Closed and open classes in Natlangs (Especially Japanese)
Posted: 07 Apr 2014 22:10
As we probably all know, in basically all languages word classes are either closed or open. Closed classes cannot take any new members (or at least have very large resistance to gaining new members), and usually are small classes of words like function words (for example, prepositions in PIE languages).
I bring this up for the odd case that is Japanese. In Japanese, verbs are closed--they have heavy resistance to taking new members whereas nouns are open. For instance, during the time where Japanese took a GIGANTIC amount of Chinese loans, literally hundreds to thousands of words, the amount of verbs they borrowed was almost nil. What the Japanese did was take Chinese nouns, and then use them with the verb suru "to do"; for instance, benkyō "study" can form the "suru verb" benkyō suru meaning "to study". Despite all these loans, the Japanese verbs resisted any new members. Other evidence for this is that almost no verbs in Japanese have /Cj/ clusters, which came from Chinese loans. Japanese also highly resisted adding new stative/adjective verbs, which end in -i. Any new adjectives were just nouns used with naru "to be" which was just shortened to "na".
However, I have seen, interestingly enough, some new verbs in Japanese coined in recent years that break this. For instance, there's a verb romuru, common enough to show up in dictionaries, that means "to browse an imageboard as a Read-Only-Member". This was formed from taking the abbreviation "ROM" and adding the suffix -ru, which ends a set of Japanese verbs (taberu "to eat" neru "to sleep"). However, -ru is not a verbalizing suffix in Japanese. Japanese has NO verbalizing suffixes, yet I ended up seeing this word, which conjugates like any normal verb; romuranai (negative), romutta (past), romuranakatta (negative past)....
A few days later, I saw the adjective eroi "sexy, erotic", from "ero", an obvious shortening of "erotic". -i was just added--but -i isn't a derivational suffix in Japanese. This also conjugates like normal adjectival verbs; erokunai (negative), for instance.
So, I made this thread to ask; are closed-classes in natlangs not perfectly "watertight"? Could this be a possible indicator of Japanese verbs becoming open class or at least more receptive to new members? Are there any precendences for closed-classes gaining new members regardless (I think English <they> is one)?
I bring this up for the odd case that is Japanese. In Japanese, verbs are closed--they have heavy resistance to taking new members whereas nouns are open. For instance, during the time where Japanese took a GIGANTIC amount of Chinese loans, literally hundreds to thousands of words, the amount of verbs they borrowed was almost nil. What the Japanese did was take Chinese nouns, and then use them with the verb suru "to do"; for instance, benkyō "study" can form the "suru verb" benkyō suru meaning "to study". Despite all these loans, the Japanese verbs resisted any new members. Other evidence for this is that almost no verbs in Japanese have /Cj/ clusters, which came from Chinese loans. Japanese also highly resisted adding new stative/adjective verbs, which end in -i. Any new adjectives were just nouns used with naru "to be" which was just shortened to "na".
However, I have seen, interestingly enough, some new verbs in Japanese coined in recent years that break this. For instance, there's a verb romuru, common enough to show up in dictionaries, that means "to browse an imageboard as a Read-Only-Member". This was formed from taking the abbreviation "ROM" and adding the suffix -ru, which ends a set of Japanese verbs (taberu "to eat" neru "to sleep"). However, -ru is not a verbalizing suffix in Japanese. Japanese has NO verbalizing suffixes, yet I ended up seeing this word, which conjugates like any normal verb; romuranai (negative), romutta (past), romuranakatta (negative past)....
A few days later, I saw the adjective eroi "sexy, erotic", from "ero", an obvious shortening of "erotic". -i was just added--but -i isn't a derivational suffix in Japanese. This also conjugates like normal adjectival verbs; erokunai (negative), for instance.
So, I made this thread to ask; are closed-classes in natlangs not perfectly "watertight"? Could this be a possible indicator of Japanese verbs becoming open class or at least more receptive to new members? Are there any precendences for closed-classes gaining new members regardless (I think English <they> is one)?