ASIAN ENGLISHES

2021, VOL. 23, NO. 3, 229–250

https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2020.1780777

ARTICLE

Englishization of the Japanese passive construction: evidence

for ‘contact-induced variation’
Andrew Moody a
and Yuko Matsumotob
Department of English, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University of Macau, Macao, Macao; bDepartment of
a

Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Macao, Macao

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A number of scholars have noted that contact with English has Received 24 September 2019
changed the Japanese language in a process of Englishization. Accepted 8 June 2020
While the most profound effects of Englishization may be seen in KEYWORDS
the influx of new lexemes, deeper structural changes to Japanese Englishization; ukemi;
syntactic structures and phonology have not been observed with ‘passive’; adversative passive;
great regularity. A review of previous research on Englishization corpus linguistics
suggests that syntactic effects of Englishization in Japanese are to
be expected. The Japanese ukemi ‘passive’ voice construction has
been hypothesized to have been Englishized and close attention is
given to those claims. This article examines a corpus of news media
texts that can be divided into two sub-corpora: those written in
Japanese and those translated from English into Japanese. The
indirect passive appears more frequently in texts written in
Japanese and in the sub-corpus of translated Japanese its use is
limited by the types of verbs that are passivized. The sociolinguistic
nature of English in Japan, where the language is taught to nearly
every student in the country, suggests that Englishization effects on
the passive construction produce contact-induced variation that
could be the earliest signs of change in progress.

Introduction
In a popular description of Japanese society and culture, Edwin Reischauer, the former
US Ambassador to Japan, describes a populist belief about the purity of the Japanese
language and its contrast to the actual situation:
The Japanese have always taken pride in the supposed native purity of their culture and
especially its language, but in actuality the language ever since it was first committed to
writing has been decidedly a bastard tongue like English. (Reischauer, 1979, p. 384)

Reischauer continues to explain that the most clearly visible effects of language contact in
the Japanese language are in the writing system, which was initially adapted from
Chinese, and the large number of loanwords from Chinese and western languages,
most recently from English. Likewise, scholarly reviews of language contact in Japanese
tend to focus primarily on lexical borrowing (Hatanaka & Pannell, 2016; Hoffer &

CONTACT Andrew Moody amoody@um.edu.mo Department of English (FAH), University of Macau, Taipa,
Macau SAR (via Hong Kong)
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
230 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

Honna, 1988; Loveday, 1990; McCreary, 1990). In addition, there have been a few studies
of graphological influences upon Japanese from English (Saint-Jacques, 1987; Twine,
1984) and phonological influences that are largely related to lexical borrowing (Kotera,
1985; Nagao, 2017; Nagata, 1988; Ong, 2017; Tsubuki, 1987). The effects of language
contact that are described in these studies illustrate the phenomenon of Englishization, a
natural and expected effect of English expanding into multilingual environments.
Kachru (1994) describes Englishization as the parallel and complementary effect of
nativization. Whereas nativization describes the influence from local languages upon
English when introduced into new ecologies and used multilingually, Englishization
describes the influences from English upon the native languages already spoken by
users of a new English. Englishization effects on Japanese lexis, phonology and graphol-
ogy (i.e. the writing system) demonstrate that Englishization of Japanese is an ongoing
process. However, studies examining Englishization within Japanese syntax are consid-
erably fewer, and most only examine syntactic effects that result from lexical borrowing.
Noriko Fujii (1988) discusses the tendency in Modern Japanese to express an explicit
subject constituent and demonstrates how, in various versions of Genji Monogatari [The
Tale of Genji], understood subjects are expressing with increasing frequency in Modern
Japanese. Although Genji is the only set of texts examined, Fujii hypothesizes that the
trend in Genji can be generalized to represent language change in progress and that this
change largely results from contact with western languages. Similarly, Mary Sanches
(1977) argues that the influx of loanwords from Chinese and English has resulted in
morphological simplification and semantic borrowing in Modern Japanese. In particular,
Sanches argues that three new syntactic structures have been borrowed into contempor-
ary Japanese from English: genitives, relative clauses and adjectival modifiers. These two
studies demonstrate that, in addition lexical change, syntactic features may well have
been borrowed into Japanese as a result of language contact. It is also possible that further
structural (i.e. syntactic) effects of Englishization can be observed. This article hypothe-
sizes that one such feature of Japanese syntax, the Japanese ukemi ‘passive voice’
structure, has undergone changes as a result of contact with English, and that the changes
can be discerned from the inherent variation in the use of the passive.

A model of language contact

The model of language contact proposed in this study of Japanese Englishization is
derived from Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) landmark work in language contact
(see Moody, 2003, for development of the model in application to Japanese/English
contact). The model of language contact, cited in Figure 1, provides a framework for
understanding the effects of contact-induced language change – or, as is more typically
observed, contact-induced variation – in terms of the degree of exposure between the two
languages. Contact-induced language change results in various degrees of borrowing,
which Thomason and Kaufman (1988) describe as either lexical borrowing or structural
borrowing. Whereas lexical borrowing entails the borrowing of lexemes, structural
borrowing includes the borrowing of morphological, syntactic or phonological features
from another language. The degree of borrowing directly reflects the intensity of lan-
guage contact and the sociolinguistic conditions related to that contact. Lexical borrow-
ing, especially of content words that introduce new cultural objects or ideas, takes place
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 231

in sociolinguistic contexts where the contact between speakers of the two languages is
relatively infrequent, highly structured or formalized. As contact becomes more intense,
other types of lexical borrowing and then structural borrowing can begin. The degree of
contact between two languages forms a cline of contact from ‘least intense’ to ‘most
intense’.1Thomason and Kaufman (1988) designate five non-discreet stages of contact
borrowing within the cline. This model proposes that the kinds of changes that take place
in the long-term historical contact between two languages and the kinds of changes that
may take place in pidginization and creolization are not qualitatively different, but
instead result from the quantitatively differing degrees of contact intensity.
This model of language contact formalizes the relationship between degrees of bor-
rowing and the relative sociolinguistic distance between two languages in contact. By
examining the specific types of features that result from lexical and structural borrowing,
we can surmise how closely two language have come into contact with one another. As
the intensity of contact between two languages increases, more structural features from
the loan language will be borrowed, and this may result in fundamental typological
changes within the borrowing language. For example, Category 1 contact entails only
lexical borrowing, and the lexical items that are typically borrowed within this category
are limited to content words, and especially those content words that are used for cultural
or technical reasons. Because this category of contact is not likely to result in many
typological changes in a language’s structure, it is indicative of a less intense level of
language contact. Category 3 contact, however, entails the borrowing of function words.
Unlike content words, the borrowing of function words implies that structural changes
within the language are more likely to result. Hence, Category 3 borrowing also entails
some morphological adaptations (e.g. borrowing of derivational or inflectional affixes),
phonological adaptations (e.g. phonemicization of previous allophones) and syntactic
adaptations (e.g. borrowing postpositions in a prepositional language).
The formalization of these categories of contact can be used to predict the specific
types of borrowing that may not yet be fully visible in all language genres, registers or
styles because the borrowing has not yet produced ‘typological change’. Statistical
patterns of the usage of newly borrowed structural features not only describe how the
features are spreading in the language and which social or linguistic factors condition this
spread; they also suggest the genres where the features were first borrowed into the
language. Understanding how a new structural borrowing is introduced into the lan-
guage and how it spreads after that introduction provides useful information about the
context and conditions of language contact and what further borrowing might be
anticipated.
In terms of Japanese and English language contact borrowing, the vast majority of
studies have focused solely upon lexical borrowing (Honna, 1995; Irwin, 2016; Loveday,
1996; Stanlaw, 1982) and the level of language contact borrowing between Japanese and
English is largely taken as Category 1 contact borrowing. This low level of contact
borrowing from English to Japanese, however, is not entirely consistent with the socio-
linguistic reality of English in Japan. English instruction (as a school subject) has been a
nearly universal compulsory component of the Japanese education system for decades
(Honna & Saruhashi, 2019) and English ability is now highly prevalent in Japanese
society (Fujita-Round, 2019; Shoji, 2019). This article will review evidence that contact
between Japanese and English might better be labelled as Category 2 or Category 3
232 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

contact borrowing. Although the literature related to structural borrowing in Japanese is

scant, a review suggests that limited structural borrowing from English has indeed
occurred in some Japanese genres, and that new structural forms are available to spread
to other genres.
First, however, this article will demonstrate that genre is a relevant factor in identifica-
tion of borrowing that goes beyond the simplest forms of lexical borrowing of content
words for cultural and functional reasons. Devitt (1989) has argued that new features in a
language can be introduced and widely used by a large number of speakers within limited
genres before spreading more generally into the language. For example, Matsumoto and
Britain (2019) examine the use of English borrowing within the specific genre of food as
evidence of variable intensity of contact with English. Similarly, Scherling (2016) exam-
ines the use of English loanwords in bilingual punning within the specific Japanese genres
of advertising and popular culture as an example of contact borrowing that does not yet
occur in other genres. Japanese pop culture genres, and especially J-pop music, are often
open to lexical borrowing from English and the lexemes borrowed – particularly function
words – are indicative of Category 2 borrowing that may have begun to spread to other
genres (Nagano & Shimada, 2018).
Second, based upon the understanding that borrowings, both lexical and structural,
move from genre to genre in the process of language change, we will examine rates of
passivization in a corpus of translated news articles that been either written in Japanese or
translated from another language, primarily English. A number of scholars have sug-
gested that the Japanese ukemi passive has changed as a result of contact with English. If
so, this would be clear evidence of Category 2 or Category 3 borrowing and it would be in
a genre where Englishization innovations might be easily anticipated. If observed,
Englishization of the Japanese passive construction could become an important indicator
of Category 2 or 3 structural borrowing from language contact.

Lexical borrowing: Englishization of Japanese lexis and phonology

If indeed Englishization of Japanese represents more intense contact than the Category 1
level of contact borrowing, then it would not likely take place in isolation of other lexical
and phonological changes described by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) for Category 2
or 3. Therefore, we will briefly look at some of the literature on Englishization of Japanese
to demonstrate that the evidence for Category 2 or 3 level language contact does not
come solely from the ukemi passive forms. Instead, the classification is the result of a
broader look at Englishization of Japanese.

Lexical borrowing
The study of lexical borrowing from foreign languages into Japanese has been the subject
of numerous scholarly works over the years (Barrs, 2015; Daulton, 2008, 2020; Saito,
1968; Umegaki, 1963; Yamada, 1940; Yano, 2011) as well as several contemporary and
vintage reference works (Kamiya, 1993; Saito, 1985; Sanseido-Henshuusho, 1979;
Tanabashi & Suzuki, 1912). Without doubt, the effect of lexical borrowing from
English specifically has also been the subject of a number of works dealing with language
contact in Japan (Kageyama & Kishimoto, 2016; Ozawa, 1976; Scherling, 2012).
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 233

One factor that appears to be driving the high degree of lexical borrowing in con-
temporary Japanese may be the importance of English within various forms of popular
culture (Daulton, 2004). Among the most obvious pop culture uses of English is the use
of English in Japanese popular music (i.e. J-pop). Moody (2000) offers an initial look at
the kinds of English words that might be found in J-pop through a corpus analysis
method of 227 top 50 hits from a six-month period in 1999. The data demonstrate that
English words or phrases (within Roman script) are highly prevalent and that nearly two-
thirds of all J-pop songs contained some English (Moody, 2006).
While the occurrence of any English borrowings is itself an interesting aspect of
language contact, the model of language contact used in this study demands a close
examination not only of the rate of borrowing, but also the kinds of loanwords that are
supplied by English in order to determine how intense the contact is. As suggested in
Figure 1, the least intense level of contact is restricted to content words for ‘cultural and
functional reasons’. As contact becomes more intense, function words like conjunc-
tions, prepositions or pronouns are also borrowed, as well as inflectional or deriva-
tional affixes.
Table 1 presents a list of the most frequently occurring lexical items from J-pop songs.
From the list, the two most frequently occurring English words are the first-person
singular personal pronoun and the second-person personal pronoun. Together, these
pronouns account for 970 tokens, roughly 14.5% of the corpus. In fact, the only content
words appearing within the 10 most frequently English items are love, baby and yeah.2
While Matsui (2003) demonstrates that the Japanese public’s fascination with English in
titles or lyrics of J-pop has little, if any, direct relation to an individual’s ability or
inclination to speak English, these particular lexical items are not likely to be used in
many contexts outside the pop song in which they occur. However, it is interesting to
note that the kinds of function words borrowed from English do not characterize
Category 1 level of lexical borrowing, but instead more closely resemble the kind of
lexical borrowing found in Category 2, or perhaps even Category 3. The fact that
Category 2–3 contact lexical borrowing is found primarily, if not exclusively, within J-
pop song lyrics is not surprising. This is a genre where this level of borrowing is
introduced and, if this level of borrowing is to become more prevalent, we would expect
to see these types of English loanwords introduced into other genres.

Phonological borrowing
Throughout the history of Japanese, borrowing of loanwords has directly led to several
phonological innovations. For example, Chinese loanwords into Japanese introduced
palatalized glides like those found in the syllables lyou and gyou (Satake, 1981; Tatsuki,
1979). In order to transcribe these sounds within the relatively limited hiragana and
katakana writing systems, Japanese had to develop the writing convention of using full-
sized kana together with half-sized kana to form the new sounds. Whereas a single kana
usually represents a syllable (or, more accurately, a mora), in the innovated full/half-sized
kana combinations the two kana represent a full mora. The development of the conven-
tion within the writing system mirrored the development of new phonemes and new
contrasts that resulted from a massive borrowing of Chinese loanwords.
234 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

Figure 1. Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) model of language contact for languages in maintenance.

More recent phonemicization as a result of language contact has led to the appearance
of /p/ at the beginning of mora (i.e. pa, pi, pu, pe and po)3. This change is akin to the
Middle English development of the /v/ voiced labio-dental fricative. While allophonic [v]
was present in Middle English, it never appeared at the beginning of words and
complementary distribution governed the appearance of the sound. After a number of
loanwords from Norman French entered the language, this allophone developed into an
independent phoneme. Similarly, the only words in Modern Japanese that begin with /p/
are loanwords and are written in katakana; no native Japanese words begin with /p/,
although the sound may appear natively when the combination of certain mora form a
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 235

Table 1. The 10 most frequently occurring English words in 640 J-

Pop songs (n = 6698 tokens).
Rank Lexeme Number of occurrences
1 I/-’d/-’ll/-’ve/-’m/me/my 549
2 you/-’ll/’re/-r/-rself/u 421
3 lov-/-er/-in’ 162
4 do/don’t 133
5 the 127
6 on 95
7 baby 88
8 to 86
9 a/an 84
10 yeah 78
10 it/-’s 78
10 for 78
Source: Moody (2000).

geminate. However, because of the large number of foreign words written in katakana
that have been borrowed into Japanese (i.e. foreign words other than most Chinese
loanwords and borrowed later than the Chinese loanwords), allophonic [p] came to be
contrastively distributed when it began to appear as the first sound of a word. Hence, the
allophone [p] became the phoneme /p/. Similarly, Moody and Matsumoto (2012) discuss
a possible phonemic split between /b/ and /v/, represented conventionally in katakana as
バ and ヴァ, respectively, as a possible change in progress. Within the model of language
change that is used in this discussion of Englishization, these types of language change
would be classified as Category 3 structural borrowing.
This suggests that the scope and depth of the influence of English and other western
languages – perhaps because of the large amount of attention given to loanwords as the
predominant evidence of language contact – has not been accurately assessed for
Japanese. If Category 2 changes have clearly taken place in both lexis and phonology,
we would naturally expect to also find other Category 2 changes within Japanese syntax.

Structural borrowing: Englishization of Japanese syntax

As noted earlier, studies that examine the influence of Englishization on Japanese syntax
frequently treat syntactic changes as knock-on effects of the proximate cause of lexical
borrowing. However, Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) model of language change does
not treat lexical borrowing as qualitatively different from structural borrowing. Instead,
structural borrowing is treated as one of the likely outcomes of contact between
languages when the contact is more intense than changes associated with Category 1
contact borrowing. Since Category 2 – and perhaps Category 3 – structural borrowing
from English phonology has already been observed in contemporary Japanese, it is only
reasonable to expect to also find Category 2 or 3 structural borrowing of English syntax.
These types of changes might include ‘new syntactic functions or restrictions with no
typological changes’ (e.g. a Category 2 effect) or ‘some syntactic changes such as
borrowed postpositions in a prepositional language’ (e.g. a Category 3 effect). The
following represent some of the syntactic changes of Japanese that have been discussed
as possibly resulting from Englishization:
236 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

Less ellipsis, more use of person-referring terms in Japanese (Alfonso, 1966; Fujii,
1988; Miura, 1979).
Sentence as proposition rather than discourse turn (Tokoro, 1986).
Passive with extended semantic function; for example, not restricted to adversative
connotations in Japanese, Chinese or Thai (Kachru, 1994).

These syntactic changes resulting from structural borrowing from English suggest the
scope of Englishization effects that go beyond lexical borrowing.
Each of these three observed changes are Category 2 changes, which take place without
typological borrowing. In particular, this article aims to investigate the third
Englishization effect, which has been hypothesized to occur in Japanese as well as
Chinese and Thai. To the degree, therefore, that supposed changes in the Japanese
passive construction might represent a process of Englishization, syntactic borrowing
would confirm lexical and phonological data that Japanese–English contact borrowing
might be characterized as more intense than previously supposed.

Japanese passive typology

There are a number of interesting features of the Japanese passive construction and
syntacticians often hold differing views about which features should be used in various
typologies. Iwasaki (2018) offers a comprehensive, up-to-date and informative survey of
the features of the Japanese passive, especially as they are of interest to syntacticians. Our
purpose in this section is not to discuss the various typologies and their differences in
approach to the passive, but instead to introduce the basic features that will allow us to
evaluate Kachru’s (1994) statement that the passive construction will expand beyond the
‘adversative connotations’ of the passive. To this effect, passive typology will be compared
to English typology in order to understand the likely effects Englishization has had on the
construction.
The passive is formed by the addition of (r)-are-ru to the negative verb stem, and other
endings such as past -ta or polite -masu may be added to the base form of the passive in
the regular manner. Most writers agree that the passive construction can be characterized
by two distinct types, direct and indirect (see Hoshi, 1999; Howard & Niyakawa-Howard,
1976; Kuno, 1986; Kuroda, 1979, 1985; Miyagawa, 1989; Tsujimura, 1996). Between these
two types of passive, the direct passive is usually considered the more similar to the
English passive. Like passive sentences in English, the direct passive is related to an
underlying active form, illustrated in Examples 1 and 2, where the sentences are rendered
first in their passive forms and then in the underlying active forms (see Appendix 1 for
abbreviations):
Example 1

a. 絵が泥棒 盗まれ °
E-ga dorobou-ni nusum-are-ta

painting-NOM thief-BY steal-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘The painting was stolen by the thief’.]

 ASIAN ENGLISHES 237

b. 泥棒が絵を盗んだ°
Dorobou-ga e-wo nusun-da
thief-NOM painting-ACC stole-PAST
[‘The thief stole the painting’.]

Example 2

a. 太郎が先生 叱 れ °
Taro-ga sensei-ni shikar-are-ta

Taro-NOM teacher-BY scold-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Taro was scolded by the teacher’.]

b. 先生が太郎を叱っ °
Sensei-ga Taro-wo shikat-ta
teacher-NOM Taro-ACC scold-PAST
[‘The teacher scolded Taro’.]
The indirect passive is frequently used to express the indirect effect of an action upon a
participant who is related semantically as an affected participant (see Fukuda, 2006,
2015). Because the indirect effect is usually implicitly a negative effect, the indirect passive
construction is also referred to in the literature as an adversative passive (see Kachru,
1994) or the suffering passive. This construction is illustrated in Examples 3 and 4, where
the sentences are rendered first in their passive forms and then in the underlying active
forms:

Example 3

a. 花子が隣 学生 ピアノを朝まで弾 れ °
Hanako-ga tonari-no gakusei-ni piano-wo asa-made hik-are-ta

Hanako-NOM neighbouring-GEN student-BY piano-ACC morning-until play-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Hanako was adversely affected by the neighbouring student’s playing the piano until
morning’.]

b. 隣 学生がピアノを朝まで弾い °
Tonari-no gakusei-ga piano-wo asa-made hii-ta
neighbouring-GEN student-NOM piano-ACC morning-until play-PAST
[‘The neighbouring student played the piano until morning’.]

Example 4

a. 父親が先生 息子を学校まで呼び出され °

Chichioya-ga sensei-ni musuko-wo gakko-made yobidas-are-ta

Father-NOM teacher-BY son-ACC school-TO call to come-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘The father was adversely affected by the teacher calling the son to come to school’.]
238 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

b. 先生が息子を学校まで呼び出 °
Sensei-ga musuko-wo gakko-made yobidashi-ta
teacher-NOM son-ACC school-TO call to come-PAST
[‘The teacher called the son to come to school’.]
Kachru’s (1994) prediction that Englishization of the passive form would produce
more uses that are not exclusively adversative responds to the Japanese indirect passive
form that is somewhat different from the English passive. The features of the Japanese
passive that are even more different from English involve the types of verbs that can be
passivized. Unlike the passive voice in English, the Japanese passive structure is not
restricted to use with transitive verbs, but may also be used with both intransitive and
causative verbs, as illustrated in Examples 5 and 6 and Examples 7–9, respectively:

Example 5

a. 太郎が犬 死なれ °

Tarou-ga inu-ni shin-are-ta

Tarou-NOM dog-BY die-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Taro was adversely affected by his dog’s death’.]

b. 犬が死んだ°
Inu-ga shin-da
dog-NOM die-PAST
[‘The dog died’.]

Example 6

a. 次郎が雨 降 れ °
Jirou-ga ame-ni fur-are-ta

Jiro-NOM rain-BY fall-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Jiro was rained on’.]

b. 雨が降っ °
Ame-ga fut-ta
rain-NOM fall-PAST
[‘It rained’.]

Example 7

交通渋滞 ひどさ は閉口させ れ °

Koutsuu juutai-no hidosa-ni wa heikou-saser-are-ta

traffic congestion-GEN bad-BY HOW surprised-BECOME-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘I was dumbfounded by how bad the traffic jams were’.]

 ASIAN ENGLISHES 239

Example 8

運用責任者 暴走 ツケは, これ 住民が払わされ こ な °

Un-you sekininsha-no bousou-no tsuke-wa, kore-kara juumin-ga
harawas-are-ru koto-ni naru running administrator-GEN recklessness-GEN actions-
TOP now-FROM public-NOM pay-PASSIVE-INFINTIVE event-BY

to become [‘The citizens will now be made to pay the bill run up through the “recklessness”
of those responsible for running it (= local government)’.]

Example 9

同氏 証言次第では, 大統領が窮地 立 され こ もありそうだ°

Doushi-no shougen shidai-dewa daitouryou-ga kyuuchi-ni tatas-are-ru
koto-mo ari-sou-da

peer-GEN testimony gradually-THEN president-NOM plight-IN stand-PASSIVE-

INFINITIVE event-ALSO have-LIKELY-PAST

[‘Depending on his testimony, the president may be put into a critical position’.]

To summarize, most Japanese syntacticians consider that Japanese passives can be

classified according to two different types, direct and indirect, and these can be derived
from three different verb types: transitive, intransitive and causative. The taxonomy is
illustrated with reference to the previous examples in Table 2.

Age-graded attitudes towards Englishization of the passive construction

In an attempt to understand the likely effect of Englishization on the acceptability of
various passive constructions, Thompson and Moody (2001) examined the effect of self-
reported knowledge of English among a population of 1000 subjects ranging from age 10
to 83. Using the taxonomy described earlier, sample passive sentences were extracted
from various sources and parallel non-passive forms were constructed. After all of the
sentences were examined by a number of native-speakers of Japanese in order to ensure
that all of the sentences were grammatical and represented naturally occurring variation
between the passive and non-passive forms of Japanese verbs, the sample sentences were
used to construct a grammaticality questionnaire. Respondents were asked to judge the
sentences’ relative grammaticality in two ways. First, each respondent was given 10
sentences, five containing passive voice constructions and five containing non-passive
constructions. The respondents were asked to rate each sentence according to gramma-
ticality along a four-point scale, with 0 = ungrammatical, 1 = least grammatical and 3 =
most acceptable. Second, participants were given five pairs of passive/non-passive

Table 2. Taxonomy of Japanese passives from Examples 1–9.

Transitive Intransitive Causative
Direct Transitive direct (Examples 1 and 2) –a –a
Indirect Transitive indirect (Examples 3 and 4) Intransitive indirect (Examples 5 and 6) Causative indirect (Examples 7–9)
Note: aDirect passives are not formed by intransitive or causative verbs.
240 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

sentences and were asked to choose which of the two was the more acceptable.
Essentially, the two components of the study were a scaled (from 0–3) grammaticality
rating and a preference test. Respondents were also asked questions to measure the
potential influence of four sociolinguistic factors: age, gender, educational background
and a self-assessment of ability in English.
Several findings emerged from this preliminary study. Initial assessment of the results
demonstrated that there were no statistically significant correlations between age, gender,
educational background or self-assessment of English ability and the grammaticality judge-
ments of individual sentences in the first section. When examining the results of the second
section, where participants were asked to choose between active and passive versions as the
most natural, the sociolinguistic factors of gender, educational background and self-assessed
English ability did not appear to have a statistically significant correlation with the choice of
an active or passive form. There did appear, however, to be a difference of age grading, where
the oldest speakers (age 51–83) chose active forms at a slightly higher, although not
statistically significant, rate than the two other age groups (age 10–25 and 26–50).
However, a closer examination of a subset of the data collected from the participants
suggested a clearer pattern of age grading that one would expect to see if Englishization,
or any change in progress, of the Japanese passive construction were indeed taking place.
Based upon Takeuchi’s (1999) discussion of the development of the passive construction
in Modern Japanese from those found in Pre-modern Japanese, the data were reclassified
according to whether or not a sentient adjunct is topicalized within the passive construc-
tion. Examples 10 and 11 illustrate when a sentient adjunct is topicalized in (a), as
opposed to appearing as a grammatical subject in (b):
Example 10

a. 教師は子供 ち われ °
kyoushi-wa kodomo-tachi-ni karakaw-are-ta

teacher-TOP child-PLURAL-BY tease-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘The teacher was teased by the children’.]

b. 教師が子供 ち われ °
kyoushi-ga kodomo-tachi-ni karakaw-are-ta
teacher-NOM child-PLURAL-BY tease-PASSIVE-PAST
[‘The teacher was teased by the children’.]
Example 11

a. 母親は先生 息子をほめ れ °
hahaoya-wa sensei-ni musuko-wo homer-are-ta

mother-TOP teacher-BY son-ACC praise-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘The mother (was happy when) the son was praised by the teacher’.]

b. 母親が先生 息子をほめ れ °
hahaoya-ga sensei-ni musuko-wo homer-are-ta
mother-NOM teacher-BY son-ACC praise-PASSIVE-PAST
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 241

[‘The mother (was happy when) the son was praised by the teacher’.]
These examples contrast with a somewhat newer passive construction that allows non-
sentient adjuncts to be topicalized, as Examples 12 and 13 illustrate. In each example, the
passive appears in (a) with a non-sentient topic and in (b) as a subject, but only as a topic
in (c), the non-passivized form. These might be of the type in which a relevant AGENT is
present or not, as illustrated respectively in Examples 12 and 13:

Example 12

a. 名古屋城は徳川家康 よって築 れ °
Nagoya-jou-wa Tokugawa Ieyasu-ni yotte kizuk-are-ta

Nagoya Castle-TOP Tokugawa Ieyasu-BY means of construct-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Nagoya Castle was constructed by Ieyasu Tokugawa’.]

b. 名古屋城が徳川家康 よって築 れ °
Nagoya-jou-ga Tokugawa Ieyasu-ni yotte kizuk-are-ta

Nagoya Castle-NOM Tokugawa Ieyasu-BY means of construct-PASSIVE-PAST

[‘Nagoya Castle was constructed by Ieyasu Tokugawa’.]

c. 名古屋城は徳川家康が築い °
Nagoya-jou-wa Tokugawa Ieyasu-ni kizui-ta
Nagoya-cast-TOP Tokugawa Ieyasu-BY construct-PAST
[‘Ieyasu Tokugawa built Nagoya Castle’.]

Example 13

a. 喫煙は禁止されています°

kitsuen-wa kinshis-are-tei-masu

smoking-TOP prohibit-PASSIVE-STATE-POLITE

[‘Smoking is prohibited’.]

b. 喫煙が禁止されています°

kitsuen-ga kinshis-are-tei-masu

smoking-NOM prohibit-PASSIVE-STATE-POLITE

[‘Smoking is prohibited’.]

c. 喫煙は禁止 ています°
kitsuen-wa kinshish-itei-masu
242 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

smoking-TOP prohibit-STATE-POLITE

[‘Smoking is prohibited’.]

The passive constructions illustrated in Examples 12a and 13a are newer constructions and
appear in Modern Japanese somewhat less frequently than the other two types. However,
because they are easily related to an active form with no adversative meaning derived from
the ukemi passive, it was hypothesized that these forms would be relatively more likely to
appear acceptable if Englishization of the passive were indeed taking place. The anticipated
acceptability of these forms would result from users’ understanding of the Japanese passive
construction as a form that is comparable to the English passive construction, which also
does not always encode an adverse effect upon the Topic or Nominative adjuncts.
Within the first half of the questionnaire, there appeared to be a clear preference for non-
sentient resultative states (i.e. Examples 12a and 13a) where no relevant agent is specified.
Table 3 illustrates that these sentences were evaluated as more grammatical than sentences
that did have a relevant agent. However, by examining a subset of the data, there were not
enough responses from the entire population to find statistically significant correlations
with the sociolinguistic factor of age. This was, however, not the case within the second half
of the questionnaire, where respondents were asked to choose whether active or passive
versions of the same sentence were more acceptable. Table 4 presents the results of this part
of the questionnaire along with a two-way chi-square (X2) calculation of statistical sig-
nificance. The preference for the active voice form within the oldest group of speakers (i.e.
age 51–85) strongly suggests that the passive form has undergone age-graded change.
While subjects taking part in this test of grammaticality judgements considered both
types of passives to be grammatical, the English-style passive was considered grammatical
more frequently – but only among younger generations – than other types of passive.

Englishization of the passive construction in translation

Thompson and Moody (2001) examined the Japanese passive construction as it occurs in
native interactions in Japanese. While there is some limited evidence of an age-graded
difference in grammaticality judgements, there is no clear evidence that this results from
Englishization. It could instead result from language change in progress without language
contact as a proximate cause. Despite the fact that English education has been universal

Table 3. Acceptability of ‘new’ uses of passive con-

struction (average rating across all respondents).
Score
Non-sentient topic/direct (no relevant agent) 2.1
Non-sentient topic/direct (relevant agent) 1.6
Note: 0 = unacceptable; 3 = highest acceptability.
Source: Thompson and Moody (2001).

Table 4. Results of choice between active and passive forms.

Age 10–25 Age 26–50 Age 51–83
With sentient topic Active 424 (49.8%) 169 (47.3%) 96 (45.9%) n = 1418
Passive 428 (50.2%) 188 (52.7%) 113 (54.1%) p = 0.617
Without sentient topic Active 126 (33.8%) 55 (37.9%) 45 (54.2%) n = 601
Passive 247 (66.2%) 90 (62.1%) 38 (45.8%) p = 0.003
Source: Thompson and Moody (2001).
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 243

in Japan for more than 50 years (Honna, 2008; Honna & Saruhashi, 2019), we expect that
familiarity with English passives has likely had an effect on the younger generations, who
are more likely to accept the Japanese direct passive’s grammaticality because it is more
similar to the English passive. However, Thompson and Moody (2001) did not find that
self-assessed knowledge of English as a sociolinguistic factor correlated with a preference
for the hypothetically Englishized passive construction.4 This study reports an attempt to
understand how translation from English to Japanese may have affected the frequency of
different types of passive constructions, especially the adversative passive or indirect
passive. In the same way that the J-pop music genre is a genre with advanced borrowing
of function words from English, the hypothesis here is that a genre that is regularly
translated from English may be more open to structural borrowing from English. Because
the indirect passive is presumed to have been Englishized to include uses without
adversative connotations (Kachru, 1994), comparison of the rates of passivization in a
corpus of Japanese news writing, half of which is translated from English, should suggest
how contact-induced variation develops in Japanese.

Materials: corpus of news articles

The corpus used in this study is a collection of news articles from the Japanese-language
website of the English Reuters news service (Reuters, 2007). During the month of July
2007, all stories on the プニュ [Toppu Nyuusu, ‘top news’] page were collected in
electronic format. In total, 753 stories were collected to form a corpus of 510,899 Japanese
characters (i.e. words). Each story was examined in order to determine the source of the by-
line of the stories.5 Those with by-lines from Japan, usually Tokyo, were placed into a sub-
corpus of native Japanese, while those with foreign by-lines, usually New York or London,
were placed into a sub-corpus of translated Japanese. It should be noted that two factors
question our confidence that the translated Japanese sub-corpus is indeed translated from
English. First, some by-lines are from non-English-speaking countries, such as those from
Beijing or Paris, and it is not clear that the Japanese versions of the stories with these by-lines
were translated from English. However, stories with these by-lines were infrequent and it was
felt that, because Reuters is an English-language news service, most of the Japanese articles – if
not all – would have been translated from English regardless of where the article was filed.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the translated sub-corpus may represent a sampling of
Japanese used in translation, not necessarily translated from English. Second, there is likewise
uncertainty that by-lines from Japan necessarily represent work composed in Japanese. Our
confidence, however, that articles in the native Japanese sub-corpus were usually composed in
Japanese is strengthened by the fact that by-lines from Japan frequently include an additional
by-line at the end of the article with the affiliation, 日本語ニュ [Roitaa
Nihongo Nyuusu, ‘Reuters Japanese-Language News’], and the Japanese name of the writer.
Likewise, stories from the translated sub-corpus that contain a writer’s name in the final line
use the same marker with the name of the writer in Roman letters (i.e. English alphabet) and
the name of the Japanese translator. Table 5 presents the size of the two sub-corpora. As
might be expected, native Japanese stories are generally longer than those found in the
translated sub-corpus.
244 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

Table 5. Size of the translated and native Japanese sub-corpora.

Number of stories Number of words Average length of stories
Native Japanese 303 296,025 977
Translated Japanese 451 214,874 476
Total 754 510,899 678

Findings: differences between passives in the translated and native Japanese sub-
corpora
Passive forms were collected from the two small sub-corpora and then analysed manually
for two possible factors: whether they were direct or indirect (adversative) passives; and
whether the passive was formed from a transitive, intransitive or causative verb. Table 6
presents the overall rate of passivization in the two sub-corpora. Passive voice verbs
appear with greater frequency (n = 931) in the native Japanese sub-corpus, which is an
increased rate of 28.2%. Keeping in mind that the native Japanese sub-corpus has more
words (37.8%) than the translated sub-corpus, the number of tokens per character
(treated here as ‘words’) is highly comparable, with 0.00410 tokens per character in the
native sub-corpus and 0.00319 tokens in the translated sub-corpus. A more accurate
comparison of the rates of passivization in the two sub-corpora, however, is suggested by
the calculation of the number of tokens per sentence. This calculation corrects for the
possible fact that sentences may be longer in one of the sub-corpora, which they are in the
native Japanese sub-corpus. When the rate of passivation is compared in terms of
the total number of passivizations possible (i.e. sentences), the rate is slightly higher in
the translated sub-corpus, and this fact is reflected in the calculation of normalized
tokens. When normalized according to the number of sentences in the corpus, the
translated sub-corpus shows a slightly higher (4.0%) rate of passivization (see Table 6).
The vast majority of the 1657 passive verbs in the corpus are direct passives and they
account for all but 20 (1.2%) indirect passives. The relative infrequency of the indirect
passive in both sub-corpora, therefore, makes definitive conclusions about the frequency

Table 6. Rate of passivization (direct and indirect) in two sub-corpora.

Tokens per Normalized
Tokens Tokens per character sentence tokens (×1.334)
Native Japanese 931 0.00410 0.1979 931
Translated Japanese 726 0.00319 0.2059 968

of the structure difficult, although there are several reasons to suggest that the indirect
passive appears more naturally in the native Japanese sub-corpus than in the translated
Japanese sub-corpus. Table 7 presents the distribution of indirect passives according to
three different verb types: transitive, intransitive and causative verbs. The number of
indirect passives in the native Japanese sub-corpus is three times (300%) higher than that
in the translated Japanese sub-corpus. Twelve (60%) of the verbs used to form the
indirect passive are transitive verbs, with only one example in the entire corpus of an
indirect passive formed with an intransitive verb. As the passive form that is most unlike
the English passive, it is understandable that an indirect passive from an intransitive verb
only appears in the native Japanese sub-corpus. Unfortunately, the form’s relative
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 245

Table 7. Number of indirect passives in two sub-corpora.

Transitive verbs Intransitive verbs Causative verbs Total
Native Japanese 8 1 6 15
Translated Japanesea 4 (5.4) 0 1 (1.3) 5
Note: aNormalized figures in parentheses.

infrequency within either sub-corpus prevents an understanding of how the form is

potentially made more rare by Englishization. What is most striking about the differences
between the native and translated Japanese sub-corpora, however, is the frequency of
indirect passives formed with causative verbs: six times (600%) higher in the native
Japanese sub-corpus compared to just one occurrence in the translated sub-corpus. If
indeed transitivity is becoming a requirement for the use of the passive – a consequence of
Englishization of the passive construction – the relatively high frequency of the indirect
passives formed with causative verbs in the native Japanese sub-corpus suggests two
possible non-exclusive conclusions. First, causative verbs are not affected by a general
preference against passivization of intransitive verbs. This finding would support
Thompson and Moody (2001) finding that English-style passives are more likely to be
graded grammatical than are purely Japanese-style passives like the indirect passive.
Second, the difference between the two sub-corpora suggests the unlikeliness that a
causative verb will be chosen for expressing an indirect passive when translating from
English into Japanese.

Discussion
While Kachru (1994) and several other scholars have hypothesized that Japanese gramma-
tical structures – and especially the passive structure – are eligible for Englishization, there
has been little concrete evidence of these changes. The reason why these changes are
difficult to observe, however, also highlights one of the failures of only focusing on features
of divergence from standard English (i.e. Inner Circle) varieties. The Englishization of the
ukemi passive does not create a new passive that has not been seen before in Japanese.
Instead, Englishization creates new patterns of variable use of the passive forms that already
exist. Thompson and Moody (2001) demonstrated that these changing patterns could be
discerned in grammaticality judgements (i.e. preferences) that were graded according to the
age of the assessor. Corpus analysis demonstrates that the changing patterns of use of the
indirect passive are equally elusive because they do not create new distinctive forms or
features. Instead, the emerging patterns specify preferences for the direct passive when the
text is translated from English, and a similar preference for the passivization of transitive
verbs, where intransitive and causative verbs are used more frequently in texts that are not
translated from English. Instead of creating new or distinctive forms, Englishization creates
contact-induced variation (Moody, 2006).
The Englishization of the Japanese passive construction is also to be expected because
of the sociolinguistic context of English in Japan. As a middle school and secondary
school subject, English has been nearly universal in Japan for more than 50 years, but, as
many critics of the Japanese educational system note, the language is rarely used in
communicative contexts. Honna (1995) argues that the Japanese ‘have not developed
proficiency in English as a language for international communication’ despite the fact
246 A. MOODY AND Y. MATSUMOTO

that six years study of English has been a key subject of the curriculum for more than 94%
of the nation’s 15 year olds since 1947. Instead, he proposes that English ‘has been used
for facilitating the influx of English loans into Japanese’ (1995, p. 59). We are suggesting
that the loans Honna (1995) refers to are not limited to the lexemes of lexical borrowing,
but that loans may also include phonological, morphological and syntactic features of
structural borrowing.
This sociolinguistic role of English in Japanese society, then, is very similar to the
role that Latin had in many educational systems of the sixteenth to eighteenth cen-
turies. In English-speaking cultures, Latin was studied as grammar and in translation,
and, as such, the subject facilitated an influx of Latin loanwords into English. The
influence of Latin on English, however, was not limited to loanwords, even though the
language was never used communicatively in society-at-large at that time. Because
Latin was the sole language whose grammar was studied – and the study of grammar
concomitantly meant the study of Latin – the language came to influence scholars who
sought to create a description of English and formulate rules of good usage (Michael,
2010). To describe English categories like the infinitive or the subjunctive required
grammarians to look to Latin for an understanding of these English structures. While
the categories clearly existed within Latin, they were assumed to also exist within
English and the search for parallels between the two languages has been, at least in
part, driven by the practice of translating Latin into English. Likewise, grammatical
rules developed that did not accurately describe the English language. For example, it is
impossible to split a Latin infinitive because it is a single word, unlike the periphrastic
English ‘to- infinitive’. Since it was impossible to split the Latin word with the insertion
of a modifier, grammarians presupposed that English should also not be allowed to
split an infinitive with a modifier, although the truth of the matter is that only a few
English speakers negatively assess, and many do not even notice, when a writer is
allowed to freely use the split infinitive.
The Englishization of Japanese, therefore, takes place in a sociolinguistic context in
which English is not used communicatively, but is nearly universally studied as a secondary
school subject, especially as grammar and in translation. As the most widely studied foreign
language in Japan (McKenzie, 2008), English offers most students their first exposure to the
formal study of grammar and, as such, informs and influences the understanding and
description of similar structures in other languages, including Japanese. The comparison of
Japanese passives in the native and translated Japanese sub-corpora suggests that the
indirect passive is a structure that is not frequently or easily considered as an option
when translating from English. One possible reason for the low usage of indirect passives
in the Reuters corpus explored here may be related to genre-specific requirements; indeed,
it would be very easy to imagine that news-reporting genres would favor forms that do not
rely upon implied meanings, like the adversative passive. While the results of this study of
the Englishization of the Japanese passive construction offer only limited support to
conclude that Englishization represents Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) Category 3
contact borrowing, the study also suggests a number of ways in which language contact
will produce new variation and enhance existing variation in Japanese.
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 247

Notes
1. Thomason and Kaufman (1988) describe the degrees of contact in the five categories of shift
as (1) casual contact, (2) slightly more intense contact, (3) more intense contact, (4) strong
cultural pressure, and (5) very strong cultural pressure (74-75). Thomason and Kaufman
apply their model to two types of language contact situations: language in maintenance and
language in shift. The application of the model for this study only describes the lexical and
structural changes that might happen in maintenance, since this is more appropriate for the
description of Englishization of Japanese.
2. One might argue that baby and yeah are not good examples of content words since, within
the context of their appearance within the J-pop songs, they most commonly appear in the
chorus to mark rhythm.
3. These more ‘recent’ changes have occurred within the past 500-year history of Japanese
(encompassing late-Middle Japanese, Early Modern and Modern Japanese). We are grateful
to an anonymous reviewer for citing evidence of phonetic [p] without realisation as a
phoneme in Heike Monogatari ‘The Tale of Heike’, representing late-Middle Japanese.
This phonemic change was probably originally driven by Portuguese loanwords in the
15th-16th century.
4. There are several good reasons why self-assessment of English ability was not an appropriate
measure of whether the form does indeed represent Englishization. First, unless the
Englishized form is directly introduced by English users, this variable would not likely be
related to the users who have adopted the form and are promoting its use. Instead, once the
form has been introduced into the speech community it is available to all speakers with
competence in Japanese regardless of individual proficiencies in English or any other
language. Second, it is possible that when participants assess their own English ability it is
according to their peer groups and not according to all age groups within the speech
community. Because universal English education has the greatest effect upon the youngest
group of speakers, self-assessment in English is not likely to compare intergenerationally. A
speaker who assessed her ability as low in the youngest age group might assess the same
ability as high when they compare to the oldest age group, or all age groups. Therefore,
English self-assessment may well mean different things to different age groups.
5. The vast majority of the by-lines contain location, date and time that the story was filed.
Occasionally the name of the writer is included in the by-line.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
Research for this article was supported by University of Macau [Research Grant MYRG2018-
00177-FAH].

ORCID
Andrew Moody http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4841-1995

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Appendix 1. Abbreviations used in the Examples

ACC Accusative
GEN Genitive
NOM Nominative
TOP Topic