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【10月9日（金）開催】Kobe Linguistics Colloquiumのお知らせ

2026.09.24

10月9日（金）の13時30分から、以下の要領で、Kobe Linguistics Colloquiumを開催いたします。どなたでも参加可能ですので、ふるってご参加ください。プログラムはこちら。

(Kobe Linguistics Colloquium will be held on Friday, October 9, starting at 1:30 p.m., as outlined below. The event is open to everyone, so please feel free to attend.)

Date: October 9th (Fri), 2026
Time: 13:30~17:00
Place: Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University, Building C 5F, C561 (Large Conference Room)
　　　https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/guid/access/rokko/rokkodai-dai2.html


Talk１: 13:30-14:30

Osamu Sawada (Kobe University)
“Scalarity and polarity of the Japanese ambiguous negative comparative expression kurabe mono-ni nara-nai ‘cannot be compared’”

The Japanese comparative expression kurabe mono-ni nara-nai ‘cannot be compared’ has some characteristics that ordinary comparatives lack. First, its meaning is ambiguous in terms of whether the subject x is much higher than the object y or whether x is much lower than y in terms of scale. Second, it always appears with negation. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretation can be derived from the interaction with negation and the notion of category, and that the polarity sensitivity of the expression is due to its interaction with the maxim of quantity (Grice 1975) and the notion of informativeness. I will also compare the Japanese data to some related expressions in Chinese, English, and Japanese and discuss their similarities and differences. This paper shows that there is a new type of comparative, context-dependent comparison in natural language whose relative relationship is not linguistically encoded explicitly.

Talk 2: 14:40-15:40

Hideki Kishimoto (Kobe University)
“On the grammaticalization of necessity modal expressions in present-day Japanese”

In Japanese, modal expressions generally have complex forms morphologically (cf. Kaufmann and Tamura 2020). Necessity modal expressions can be of “strong necessity” type or of “weak necessity” type. and are also divided into two types according to whether they are constructed on verbs or nouns. In this presentation, I will examine a number of necessity modal expressions and show that they involve different kinds/degrees of grammaticalization. In Japanese, strong necessity is expressed in the form of double negation, i.e. with the form indicating that the negated proposition cannot be true. It is shown that strong necessity modal expressions generally have undergone auxiliation (Kuteva 2001), as well as a process of fusion (Bybee 1997) if they are verb-based expressions (e.g. ‘ne-ba naranai‘ ‘must’). Strong necessity modal expressions involve only auxiliation if they are noun-based expressions (e.g. ‘nai hazu-ga nai‘ ‘ought to’). Most weak necessity modal expressions are noun-based and are derived from either copular constructions or existential constructions. It is shown that weak necessity modal expressions (e.g. ‘hituyoo-ga aru‘ ‘necessary’, ‘hazu-da‘ ‘should’) have different degrees of auxiliation. I also suggest that Japanese has a weak necessity expression (i.e. ‘beki-da‘ ‘should’) where a category change is in progress.

Talk 3: 15:50-17:00

Andreas Trotzke (University of Zurich)
“The social turn in syntactic theory”

Recent work in formal syntax-semantics has developed elaborated frameworks for analyzing social meaning components such as ‘commitment’ or ‘politeness’, also exploring in great detail how the relation between speaker and addressee is instantiated in the morphosyntax across languages. I present a new approach in this context, which builds on the sociolinguistic concept of the weightiness of a face-threatening act. Based on a discussion of particle elements that occur low in the structure, but nevertheless scope over the whole utterance, I turn to exceptional uses of 2nd person pronouns. In particular, these new data suggest that there is a position in the left periphery that carries sociolinguistic information only.

This event is supported by the Institute for the Promotion of Humanities Research, Kobe University.