-events” occurring with changes of state demonstrates the limitations of Talmy’s typology.