Abstract
Students from non-Japanese background, particularly those who have not started to learn kanji characters, experience difficulties with kanji characters when studying Japanese. Some verbs in Japanese are expressed by adding the light verb “suru”. This paper focuses on such verbs, usually written with kanji characters plus suru, with a view to improving the Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) of students from non-Japanese backgrounds.
Kageyama (1980) points out that verbs consisting of kanji characters plus the Japanese suru are derived verbs. From the perspective of language economy, derived verbs are an efficient form of expression. Senoo (1999) outlined semantic rules for derived verbs. Based on that, the present paper suggests that Japanese elementary schools should teach independent “suru” verbs and kanji characters.
Martin (1975) states that, in Japanese, there are some nouns that can be used as verbs by adding suru. He refers to such nouns as verbal nouns. The nouns in (1) are examples of verbal nouns.
(1) anki, tozan, and benkyo
These nouns are usually represented orthographically with kanji characters and can be used as verbs by adding suru. However, these verbs differ from usual nouns, examples of which are provided in (2), neither in form nor in grammatical function. As shown in (3), usual nouns are grammatically meaningless if suru is attached.
(2) empitsu, shokunin, and tsukue
(3) *empitsu-suru, *shokunin-suru, and *tsukue-suru
Comparing the nouns in (1) with those in (2), one may note that the verbal nouns express either motion or the occurrence of an event. However, other nouns-such as those presented in (4)-can also refer to motion or events.
(4) komamawashi, netasagashi, hosiuranai, and bōrunage
Moreover, as indicated in (5), there are some verbal nouns that do not refer to motion or the occurrence of an event.
(5) ichi, inkyo, and kushin
In conclusion, the paper argues that it would be much more appropriate to classify verbal nouns as a single grammatical unit, because it is not possible to identify a verbal noun solely on the basis of its meaning.
