The Noun Class in Japanese: Morphosyntactic and Semantic Properties

In Japanese linguistics, the old class of nouns has attracted much less interest than the other major lexical categories, the adjectives and the verbs, which have been more frequently described. This study aims to identify the morphosyntactic properties of Japanese nouns, and argues that, in order to categorize linguistic units, one must take into account two syntactic parameters—the ability to govern and the ability to be governed. From a semantic point of view, the noun class is heterogeneous, as it includes sub-categories, such as pronouns or quantifiers, which differ a lot from prototypical nouns. This corpus-based analysis shows that some indefinite constructions are in a phase of lexicalization: they are about to gain nominal properties and to constitute a new nominal subclass. The noun class is syntactically quite homogeneous, but there is a gray area between nouns and conjunctive particles. “Formal” nouns, that is, nouns that have no referential autonomy or real meaning, fall within this gray area. These nouns are particularly interesting because they realize a form of categorial and also semantic “transfer”.