出版物 ｜Sophia Linguistica
江連和章
Event Cancellation in Japanese and English -Toward an Analysis Based on Causal Chain Structure-
This paper deals with the phenomena of event cancellation (EC) in English and Japanese and shows the proper direction toward an explicit analysis based on causal chain structure of events. In particular, two problematic properties EC shows are to be tackled: (1) the different crosslinguistic behavior in English and Japanese; that is, in general, EC tends to be allowed in Japanese, but not in English, and (2) the volitionality constraint; EC could be acceptable only when the event to be cancelled is an action done by a volitional agent. Toward a comprehensive account of these two properties, the paper proposes an extended version of Croft’s (1991, 2012) theory of forcedynamic event structure. Based on his model of causal chain, it is argued that two significant ideas related to volition should be incorporated, both of which are given as psychologically real semantic notions by Talmy (2000): the notions of psychodynamics and agent’s scope of intention. It is shown that this enriched theory of force dynamics could provide a comprehensive analysis of those two properties mentioned above, which is necessary to elucidate the EC phenomena.
