Grammaticalization in Japanese and the Trans-Eurasian languages.

This research project aims to contribute to ongoing research on grammaticalization, with a special emphasis on the development of verbal morphology. The languages included in this study are the so-called Transeurasian languages, a group of about 75 geographically adjacent languages consisting of Japanese, Korean, the Tungusic languages, the Mongolic languages and the Turkic languages. The study addresses the longstanding question of genealogical relationship among these languages. In particular, the following three issues are addressed: 1. The grammaticalization pathway of the participle - the most important and probably also most ancient verbal form in Transeurasian - from adnominal subordination to argument subordination to sentence-final predication. 2. Processes of cyclic grammaticalization in the renewal of verbal morphology, whereby morphological items are replaced by new periphrastic constructions that again develop into morphological expressions. 3. Clausal integration as grammaticalization (the paratactic> hypotactic> subordination cline) against the diachronic development of converbs in the Transeurasian languages.

Keywords:Trans-Eurasian Languages, Japanese

Disciplines:Theory and methodology of literary studies