Affectivity in the Japanese Passive Voice: Control as an Agentive Feature

The purpose of this article is to identify the cognitive semantic mechanisms of the actualization of the phenomenon of affectivity in Japanese indirect passive voice and to determine the factors influencing its interpretation from the perspective of the patient’s subjective perception of harm. The research is based on the semantic-pragmatic method to identify the meanings and functions of the indirect affective passive in comparison with the direct passive, as well as to determine the pragmatic conditions of their use. Corpora analysis methods with elements of computational analysis of language data were used for the selection of material, and cognitive analysis was applied to interpret the empirical data and to establish universal conditions for the allowability of usage of the indirect affective passive. In this paper, the phenomenon of affectivity is examined for the first time within the framework of cognitive grammar, based on R. Langacker’s Reference Point Construction and Control Cycle models, which make possible to explain the internal cognitive foundations of the semantic and pragmatic permissibility of the indirect passive in Japanese. The obtained results demonstrate that affectivity is not a universal characteristic of Japanese passive constructions but rather manifests itself in situations of low agentive semantics, when the patient loses control over a situation or object because of the agent’s action, causing a state of internal tension and a sense of loss. Attention is paid to the role of the agentive characteristic of animacy in the semantic structure of passive-voice utterances. The analysis of a set of examples from Japanese national corpora, as well as from classical and modern Japanese literature, reveals that affective passive constructions allow for the presence of an inanimate agent and patient remote from the prototype, which is non-canonical for the Japanese passive, imposing strict restrictions on the inanimate nature of the central participants. Ultimately, affectivity is defined as a state of discomfort arising from the patient’s unrealized desire to control a situation related to a goal. It is established that the key condition for the emergence of affective meaning is the presence of a “control submission” relationship and the patient’s desire to control the situation, which is one of the key characteristics of both the participants themselves and the situation. The study’s results clarify the cognitive nature of affectivity and contribute to the development of a cognitive-semantic description of the Japanese passive voice, possessing theoretical and practical significance for further research in linguistics and linguodidactics.

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