A comparative study on Japanese and Chinese NMCs: A semantic and discourse approach

Abstract

Japanese and Chinese differ typologically in word order (Japanese is SOV; Chinese is SVO), yet Japanese and Chinese Noun Modifying Constructions (NMCs hereafter) share a number of characteristics. Many studies (Aoun and Li 1993, Del Gobbo2007, etc.) have proposed that although Japanese and Chinese NMCs share the basic word order, they differ significantly in terms of syntax. We question the validity of these conclusions. In contrast to the syntactic observation of previous studies, the corpus data (Leeds Chinese internet Corpus) we examined indicate that Japanese and Chinese NMCs share similar pragmatic principles and acceptability evidencing a certain similarity.