This study presents a contrastive analysis of the use of dimensional adjectives in Spanish and Japanese, based on an examination of phrases containing Spanish alto and Japanese takai (both meaning ‘tall’ in English) in a translation corpus. The goal of the analysis is to determine how these two languages disambiguate polysemous adjectives when a dimensional meaning is intended. The results suggest that Japanese uses grammatical modification and descriptive strategies that are absent from Spanish: for example, the use of a double subject sentence structure in kanojo wa se ga takai (N.she TOPIC N.height NOM ADJ.tall; ‘She is tall’). The equivalent without the case supplement kanojo wa takai (N.she TOPIC ADJ.tall) instead means ‘she is expensive,’ indicating that both associated nouns and the properties of the case supplement help to disambiguate senses. However, such a structure is not required in Spanish alto, as is clear when comparing Ella es alta (3.SG.she V.IND.3.SG.PRS.be ADJ.tall. ‘She is tall’) with *ella tiene estatura alta (3.SG.she V.IND.3.SG.PRS.have N.height ADJ.tall). We conclude that, while Japanese uses grammatical structure to disambiguate polysemous adjectives, Spanish uses modification strategies to distinguish between meanings.
次元形容詞はどんなときに使われるか : 日本語とスペイン語の対照研究
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概要
