ah markings are found in genealogically unrelated languages; see e.g., (Souletin) Basque (Isolate, Oyharçabal 1993; Haddican 2018), Thai (Tai-Kadai, McCready 2014), Tamil (Dravidian, McFadden 2017), Punjabi (Indo-European, Kaur 2017), Magahi (Indo-European, Alok 2021), Korean (Koreanic, Pak 2008; Portner et al. 2019) and Japanese (Japonic, Harada 1976; Miyagawa 2017; Yamada 2019c).

More accurately, they analyze c and SentMood as being fused and supnita as the spellout of the complex head.

To be more precise, -mas is pronounced in a position between an aspectual marker and negation marker:

(i)

Two comments are in order. First, some may wish to propose a new functional projection in place of Σ, but the subsequent discussion does not hinge on the choice of a functional projection, as long as it is located somewhere between V and T. Second, in (6)b, an interpretable feature is in a higher c-commanding probe, and the uninterpretable feature is located in a lower projection in ΣP, which is an assumption different from that in Chomsky (2000; 2001). However, in later studies, the valuation and interpretability are considered two independent properties (Pesetsky & Torrego 2007). Under this view, the honorific feature in Σ is unvalued when externally-merged. Alternatively, one can assume that an Agr-node with a feature is post-syntactically introduced when c-commanded by a triggering feature (Kramer 2009; 2010; Norris 2014; Baier 2015). The analysis of Yamada (2019c) in (6)b adopts the latter strategy.

Although non-contracted examples of ku are rarer (when compared with de) — this is why I put a question mark in (10)b — there are few cases where the contraction is unaccepted. First, with beki ‘should,’ the non-contracted form is obligatory:

(i)

As in (ii), the -u preceded by a non-contracted form does not alternate with -ta. Thus, it is likely that the contraction is sensitive to the position where the ar-support takes place (i.e., whether it is in T or not).

(ii)

Second, the contraction is prohibited with -mas-en:

(iii)

For gozar-, see Section 2.3.1.

As for nouns and nominal adjectives, gozai-mas can also be used to encode the highest level of politeness; hence, three honorific levels are clearly identified. Based on this observation, Mikami (1959 [2002]: 157) convincingly argues that the canonical adjective lacks the intermediate polite meaning.

When the negation marker is adjacent to -mas, -nak (-nai is its allomorph) changes its from to -en (Yamada 2019c).

In contrast, such an ar-support is not obtained with a present tense marker. The so-called present tense marker -u does not seem to be a genuine tense suffix, but it is more reasonable to see it as a postsyntactically inserted vowel (Yamada 2019a; 2020). By seeing that the stranded affix filter is only applicable to the suffix present in the narrow syntax, we can explain the absence of the ar-support in (18).

Technical analysis of how it concords with -mas does not affect the subsequent discussions (for an attempt at a detailed analysis, see Yamada 2019c; 2020); for our purposes, it suffices to state that there is a concord between the two positions.

In most cases, a focus particle -wa in inserted to mark the scope of the negation.

Nowadays, some (young) people use Grammar 2 even in a formal context, and the boundary is quite complex.

This also applies to des- (concord):

(i)

The sentences sound more natural when the nominative marker -ga is replaced by -wa, the focus particle. However, for expository purposes, the current paper uses a sentence with a nominative subject.

Some native speakers (especially people in older generations) may not like the examples in (27) through (31), because they sound too casual. But in younger generations, some speakers who do use (27), (28), (29), and (31) find (30) too colloquial to use, with a nuance of the speaker’s being jokey or deliberately cutesy/childish. A possible reason for this may have to do with the fact that a verb is the only part-of-speech that requires -mas, but not des-, in Grammar 1. The strong connection with -mas may have a negative ‘carry-over’ effect in Grammar 2, to the extent that people are less comfortable using a verb with des- particularly in formal situations, so they are limited in very casual registers. Marked as they are, it remains true that they are produced in a daily conversation, so following the literature (Ogawa et al. 2020), this paper takes the widest scope treating examples found in casual registers as also reflecting the mental grammar of contemporary Japanese native speakers.

Source: https://twitter.com/mmm_drama/status/872447904169943041?lang=fr.

Source: https://www.hotpepper.jp/strJ001194986/report/detail_om0001452178_rn20180611A00066/.

Source: https://www.city.yonago.lg.jp/item/45473.htm.

This is because of the ambiguous status of -u. In Grammar 1 (e.g., the sentence in (i)), the -u is analyzed as a non-past (present tense) marker, because it triggers an ar-support. In contrast, in Grammar 2 sentence like (ii), -u is considered a vowel inserted only for phonological purposes.

(i)

On the one hand, if -u is analyzed as a tense marker, the sentence in (32) is seen as an instance of des- (low). On the other hand, if it is seen as an epenthetic vowel, the same sentence can be seen as an instance of des- (high).

Looking at the CHJ, we can find some examples of the gozar-, even in the government-designed textbook published in 1947. This paper, however, maintains that the ‘gap’ did exist in Grammar 1, as has been proposed in the literature. First, the apparent counter-examples in CHJ turn out to be examples from sections designed to familiarize students with old Japanese cultures (e.g., to learn Kyoogen texts, which were written in early Edo period Japanese); hence, such examples are not representative of twentieth-century Japanese. Second, if gozar- had been used in the twentieth century, linguists should have mentioned as such, which is convincingly denied by the survey of Kawaguchi (2014). Finally, previous studies examining the history of gozar- have revealed that after it had obtained the use of an AH marking, it underwent several morphosyntactic/semantic changes in the Edo period, before eventually being only observed in the fossilized grammatical context (namely, the gozai-mas- construction). Of course, why the gozar-based system became obsolete is another important question. However, I leave this issue to future research, because the change took place during a different historical period.

A reviewer asks how the sentence in (35)b is generated in Grammar 1. One possible analysis is that the no is a nominalizer/complementizer making a nominal clause:

(i)

This is consistent with several observations. First, no clauses can receive a case marker, just like a noun:

(ii)

Second, the preceding element takes the adnominal form (the form for a relative clause):

(iii)

Third, notice that the English translation is given ‘it is [ that … ].’ Since the subordinate marker that introduces a clause appearing in an argument position, it is no wonder why the corresponding no introduces as a noun clause.

In contemporary Japanese, the form in (37)a can no longer encode an epistemic meaning, but nonetheless, the form hasir-oo has continued to be used to encode the volitionality of the subject; to put it another way, in the old days, the form in (37)a was ambiguous between the volitional reading and epistemic reading, just like the English work will.

The y in yoo is not an inserted consonant. I use the Cabinet-ordered romanization system, in which [∫] is expressed as a combination of s and y as in des-yoo. Under the IPA system, however, it is expressed as [des-o:] > [de∫o:]. So what looks like an allomorph of oo is in fact a phonological change in des.

For representational purposes, I use Epi(stemic)P à la Cinque (1999) for presentational purposes, but the choice of this label does not affect the analysis of this paper.

To be more precise, Nishiyama (1997; 1999) assumes that the dummy element is the head of VP (cf., Miyama 2011; Watanabe 2013), whereas in (45), the ar- is analyzed as a post-syntactically inserted supporting element. However, this difference does not make any significant differences to the subsequent discussions.

Given that the pattern in the plain form is well-organized, we do not have motivation for analyzing dar and kar as a single fused form, and I assume that the fusion is applied when there is an honorific feature in Pred.

A reviewer asks what would happen if we dispensed with the morphological merger, proposing (i)a or (i)b.

(i)

Unfortunately, these analyses run into an empirical problem: a focus particle can be introduced between de and ar for the de ar-sentence, as in (ii)a, indicating that a focus particle can select a PredP. The structures in (i) predict (ii)b and (ii)c, contrary to the fact.

(ii)

In Adger (2003), the c-selection is done via checking. However, the choice between checking and agreement is rather conceptual, and does not result in a significant change in the subsequent discussion.

For the ease of illustration, I adopt the bracket notation in place of the set notation. The number used in the value slot is intended to capture the scopal hierarchies (i.e., the Hierarchies of Projection, HoPs), and constrains the distribution of the features. For instance, ⟨ca, 1⟩ and ⟨Pred, 2⟩ ensure that Pred appears in a position higher than the CA in the structure (Adger 2010: 198).

For limited space, the current paper only presents examples of past-tense sentences. However, our analysis can explain the data in the present tense (e.g., de ar-u and des-u), if the following rule is added to the list in (62): T_[pst:–] ↔ u. A potential problem that has been acknowledged by the previous literature is the treatment of i that appears in the non-polite, present-tense canonical adjective, as shown below (Nishiyama 1997; 1999). Note that this is not a vowel harmony: even if the root does not end with i (e.g., omosiro ‘funny’), it is pronounced i.

(i)

The status of this i can be analyzed in different ways. One can see it as an allomorph of u ‘prs.’ Under this view, it remains unclear why it does not trigger an ar-support, as in ku ar-u. Nishiyama (1999) tries to answer this question by proposing that that “present tense does not require an overt form of the (dummy) copula (ibid.: 191–192).” This explanation raises a deeper question of why a dummy copula tends to disappear cross-linguistically, and why there is a split in Japanese between u and i.

An alternative is to see it as an allomorph of k(u) ‘pred.’ By seeing k as the real morpheme and u as an epenthetic vowel, this line of thinking seems plausible with an additional rule such that k → i. Under this view, we assume a silent tense morpheme at T, and the absence of a dummy copula is easily derived; since ∅ is silent, it does not need substance to which it attaches. This analysis, too, is not without problems. For example, the choice of T (u and ∅) must be sensitive to the phrase to which Pred is merged with. However, T and CA/NA are not in a sister node relation, so we need to devise a mechanism as to how this works.

The current paper does not have a good solution to the problem of this morpheme, either, leaving this issue to future research, but it is not likely that a treatment of this morpheme will substantially change our main analysis.

The sequence de ar-u can be contracted to da, as shown below. So, one may wish to propose an additional fusion rule ([[Pr e d i [AH:–] dummy] T [PST:–] ]→#Pre d i [AH:+] dummy] T [PST:–] #) \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage[substack]{amsmath} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage[mathscr]{eucal} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \[([[{\rm Pr}\, {\rm ed}_i^{[{\rm AH}:-]}\,\,dummy]\,\,{{\rm T}_{[{\rm PST}:-]}}] \to \#\, {\rm Pr}\, {\rm ed}_i^{[{\rm AH}: + ]}\,\,dummy]\,\,{{\rm T}_{[{\rm PST}-]}}\,\,\#)\] \end{document} and a vocabulary insertion rule (Pr e d i [AH:+] +dummy+ T [PST:–] ↔da) \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage[substack]{amsmath} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage[mathscr]{eucal} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \[({\rm Pr}\, {\rm ed}_i^{[{\rm AH}: + ]} + dummy + {{\rm T}_{[{\rm PST}:-]}} \leftrightarrow da)\] \end{document} .

(i)

But this analysis is empirically challenged; this morpheme cannot be embedded in a relative clause, as in (ii) although it can be embedded in a quotative and an interrogative clause (= (iii) and (iv)).

(ii)

Therefore, we must make the vocabulary insertion rule sensitive to the status of it being in a relative clause. Two analyses seem plausible. The first is to assume an agreement between C_[Rel:+] and T (or Pred), and use the rule in (vi). Another is to assume a further morphological merger, making the c and Pred, dummy, and T within the same terminal node when there is C_[Rel:+]: with the rule in (vi), this analysis works, as desired.

(v)

Admittedly, the current paper does not have any further data to show which is better, leaving this problem to future research. However, in either way, the rules in (62) remain intact and the analysis of da does not affect analysis of the historical development of des-.

In addition to a verb, some auxiliaries are followed by -mas, but not by des-. For example, consider the example in (i)b, where the passive auxiliary is attached to the verb.

(i)

However, Japanese auxiliaries are, in fact, constituted by miscellaneous elements, and there are ‘auxiliaries’ that are used with des-, such as hazu ‘should’ and yoo ‘seems’:

(ii)

These expressions differ from (r)are-type auxiliaries in three important ways. First, unlike -(r)are in (i)b, they can be preceded not only by verbs, but also by adjectives and nouns; n.b., *siawase-rare ‘happy-pass.’ Second, etymologically, these expressions used to be nouns referring to a specific part of an arrow, and to a manner, respectively. Third, the copula preceding them takes the adnominal form na (the form for a relative clause), not da, (see also Footnote 21). With all these considerations into account, hazu and yoo are morphosyntactically ‘nouns’ (or ‘nounish auxiliaries’) being modified by a relative clause, despite their semantics which would be expressed by auxiliaries in English. In other words, only ‘verbish’ auxiliaries are used with -mas.

The rule in (70) has room for capturing this selectional restriction. Notice that the idea that categorical information can be further decomposed into more primitive features has been advocated since old days (e.g., Chomsky 1974; Stowell 1981: 21). If a primitive feature is shared by a verb and a verbal auxiliary, we can replace the “V” in (70) with that feature, and correctly capturing the distributional property of -mas. Although a full resolution awaits further work, it should be noted that at least as far as the rules for -mas restricted to verbs and auxiliaries (i.e., something ‘verbish’), the subsequent discussion is unaffected.

This chain reduction could be a side-effect of pursuing an economical grammatical architecture (Chomsky 2005), and the diachronic loss of Agree has been discussed in the literature (Roberts 2007: 123, 193). However, the detailed mechanism needs further elaboration in future research: since agreement applies before vocabulary insertion, one cannot tell (in advance) how the AH-feature is pronounced at the time when Agree is ready to apply, which appears to cause an ordering paradox.

(80) predicts that when des- can also be distributed in positions other than T/c. This prediction is borne out by a phrase-final particle construction. Japanese can put a particle in every phrase-boundary. When politely used, des is used with each phrase-final particle:

(i)

Considering the phrase-final particle (see Footnote 34), X_[ah:+] is more reasonable than c_[ah:+].

One could ask what other morphological rules are responsible for multiple grammars. Although this paper does not have a decisive answer, proposals for synchronic variations — such as probabilistic impoverishment rules (Nevins 2008; Nevins & Parrott 2010; Havenhill 2016) — are also other candidates that deserves our attention.

Apparently nai and utukusi i look similar regarding the conjugation (they both result in a sequence of k-at-ta), so one might wish to treat the sentence in (i)a as an instance of a canonical adjective in Grammar 2. But there is good reason to believe that this is not the case.

(i)

First, the corresponding sentence in Grammar 1 is given in (i)b, which is predicated by a noun. If one treated (i)a as a canonical adjective construction, it would follow that the sentence changes the sentence type depending on whether it is in Grammar 1 or not. Second, a canonical adjective takes the adverbial form when used in Grammar 1, as in (17), but nak in (i) does not. Note, however, that this does not mean that nai completely lacks the use of a canonical adjective. When used alone, that is, not being preceded by a PredP, it can be used as an adjective that means ‘absent.’ The nai in (i) is, thus, seen as a negation marker, and the one in (ii) as a canonical adjective. In the present study, I manually distinguished all the instances of nai, and exclude the former cases only; however, the frequency of such examples is less than five, and as a result, the remaining examples are ruled out based on an independent criterion.

(ii)

Each sentence of this corpus is provided with an annotation about the genre (textbooks, literature, and nonliterature) and the neighboring morphemes; based on this annotation scheme, the variables x1, x2, x4, and x5 are created. As for x3, the researcher manually annotated the information for all instances.

The textbook in this data set consists of government-designed textbooks on Japanese published from 1904 to 1947. Rather than explicitly teaching grammar rules, they comprise essays and writings for elementary school (the 1st to the sixth year) and the first year middle school students. Such censored writings are reasonably considered representing the prescriptive grammar at that time. The literature includes novels and essays written not for the purpose of promoting the prescriptive grammar, but for general purposes, reasonably seen as being sensitive to the use of day-to-day conversation. The non-literature genre consists of miscellaneous remaining categories (e.g., magazines).

One unexpected move is the ‘spike’ between 1897 and 1907, which may be attributed to the idiosyncrasies of the sampled texts. It could, however, be caused by a social movement: in those days, some novelists started writing novels in a colloquial register (aka the Genbun-Icchi movement, that is, the movement to unify the written and spoken forms of a language; Yamamoto 1971, Kamei et al. 1965: 184, Nomura 2013: 269). However, to convincingly prove the influence, finer-grained analysis would be necessary, which I would like to leave open to future research.

Although it does give us a natural interpretation, we need to be aware that the effect size of this variable is not as strong as the others. Furthermore, in terms of LOOIC and WAIC, the second best model in the model selection lacks this variable (see Figures 4 and 5). Thus too much emphasis on the difference would not be helpful; it is the least important among the four fixed-effects factors.

Even when we include x₅ and refit the model, the posterior median of the past tense shows a slightly negative value but the 95% credible interval includes 0.

Due to the limitation of the corpus used for this study which does not annotate the speaker of each instance, intraspeaker variations cannot be detected. With a fully annotated-corpus, future research is expected to improve the model by including the variable to such variations.