Abstract
The existential and possessive sentences in Japanese are analyzed under the concept-construction interface. It consists of three parts. The first part discusses the conceptual meaning of the concept of existence and the concept of possession. The second part discusses the constructional meaning of the basic construction used to express the concept of existence and possession in Japanese. The third part analyzes the interaction between the conceptual meaning and the constructional meaning in Japanese iru possessive sentence on the concept-construction interface. The main conclusion is that the concept of possession is a kind of non-processual relation, in which the possessee must be virtual. The concept of existence is a process of temporality, in which the existing entity can be either virtual or actual. In Japanese, the sentence pattern with inconsistent conceptual meaning and constructional meaning is iru possessive sentence, whose conceptual meaning is possession and constructional meaning is existence. However, in the process of fusion, the possessor and the possessee in Japanese iru possessive sentence get similar prominence.
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How to cite this paper
Existence and Possession in Japanese
How to cite this paper: Ruijia Zhang. (2023) Existence and Possession in Japanese. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 7(4), 837-841.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.04.030