INVESTIGATING THE DEFINITENESS EFFECT IN CHINESE AND JAPANESE

Back to Page Authors: Ruijia Zhang

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Keywords: definiteness effect, existence, possession, you sentences

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Abstract: It is well-known that in some existential constructions like English there sentences, the post-verbal noun phrases must be indefinite. Restriction of this kind is termed “definiteness effect (DE)”. Similar phenomenon can also been observed in Chinese existential you sentences, for example: zuo-shang you yiben shu/*neiben shu. (There is a book/*that book on the table). However in Japanese existential sentences there is no such restriction, for example: heya-ni hito/taro-ga iru. (There is a person/taro in the room). Here arises the question that why DE show up in Chinese existential sentences but not in Japanese ones. So far no account has been able to explain the reason of the distiction. This paper argued it is due to the different kind of constructions that used to express existence in Chinese and Japanese. In Chinese existence is expressed by a construction which is basically possessive in nature (you construction), while in Japanese it is a construction which is basically existential in nature (iru/aru construction). Different from existence, possessed has to be indefinite in a possessive relationship semantically, which is in fact the restriction called DE. So it is reasonable that a possessive construction would also obey the DE just like the case in Chinese existential sentences. By contrast, existential relationship has no such restriction, so a existential construction, like Japanese iru/aru construction, has no need to obey the DE.

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