BENEFACTIVE ADVERBIAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN JAPANESE: A COMPARISON WITH ENGLISH

Japanese has apparently peculiar expressions like Suteeki-o oisi-ku tabe-ta 'lit. (I) ate the steak tastily.' They exhibit several characteristic properties, a particularly puzzling one of which is the semantic restriction on the adverbial: it must denote a positive sensation (e.g., even if the steak tasted unpleasant, one cannot describe it grammatically with the adverbial form of an adjective like mazui 'untasty'). This brief article addresses questions about the nature of these expressions, focusing primarily on the riddle: Where does this mysterious restriction on the adverbial come from? It also makes a comparison with English, which has no such constructions, and considers what is responsible for their (un)availability.