Chapter 6. The final-appendage construction in Japanese and Korean

Abstract

Japanese and Korean are both predicate-final (OV) languages with relatively flexible constituent order. However, our analysis of parallel texts (Japanese novels and their Korean translations) demonstrates that the two languages differ in the exploitability of post-predicative position. Korean has a much lower frequency of final-appendage structures with clause-internal elements (especially adnominals and subject nominals) less likely to occur in post-predicative position. On the other hand, Korean shows a relatively higher proportion of vocative phrases in post-predicative position despite a lower frequency of final-appendage structures. The results reveal that Japanese exhibits a relatively higher degree of constructional entrenchment of final-appendage structures. In contrast, post-predicative position in Korean is rather restrictive, more limited to clause-external elements than to clause-internal ones.