A Study of the Bump Alternation in Japanese from the Perspective of Extended/Onset Causation

This paper deals with a seldom studied object/oblique alternation phenomenon in Japanese, which. We call this the bump alternation. This phenomenon, first discussed by Sadanobu (1990), is similar to the English with/against alternation. For example, compare hit the wall with the bat [=immobile-as-direct-object frame] to hit the bat against the wall [=mobile-asdirect-object frame]). However, in the Japanese version, the case frame remains constant. Although we fundamentally question Sadanobu’s acceptability judgment, we also claim that the causation type (i.e., whether the event is an instance of onset or extended causation; Talmy, 1988; 2000) could make an improvement. An extended causative interpretation could improve the acceptability of the otherwise awkward immobile-as-direct-object frame. We examined this claim through a rating study, and the results showed an interaction between the Causation type (extended/onset) and the Object type (mobile/immobile) in the direction we predicted. We propose that a perspective shift on what is moving causes the “extended causation” advantage.