Japanese/Korean Linguistics

Western Old Japanese is notable for the formal diversity of its adjectival modification constructions. While past literature has identified the extent of this diversity, there is a paucity of research uncovering its underlying mechanisms. This study aims to address this research gap using a corpus-driven methodology with data from the Oxford-NINJAL Corpus of Old Japanese. It finds that the formally diverse adjectival modification constructions of Western Old Japanese can be placed into two groups based on how they exhibit parallels in their structural (i.e., morphosyntactic) and functional (i.e., semanticopragmatic) properties. This finding has potential implications for comparative research concerning the Japonic relatives of Western Old Japanese.