Research On Modern Japanese Adjectives Based On Valence Theory

This paper uses Valence Theory to examine the coordination valence of modern Japanese adjectives, the syntactical structure and the meaning of its case-element. This paper is divided into five parts.Chapter 1 is the introduction part. This chapter proposes the research objective and research purpose, introduces the relevant concepts and existing studies of valence grammar, and groups modern Japanese adjectives into three categories: attributive adjectives, evaluative adjectives and state adjectives.Chapter 2 explores state adjectives by using Valence Theory. According to the subjectivity and objectivity of meanings, state adjectives can be divided into objective-state adjectives and subjective-state adjectives. An objective state adjective needs state subject and state receiver as its own cases and it belongs to bivalent adjective. Its basic syntactical structure is as follows "N1 ガ+ N2 ニ/ト+A". Subjective-state adjectives can also be classified into sensorial adjectives and emotional adjectives. Among them, sensorial adjectives are mostly univalent adjectives with a basic syntactical structure of "N1 ガ+A", while emotional adjectives are bivalent adjectives with a basic syntactical structure of "N1 ガ+ N2 ガ+A". Subjective-state adjectives(sensorial and emotional adjectives) all require the state subject to have a meaning of a person, usually in the first person.Chapter 3 studies attributive adjectives by using Valence Theory. Attributive adjectives directly describe the nature, state, action and other objective attributes or states of people or things. An attributive adjective only needs a nominal composition as its case and belongs to univalent adjective. It’s basic syntactical structure is "Nガ+A". Attributive adjectives can be further divided into 20 sub-categories, and requires the state subject to have a meaning of a thing.Chapter 4 discusses evaluative adjectives by using Valence Theory. Evaluative adjectives are used to express the evaluations and views of the speaker on a certain thing or object. An evaluative adjective only needs a nominal composition as its case and also belongs to univalent adjective. It has a basic syntactical structure of "N ガ+A". Evaluative adjectives have few limits on the attached nominal composition and the nominal composition can be a thing, an event or a person.Chapter 5 is the conclusion part, which summarizes the conclusions and points out future research topics.