Japanese compound verbs are morphological amalgamations of two »simple« verbs, which behave, grammatically as well as semantically, as one verb. According to certain syntactic characteristics, Japanese compound verbs can be divided into two groups, syntactic and lexical compound verbs. This classification consequently influences certain grammatical attributes, such as productivity and verb transitivity. Japanese compound verbs with second verb -komu belong to the lexical compound verb group. When -komu appears as a second verb in Japanese compound verbs, it loses its original meaning and modifies the preceding verb in a new way. Linguists have researched semantic relations between first and second verb of a compound verbs with different methods, and have discovered that, when -komu appears as a second verb in compound verbs it can have quite different meanings. As an example, it can give directional meaning to the first verb, which on its own does not indicate a direction, or it can show continuation of a state for a longer period of time. There are 255 Japanese compound verbs with second verb -komu in use in contemporary Japanese. I have analysed the frequency of occurrence for 197 of those 255 verbs in chosen genres, and have discovered, that while Japanese compound verbs with second verb –komu appear in all chosen genres, they do so with a vastly different frequency of occurrence. The most frequently appear in the genre literary works, and least frequently in the genre official texts.
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