Experimental investigation

A simple experimental survey was carried out in order to test the hypothesis that WA and GA sentences have different semantics which seem to be inherent in the sense that these semantics are not discourse- induced.

5.2.3.1 Method

Ten noun phrases were prepared. On a page the ten noun phrases, all GA marked, were placed and numbered from one to ten; on another page ten identical noun phrases were arranged the same way except that these noun phrases were all WA marked. Eight native speakers of Japanese were asked to make complete sentences with each and every noun phrase. Instructions were given that sentences be natural, simplex (as opposed

to complex) and were to be used in isolation; as for the WA marked examples, the participants were specifically requested not to make negative sentences. This request was made so as to eliminate another function of WA as marking the scope of negation [McGloin (1976:390—7)], which would have interferred with the present analysis of thematic WA. The ten noun phrases used were as follows. (In the English transla­ tion, plurality and articles are dismissed due to the fact that Japanese normally does not overtly mark the two notions and that all

the ten noun phrases used were unmarked for such notions): 1) sakura no hana 'cherry blossom'

cherry GEN flower

2) tanomareta shigoto 'work which one was asked to do' asked(PAS) work

3) keeki o yaku nioi 'smell of someone baking a cake' cake ACC bake smell

4) kinjo no inu 'dog of the neighbourhood' neighbourhood GEN dog

5) Nihonjin kankookyaku 'Japanese tourist' Japanese tourist

6) Hookushushoo kantei 'Prime Minister Hawke's official Hawke P.M. official residence'

residence 7) magupai 'magpie' 8) watashi

I

no ichiban shitashii tomodachi 'my best friend' GEN most close friend

9) yuujin friend

ni karita hon 'book I borrowed from a friend' from borrowed book

10) Fujisan 'Mt. Fuji'

There are four noun phrases which can be interpreted as being definite description (although definiteness is not a grammatical category and is thus not marked in Japanese); they are 4), 6), 8) and 10). Noun phrases 2) and 9) may be interpreted either as definite or indefinite but they are more likely to be given a definite interpreta-

tion over an indefinite interpretation; 1), 3), 5) and 7) seem to yield either interpretation as easily as the other.

5.2.3.2 Results

There were altogether eighty GA sentences and eighty WA sentences made by the subjects. Whether or not a given sentence is scene- descriptive or qualifying was determined by testing whether it could take a time— specifying word such as kyoo * today* . kyonen'last year', asu'tomorrow' and so forth. As seen in (6) and (7), a qualifying sentence cannot semantically accommodate such time specifying words. The adverb itsumo * always'. which is not time-specifying but is frequency-specifying, on the other hand is likely to occur with qualifying sentences but not with scene-descriptive ones. Example (20) below is anomalous with it sumo * always' but not so with konshuu' this week'; whilst (21) behaves exactly the opposite. Therefore (20) is

determined as scene-descriptive and (21) as qualifying. (20) Sakura no hana GA *itsumo/konshuu hiraita.

cherry GEN flower NOM always this week opened up 'The cherry blossoms *always/this week have opened up.' (21) Sakura no hana WA itsumo/*kyoo sugu chiru.

TOP quickly fall

'The cherry blossoms always/*today quickly fall.'

Tested this way, the number of scene—descriptive sentences out of 80 GA subject sentences totalled 76; and that of qualifying sentences out of 80 WA subject sentences 63. See the table below:

TABLE 1

NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF GA MARKED SCENE-DESCRIPTIVE SENTENCES AND WA MARKED QUALIFYING SENTENCES

Scene-descriptive Qualifying GA sentences WA sentences

N o . 76 63

Percentage 90% 78.75%

The percentage of qualifying WA sentences is relatively smaller than that of scene-descriptive GA sentences. 20% of the WA sentences include scene-descriptive (including existential) sentences as in (22) and

(23), and non-subject NP WA as in (24) and (25)5: (22) Tanomareta shigoto WA kesa sunda.

asked work TOP this morning finished

'The work which I was asked to do was finished this morning.' (23) Yuujin ni karita hon WA koko ni aru.

friend from borrowed book TOP here at exist 'The book I borrowed from a friend is here.'

(24) Tanomareta shigoto WA sugu yaranai to ikenai. asked work TOP(ACC) quickly not do if not good 'One must swiftly do the work which one was asked to do.' (25) Tanomareta shigoto WA shikkari yaritogeyoo.

asked work TOP(ACC) properly let's complete

'Let's complete the work properly which we were asked to do.'

It is unclear why some WA sentences given in the responses were non­ qualifying; however, the result of the experiment did yield some reliable support for the proposed hypothesis of GA and WA sentences as predominantly denoting a scene and a quality respectively, particularly for GA sentences when the sentences are used in isolation. It can therefore be stated that our hypothesis is in basic accordance with native speakers' intuition.

It is also important to point out that what made the native speakers choose a certain predicate and thus produce a scene— descriptive or qualifying sentence in the experiment were the particles GA and WA themselves and no other factors. This indicates that the difference in the sentential types may be traced back to the notions expressed by GA and WA themselves; what these notions actually are will be discussed in Chapter 6.