In Japanese language, some transitive verbs, such as
kiru ‘cut’ and
yogosu ‘make dirty’ are paired with morphologically and semantically corresponding intransitive ones, such as
kireru ‘be parted’ and
yogoreru ‘become dirty’, but others, such as
tataku ‘beat’ and
yomu ‘read’, are not. Is it an unpredictable matter depending on an individual transitive verb whether it is paired with an intransitive one or not? The purpose of this paper is to show that it is not and to propose that there is the semantic difference between paired and unpaired transitive verbs: in general, the former describe the event focussing on the result of an agent's action, and the latter describe the event focussing on the process of an agent's action.
抄録全体を表示