N -grams of grammatical functions and their significant order in the Japanese clause
Haruko Sanada · Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series 4, Current issues in linguistic theory · 2021
Abstract The present study investigates the statistically significant order of grammatical functions in Japanese clauses by employing n -gram frequency data of grammatical functions. There are broad rules for the order of grammatical functions, though Japanese is an agglutinative SOV language and complements can be elliptic. I conclude that the time and the place appear between the subject and object with statistical significance. The occasion takes a position before the subject, between the subject and object, or after the object. Therefore, the occasion shows that Japanese is a free word order language. The subject and object play the role of ‘anchors’ in the clause. By using the ‘two-sample test for equality of proportions without continuity correction data’, the study introduces a descriptive verification method of implicit speaker-hearer knowledge.