Case in Japanese by Harvey M. TaylorReview by: John J. Chew, Jr.The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1977), pp. 73-76Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489490 .

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BOOK REVIEWS: LINGUISTICS

CASE IN JAPANESE, by Harvey M. Taylor. South Orange, New Jersey: Seton Hall University Press, 1971. XXV and 494pp. $10.00. Paperback.

Reviewed by JOHN J. CHEW, JR.

University of Toronto

To quote from the foreword: "Recent generative grammars, including some of Japanese, have been open to the criticism that they are only "grammar-ettes", treating just a limited portion of the syntax of a

language. It is realized that the description of case given here similarly treats a limited set of Japanese syntactic phenomena, and that certain other parts of the syntax . . . are only very incompletely covered; thus this work also can be faulted as being just another

grammar-ette."

But what a grammar-ette! Taylor's book is slightly over 500 pages long. And although as Taylor himself has said, one cannot discuss case without "some reference to the major phenomena of the language, as reflected in the

phrase structure rules", the fact is that the bulk of the book is devoted to case itself.

Though Taylor's book has the dimensions of a reference

grammar, it actually presents a series of ordered arguments, which means that it must be read from beginning to end to be understood, although one can start with Chapter Five if one is familiar with the subject in the first place. Since the book is not written in plain language, but rather in technical jargon, and what is more, with a large number of

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BOOK REVIEWS: CHEW

abbreviations, many of which are apparently the author's inventions, the reader is advised to make a list of terms and abbreviations as he encounters them (the list can be used as a bookmark), so that he can quickly refresh his

memory on those numerous occasions when he will have

forgotten what the term and especially the abbreviation refers to. It would be awfully nice if the book had been provided with an index.

To quote further from the foreword: "This work has two interrelated goals: (1) Primarily, the presentation of an analysis of predicate-related case phenomena in

Japanese using a model which not only describes but also

explains the interrelationships between case relationships and case markers. (2) Secondarily, an illustration of the

application to Japanese of a generative linguistic model

having narrowly restricted power; this model shifts power from the very powerful transformational component of other

generative models into the lexicon, and accounts for

generalizations by the use of redundancy rules referring to features within the matrices of lexical items. For

simplicity of reference, this model has been referred to as "lexicase" model."

In my judgement the theory which Taylor employs has enabled him to describe and explain the Japanese case

system. Taylor's approach involves the setting up of a

system of case relationships which are semantically based and which are reflected in the surface case markers of the language, but not on a one-to-one basis. The

recognition that a single case marker can represent different cases on different occasions and that, vice

versa, a single case can be represented by different case markers is crucial to the analysis. Taylor argues for the existence of ten case relationships in Japanese: agent, object, dative, instrument, time, location, direction, comitative, result, and manner. These are expressed by eight case-marker post-positions: ga, de, e, kara, made, ni, o, and to. The choice of the case-marker on any particular occasion is determined by redundancy rules associated with the lexical items in the relationship. On the basis of these redundancy rules Taylor is able to establish classes of nouns, and particularly of verbs, which in this reviewer's opinion is the major contribution of Taylor's work to our understanding of Japanese structure.

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BOOK REVIEWS: CHEW

Without wishing to detract from the value of Taylor's book I would be less than honest if I were to say that it is an easy book to read. Quite the opposite. The jargon in which it is written (and for which Taylor is hardly responsible) makes it slow going at best. Nor is it in

my opinion a case of plain language being inadequate to the task. The jargon is not only unreadable, it also--to me at least--highly unesthetic. I give one example (though almost every page in the book could supply them) to make my point. From the top of p. 254:

4.2.8.3. Four V inflections may occur in

Japanese independent S's. These four are the realizations of the features [+indic] (indica- tive), [+perf] (perfective), [+imper] (impera- tive), and [+presum] (presumptive), i.e., V-ru, V-ta, V-e, and V-yoo, respectively. (The names for the first three inflections appear in Jorden 1963:360-1; that of the fourth is from Miller 1967 1967:333.)

Redundancy rule VRR 1 in 4.2.7.0 marks [+imper] and [+presum] matrices with the feature [+fin] ([+finite] and [-finite]). On the basis of these finiteness features, SER's 1 and 2 below

prohibit any occurrence of a [+fin] item in an embedded S and require that only [+fin] items occur in independent S's. The result is that [+fin, +imper] (V-e), [+fin, +presum] (V-yoo), [+fin, +indic] (V-ru), and [+fin, +perf] (V-ta)

occur in embedded S's.

VRR 1 has the shape: +V

[+imper] [+finite] [+presum]

SER 1 has the shape: M[-fin]M M[+ [+fin]]M

SER 2 has the shape: M[+fin]M M[- [+fin]]M

What all this means in plain language is that non-past and past tense verb forms (V-ru and V-ta) may occur in both embedded and independent sentences, but that impera- tives and presumptives (V-e and V-yoo) may only occur in

independent sentences. I doubt that Taylor would have

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BOOK REVIEWS: CHEW

failed to convey any important information by using plain language. But the book would have been only half as long, and it would have been able to reach a larger audience.

There are times when it appears to me as if Taylor has forced the data into the categories provided by current case theory, times when the data appear uncomfortable in their slots. For example the justification for treating both ni and kara as dative (p. 412), or tame ni as manner

(p. 411) seems weak to me. One cannot help feeling that

categories are being forced on the language from without.

Many questions arose in my mind while reading the book which might have found answers had there been an index. For example, what case does to express in to onazi or to tigau or to hitosii? What of duration and extent as in sanzikan hataraita or sankiro aruita? I never did find out what Taylor does with expressions like these, if

anything.

To end this review on a positive note, Taylor has

obviously put a lot of thought into his book. It will not fail to stimulate the serious reader. And no book

dealing with case in Japanese in the future will be able to ignore this work.

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