Chiharu Furukawa’s scientific contributions

This paper attempts to explore the relationship between Chinese coverb li and the Japanese postpositional particles made and kara. First, we subdivided the object of li into three types: time, direction, and abstract phenomena. Considering the three types of objects associated with li, there is an attempt to explore the relationship between li and made and kara. There is some discussion of the pedagogical implication of teaching Japanese learners of Chinese about coverbs. To carry out the research, we used language data from (1) the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese and (2) previous studies and authentic Chinese textbooks as well. This study focuses on Chinese 'A li B' vis-à-vis Japanese 'A wa B {made/kara}'. There is no discussion of Chinese 'cong A dao B' vs. Japanese 'A kara B made'. The major conclusion differs from the findings of Haruki Kaku's study of Chinese li corresponding to Japanese kara (2001:243). This study also shows that three types of object of li have different corresponding relations with Japanese made and kara.