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HANDBOOKS OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE AND LINGUISITCS (Mouton de
Gruyter). Series editors: Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama
Book proposal
The Handbook of Japanese Syntax
Volume editors: Masayoshi Shibatani, Shigeru Miyagawa, Hisashi Noda
I. Editors' profiles
Masayoshi Shibatani (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1973)
Deedee McMurtry Professor of Humanities and Professor of Linguistics, Rice University;
Nihongo no Bunseki, Taishūkan Shoten, 1978; The Languages of Japan, Cambridge
University Press, 1990; Approaches to Language Typology, Oxford University Press (co-
edited with Thea Bynon), 1995; Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, acquisition, neuro-
cognition, evolution, John Benjamins (co-edited with T. Givón) 2009; numerous articles
in Language, Journal of Linguistics, Lingua, Linguistics, Japanese/Korean Linguistics,
and others.
Shigeru Miyagawa (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1980)
Professor of Linguistics and Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order,
Routledge Leading Linguists Series, 2012; Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-
based and Discourse Configurational Languages, MIT Press, 2010; Handbook of
Japanese Linguistics, Oxford University Press (co-edited with M. Saito), 2008; articles in
a variety of journals including Linguistic Inquiry, Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of
East Asian Linguistics, Lingua, and English Linguistics.
Hisashi Noda (Ph.D., University of Tsukuba, 1999)
Professor of Japanese Linguistics and Japanese as a Second Language, Center for JSL
Research and Information, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics,
Tokyo; A program officer of Research Center for Science Systems, Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science; Wa to ga [Japanese particles wa and ga] (Kurosio, 1996), co-
author of Nihongo no bunpō 4: fukubun to danwa [Japanese grammar 4: complex
sentences and discourse] (Iwanami Shoten, 2002); the editor of Nihongo kyōiku no tame
no komyunikēshon Kenkyū [Communication studies for Japanese language education]
(Kurosio, 2012).
II. Timeline
・First submission from the authors: August, 2014
・Internal review, rewriting, and copy-editing: Fall 2014-Summer 2015
・Submission of editor-reviewed complete manuscripts: September 2015
III. Significance of this volume
Studies of Japanese syntax have played a central role in the long history of Japanese
linguistics spanning more than 250 years in Japan and abroad. More recently, Japanese
has been among the languages most intensely studied within modern linguistic theories
such as Generative Grammar and Cognitive/Functional Linguistics over the past fifty
years. This volume presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese syntax from these three
research strands, namely studies based on the traditional research methods developed in
Japan, those from broader functional perspectives, and those couched in the generative
linguistics framework.
The twenty four studies contained in this volume are characterized by a detailed
analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with broader implications to general linguistics,
making the volume attractive to both specialists of Japanese and those interested in
learning about the impact of Japanese syntax to the general study of language. Each
chapter is authored by a leading authority on the topic. Broad issues covered include
sentence types (declarative, imperative, etc.) and their interactions with grammatical
verbal categories (modality, polarity, politeness, etc.), grammatical relations (topic,
subject, etc.), transitivity, nominalizations, grammaticalization, word order (subject,
scrambling, numeral quantifier, configurationality), case marking (ga/no conversion,
morphology and syntax), modification (adjectives, relative clause), and structure and
interpretation (modality, negation, prosody, ellipsis). These topics have had a profound
impact on the study of Japanese syntax, and each also has had important roles in the
development of general linguistic theory. For example, the long sustained studies on the
grammatical relations of subject and topic in Japanese have had significant impacts on
the study of grammatical relations in European as well as Austronesian languages. In the
study of word order, the analysis of Japanese numeral quantifiers is used as one of the
leading pieces of evidence for the existence of A-movement in human language. Under
case marking, the way subjects are case marked in Japanese has played a central role in
the study of case marking in the Altaic family of languages. For modification, the recent
studies of nominalizations have been central to the analysis of modification and nominal
clauses in a wide variety of languages from around the globe. And the study of how in
Japanese prosody plays a crucial role in interpretation has become the basis for some
important recent developments in the study of wh-questions.
IV. Organization of the volume
This book is organized in three parts. Part 1 contains papers developing out of the
traditional research paradigm of Japanese linguistics. They deal with such central issues
as characterizations of sentence types, functional and formal definitions of sentences and
clauses, and the functions of grammatical relations subject and topic. Part 2 represents
studies demonstrating functional linguistic methods and their achievements in Japanese.
A variety of topics including transitivity, nominalization, and grammaticalization are
dealt with in this section. Finally, Part 3 is a collection of thirteen papers representing
generative approaches to Japanese syntax covering some central syntactic issues such as
argument structures, and case marking, as well as interface topics such as morphology-
syntax and syntax-prosody interactions.
V. Table of contents
The following is the table of contents with a summary of each chapter by its author(s).
Introduction: Shigeru Miyagawa, Masayoshi Shibatani, Hisashi Noda
The introduction written jointly by the three editors offers both broad overview of the
field of Japanese syntax and a summary of the significance of the papers contained in this
volume.
Part 1
1. Basic Structures of Sentences and Grammatical Categories, Yoshio Nitta,
Kansai University of Foreign Studies
Sentences can be classified into predicate sentences and those composed of independent
words based on its internal structure. In this chapter, the internal structures of different
sentence types will be discussed with a focus on predicates. From the perspective of a
signaling function, predicate sentences can be divided into declarative, interrogative,
imperative, and volitional sentences. Based on the content, predicate sentences can be
separated into active, situational, and categorical sentences. Sentences mainly consist of a
proposition and modality. Modalities and the grammatical categories in which they
appear differ depending on sentence types. An epistemic modality will not appear in
imperative sentences, while a conveyance modality will be structurally latent in
declarative sentences. Moreover, aspects appear in active sentences but not in situational
and categorical sentences. Tense semantics of tense forms in categorical sentences differ
from those in other types of sentences.
Predicates assume a dominant position among the components of a sentence. Various
grammatical categories are represented as morphological changes in predicates. In
Japanese, both affirmation/negation and politeness can be achieved by the conjugation of
predicates—a principal method in grammatical category formations. Affirmation or
negation can be represented with the dichotomy of hasiru (I’ll run)–hasiranai (I won’t
run), while politeness can be represented with hasiru (I’ll run)–hasirimasu (I will run)
and ookii (it’s big)–ookiidesu (it is big)–ookyuugozaimasu (it is big). That the
affirmation/negation polarity is a grammatical category is seen from the fact that a
negative polarity item such as mettani (hardly) alone cannot express a negative assertion,
as shown by the ungrammaticality of mettani hasiru (hardly runs).
2. Sentence and Predicate Phrase, Hiroyuki Shirakawa, Hiroshima University
In traditional Japanese linguistics the structure of a predicate phrase has long been
discussed vigorously as an issue inseparable from the problem of “the formation of a
sentence”, since a predicate at the end of a sentence determines whether the sentence is
completed, or suspended and to be continued, and it also bears relation to both
proposition and modality. This chapter views some of the traditional studies of the
predicate phrase and presents modern approaches to the predicate phrase.
Firstly discussed are the controversies over the notion of “predication” that attracted
much attention among traditional Japanese grammarians. We will survey the history of
the controversies over chinjutsu (predication), beginning with Yamada (1908), who first
used the term chinjutsu and explained the structure of a sentence in terms of the predicate
function of “predication”, and ending with Watanabe (1971) , who argued that the alleged
unique function of a predicate had to be analyzed as a dual function. It will be shown that
the traditional studies of the Japanese language had original views of sentence
construction that are similar to the recent discussions of modality.
Secondly, turning our viewpoint from sentence-grammar to discourse-grammar,
sentence formation will be studied at the discourse level. We will discuss the relation of a
predicate phrase and a sentence, taking into account of such works as Noda (1989) and
Shirakawa (2009). The former argues that some sentences have no real modality and are
dependent on some other sentence and are thus semantically equivalent to dependent
clauses, while the latter argue that some predicate phrases behave like a full-fledged
sentence in discourse and thus are modally equivalent to an independent sentence.
A discussion on future directions in the study of predicate phrases concludes this
chapter.
3. Sentencehood of Japanese Subordinate Clauses, Isao Iori, Hitotsubashi
University
There is a rather strict sequential order imposed on the grammatical morphemes in
Japanese verb sentences. The order is correlated with the hierarchical structure of
sentences. This structure has been discussed in modern Japanese grammar from the view
point of the structure of complex sentences. Minami (1974) and Mikami (1953), the most
important achievements in this field, raise a question how the “finiteness” of a verb
should be understood in Japanese. Takubo (1987), which modifies the Minami’s model,
asserts that Minami’s four groups of subordinate clauses, Groups A, B, C and D,
correspond with the syntactic-semantic types of action, event, judgment, and
communication, respectively. Arita (2007) investigates the Group B subordinate clauses
closely and points out that there are two types in tense realized in the group.
With these studies as a background, this chapter deals with the internal structures of
subordinate clauses. I will explore the questions of how different types of grammatical
categories are structured in a clause and how they correlate with the semantic functions of
clauses.
4. Topic and Subject, Takashi Masuoka, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies,
This chapter centers around the notions of topic and subject in Japanese. These notions
are fundamental to sentence-grammatical descriptions in Japanese, since topic and
subject phrases figure importantly in the composition of the Japanese sentence. This
chapter is not intended as a purely structural analysis, in that the notions of topic and
subject are discussed from the viewpoint that sentence grammar is concerned with the
form-meaning correspondence.
Research on Japanese sentence grammar has produced a vast amount of literature on
the topic/subject. Thus, the first part of this chapter provides a survey of the previous
research results, focusing on (i) the perspective of language typology with respect to the
topic/subject, (ii) the perspective of the predication type, i.e., “property predication” vs.
“event predication,” and (iii) the perspective of the prototypicality of the topic/subject.
Based on the survey, the second part presents a view on the topic/subject controversy,
to the effect that Japanese belongs to the language type which has prototypical topic and
non-prototypical subject. This thesis is a synthesis of the three perspectives mentioned in
the first part. The basic stance of the chapter is that such fundamental notions as the
topic/subject are to be elucidated from a contrastive/typological point of view.
The final section points out some related issues that would stimulate further studies of
the topic/subject in Japanese.
5. Toritate: Focusing/defocusing Words, Phrases, and Clauses, Hisashi Noda,
National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
This chapter will discuss toritate or focusing/defocusing markers that are especially well
developed in Japanese. Toritate markers serve to place or displace focus on words,
phrases, or clauses. They represent meanings similar to the English words only, too, and
even. Most Japanese toritate markers are toritate particles, which are placed after items
that have to be focused on. However, toritate adverbs are placed before focused items.
Toritate markers have been traditionally distinguished as adverbial particles that add
meaning only to words that the marker attaches to and as binding particles that cause
ending links related to the formation of entire sentences—the phenomenon known as
kakari-busubi. Studies conducted for modern Japanese, in which the kakari-musubi
phenomenon no longer obtains, have been still rigorously analyzing toritate markers from
semantic and syntactic perspectives by handling both adverbial and binding particles as a
unified phenomenon.
From a semantic perspective, toritate markers can be categorized into those
representing contrasts (i.e., wa), similarities (i.e., mo), restrictions (i.e., dake), and
limitations (i.e., sae). On the other hand, from a syntactic perspective, toritate markers
can be categorized into those functioning at the aspectual level (i.e., bakari), the
affirmation/negation level (i.e., sika), the reality level (i.e., nara), and the level of
addressee-oriented modality (i.e., koso).
Significant tasks for the future research include those dealing with crosslingusitic
variations in the use of toritate markers.
Part 2
6. Functional Syntax, Ken-Ichi Takami, Gakushuin University and Susumu Kuno,
Harvard University
In this paper we will first review briefly the theory of Functional Syntax proposed by
Susumu Kuno and some of the advances in the study of Japanese syntax it has made
possible. Functional Syntax has amply shown how important it is to bear in mind
nonsyntactic (semantic, discourse-based or pragmatic) factors that interact with syntactic
phenomena and how dangerous it is to draw sweeping generalizations only on the basis
of limited syntactic notions such as ‘c-command’ or the ‘unergative/ unaccusative’
distinction. In the first part of this paper, we will illustrate the significance of
nonsyntactic factors such as Point of View or Empathy, Flow-of-Information Principle,
and Humanness, by taking up a number of phenomena in Japanese.
In the second part of this paper, we will discuss from our Functional Syntax
perspective the –te aru construction, as in Mado ga ake-te aru ‘The windows have been
opened’, but not *Kodomo ga home-te aru ‘The child has been praised’ (what Martin
(1975) calls the ‘intransitivizing resultative’ construction). It has generally been held in
traditional Japanese grammar and Japanese language teaching that this construction
shows that a result brought about by an action is still in force at the moment of speech
and that the action described in this construction is one performed in preparation for
something (e.g. Takahashi 1969, Yoshikawa 1973, Teramura 1984, Jorden 1963). On the
other hand, Kageyama (1996) has argued in the framework of lexical semantics that only
transitive verbs that intentionally bring about a change of state or a change of location
can appear in this construction. (Miyagawa (1989) made a similar claim using the notion
of ‘Theme’.) We will argue, however, that these formulations leave many examples
unaccounted for. We will then make clear that it is essential to differentiate the actor
(agent) of the action described in the –te aru construction from the observer (speaker) of
the action, and propose the following: The –te aru construction shows that (i) it is
obvious to the speaker that the intentional action the verb represents was performed by
someone for a certain purpose in the past, and (ii) the state brought about by the action is
significant to the speaker at the moment of speech. We will further demonstrate that this
constraint can account not only for a wide range of examples of the ‘X-ga … -te aru’
construction, but also for those of the ‘X-o … -te aru’ construction (what Martin (1975)
calls the ‘possessive resultative’ construction), as in Mado o ake-te aru ‘I have opened
the windows’, and those involving intransitive verbs, as in Moo zyuubun ason-de aru
‘I’ve already played enough’. Finally, we will consider in the third part of the paper
further directions of Functional Syntax (or, more broadly, functional linguistics in
general) and what else it can contribute to the study of Japanese syntax.
7. Transitivity, Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University
Transitivity in Japanese is a multifaceted phenomenon encompassing syntactic, semantic,
and morphological dimensions. What counts as a transitive predicate can be defined
independently in terms of any of these three dimensions, with results that do not perfectly
overlap, raising the question of whether grammatical transitivity is in fact a unitary
concept or not. The traditional syntactic definition of a transitive predicate as one that
“takes a direct object” picks out as transitive, in its formal Japanese counterpart,
predicates that co-occur with accusative o-marked nouns (e.g., A ga B o naguru “A hits
B”). But in a broader semantic sense, any two-place predicate may be viewed as
transitive, thus including predicates where the second argument is marked with case
particles other than accusative o (e.g., A ga B to tigau “A differs from B,” A ga B ni au
“A fits/matches B”). This chapter explores the question of why it is that, of the various
ways the second argument is encoded among these predicates (to, ni, and o on the B
arguments in the above examples), o-marking is given privileged place as a marker of
transitivity. It will be argued that the various meanings of accusative o constructions
center around a core “prototype” meaning that is defined (contra past treatments of
prototype such as Hopper and Thompson 1980) by the presence of intentionality, either
in the sense of one entity exerting intentional control in bringing about an effect on
another entity (A ga B o kowasu “A breaks B”) or by mentally intending it as an
experiencer (A ga B o miru “A sees B,” A ga higai o ukeru “A receives damage”).
The presence of verb pairs where transitive and intransitive verbs are distinguished by
means of suffix oppositions (e.g., A ga B o ageru “A raises B” vs. B ga agaru “B rises;”
A ga B o naosu “A fixes B” vs. B ga naoru “B gets fixed”) provides yet a third,
morphological basis for defining a transitive verb in Japanese. None of the three
criteria—syntactic, semantic, or morphological—delimits exactly the same class of
transitive predicates. Following Næss (2007), this chapter will argue that despite this
apparent divergence, all three manifestations of transitivity encode in common a notional
distinction between relatively lower (intransitive) and relatively higher (transitive)
differentiation between two entities, along a cline defined by maximal differentiation at
one pole and zero differentiation at the other.
8. Nominalizations, Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University
Nominalizations in Japanese grammar were first recognized by Yoshio Yamada in his
impressive compendium of Japanese grammar Nihon Bunpōron [Japanese grammatical
theory] published in 1908. Taking Yamada (1908) as a starting point, this chapter
advances a new theory of nominalization both correcting a large number of errors we
have made over the phenomena in which nominalizations play a central role and offering
several new treatments for them. The theory proposed makes the following points: (1)
structures and their uses must be clearly distinguished, (2) following point (1), so-called
relative clauses are nothing but a use of nominalizations—there are nothing like relative
clauses apart from nominlizations used as a modifier, (3) there are N-based (strictly NP-
based) nominalizations along with V-based nominalizations, (4) point (3) obviates the
genitive no and so-called pronominal no as well as a deletion analysis for a certain type
of no, thereby unifying various no’s that have been proposed in the past into a single
nominalizing no. Data are drawn from both Modern and Classical Japanese as well as
various modern Japanese and Ryukyuan dialects.
9. Locative Alternation, Seizi Iwata, Osaka City University
Certain verbs are known to alternate between two ways of argument realization: either a
Theme realized as direct object as in (1a) or a Location as direct object as in (1b).
(1) a. kabe-ni penki-o nuru (ni-variant)
wall on paint ACC smear
‘smear paint on the wall’
b. kabe-o penki-de nuru (de-variant)
wall ACC paint with smear
‘smear the wall with paint’
In the literature it has been claimed that the alternation arises when the verb involves the
notion of “affectedness” (Fukui, Miyagawa and Tenny 1985) or that the two variants are
to be characterized in terms of the contrast between a change of location vs. a change of
state (Kishimoto 2001). Both analyses, however, are problematic. What is essential is
that the verb has the potential to be construed either as a put-type verb or a cover/fill-type
verb. This analysis easily extends to cases involving verbs suffixed with –tsukusu. In
order to systematically account for the possibility of locative alternation, however, far
more reference to world knowledge needs to be made than appears at first sight.
10. Grammaticalization, Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University
Grammaticalization theory aims to explain synchronic language structures through their
diachronic emergence. It offers an alternative to purely synchronic views of language
structure and has therefore become an important pillar of functionalist theories of
language. Nevertheless, it has recently even attracted interest from generative grammar.
Studies of grammaticalization in Japanese have traditionally focused on the pragmatic
aspect of the phenomenon, which is salient in the development of honorific marking and
sentence-final particles, for example. This article will focus on the more structural aspects
of grammaticalization in Japanese, namely morphology, syntax and, related to them,
semantics. In particular, the author will attempt to show how grammaticalization in
Japanese relates to recent theories of syntax.
Part 3
11. Configurationality, John Whitman, National Institute for Japanese Language
and Linguistics
Since Hale's pioneering proposal that divided the world's languages into configurational
and nonconfigurational languages, a great deal of work has been produced to argue for
and against Hale's original notion that Japanese is nonconfigurational, thus lacking a VP
node. While this view that Japanese is, in fact, configurational, has become the standard
assumption, a number of phenomena, including word order flexibility, still remain a
mystery, a mystery for which the original conception of Japanese as a nonconfigurational
language had a simple and elegant solution. It is possible to regard Japanese as a
configurational language but at the same time show how it has nonconfigurational
properties in specific areas of the grammar.
12. Scrambling, Noriko Yoshimura, Shizuoka Prefectural University
This chapter discusses the nature of scrambling in Japanese from the perspectives of
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Properties discussed include the optionality of
scrambling, the A- vs. A-bar distinction relative to short- vs. long-distance movement,
vacuous movement related to radical reconstruction effects, and focus/topic-inducing
analysis related to landing site in CP vs. TP. By exploring these issues, this discussion
attempts to answer questions raised by recent advances in the study of Japanese
linguistics indicating that, although scrambling takes place in narrow syntax, its
significant interpretative consequences emerge at the syntax-pragmatics interface.
13. Numeral Quantifiers, Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT
The study of floating quantifiers in English, French, Irish, and Japanese has had a
significant impact on linguistic theory. The floating numeral quantifiers in Japanese has
shown that A-movement is a bona fide operation in natural language; we can see this by
the fact that such quantifiers may be stranded precisely where one expects the copy of A-
movement to occur — direct passive and unaccusative constructions and one form of
scrambling. More recently, in response to a number of counterexamples, it has been
proposed that the A-movement that leaves a copy is sensitive to aspect, specifically,
whether a predicate is telic or atelic.
14. Syntax and Argument Structure, Natsuko Tsujimura, Indiana University
Research on predicate argument structure has revealed a number of intriguing issues
relevant to morphology, semantics, syntax, as well as their interface areas. There have
been different theoretical approaches to argument structure, particularly focusing on the
way in which the relation between verb meaning and the distribution of a verb’s
arguments in syntax should be captured. Included in the set of proposed views are
“projectionist” and “constructionist” approaches, as well as the theory of “preferred
argument structure”. There has been a body of work that touches directly and indirectly
on argument structure in syntax and in syntax-lexical semantic interface in Japanese. This
chapter will first illustrate that past investigations of argument structure in Japanese have
made significant contributions to debates surrounding argument structure and have
enriched our understanding of the topic both typologically and theoretically. The chapter
will then discuss some data, including language acquisition, formation of innovative
verbs, and mimetic verbs, to examine the extent to which each of the Japanese
phenomena appeals to a specific view of argument structure (e.g. projectionist,
constructionist) and conversely the challenges that it presents.
15. Subject, Masatoshi Koizumi, Tohoku University
This chapter considers syntactic positions of subject in Japanese. In particular, it
discusses (i) whether the external argument of transitive verbs is base-generated in Spec,
TP or it is initially merged to a lower position (e.g. Spec, vP); (ii) (if the latter is the case)
whether it must, may, or must not move to a higher position; (iii) wither or not it can
undergo scrambling to a position higher than Spec, TP; and so on. My tentative
conclusion at this moment is that (i’) the external argument is external-merged with a
verbal projection; (ii’) whether it moves out of its initial position depends on factors such
as its categorial status, whether or not the object has moved across it, etc.; and (iii’) it can
move to a position higher than Spec, TP.
16. Case Marking, Hideki Kishimoto, Kobe University
The present chapter presents a survey on case marking, which plays a very important role
in Japanese grammar. This chapter begins by introducing the notion of structural and
inherent case marking, while explicating a difference in this conception between
generative grammar and traditional Japanese linguistics. After laying out the basics of
case marking in Japanese, this chapter discusses how case marking interacts with
syntactic structures, taking up some prominent issues on case marking, such as the
nominative-case and the double-o constraints, nominative-genitive conversion,
implemented via embedding under relative or nominal-complement clauses and via
possessor raising (as found in the so-called major-subject construction), and other case
alternation phenomena (such as one found in the locative alternation). For the up-to-date
research, this chapter makes an investigation of how case marking affects the syntactic
position of subjects, and argues that their structural position varies according to whether
tense licenses nominative case marking on an argument.
17. Ga/No Conversion, Masao Ochi, Osaka University
Since the seminal work by Harada (1971, 1976), the nominative/genitive case alternation
has received a great amount of attention in the literature on Japanese syntax (Bedell 1972,
Shibatani 1975, Nakai 1980, and Saito 1983 among many others). The first half of this
chapter reviews two major lines of approach to this construction, the D-licensing
approach (Miyagawa 1993, Ochi 2001 among others) and the C-licensing approach
(Watanabe 1996, Hiraiwa 2000 among others), by highlighting their advantages and
shortcomings. The second half of the chapter attempts to achieve the following: (a) to
provide a comprehensive account of the ‘mixed’ pattern of the nominative/genitive
subject and the nominative/genitive object of stative predicates (see Miyagawa 1993,
2011), and (b) to explain why the genitive subject cannot be focused (see Akaso and
Haraguchi 2011, Miyagawa 2011, 2012, 2013) while an element other than the genitive
subject can be focused in the same construction. The chapter will discuss these issues in a
cross-linguistic perspective, drawing insights from works on other languages, such as
Turkish, that also possess genitive subject constructions.
18. Passives, Tomoko Ishizuka, Tama University
This chapter investigates the passive voice system in Japanese within the framework of
generative grammar. Japanese passive voice system is extremely rich and is
conventionally divided into two types—direct and indirect passives. Unifying the two
types while assuming a single lexical entry of the passive morpheme -rare is theoretically
a desirable hypothesis, but it has never been successful (see Hoshi 1999). The difficulty
comes from the well-known phenomenon that unlike the direct passive, the indirect
passive appears not to contain a gap corresponding to the nominative subject (Kuno
1973). This chapter, however, questions this fundamental assumption and advances a
minimalist analysis that unifies Japanese passives by reanalyzing indirect passives as
pseudo-passives—passives with a gap in oblique and genitive positions. This analysis
brings the passive voice in Japanese much closer to those in Western languages.
19. Modification, Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo
How attributive modification works in Japanese is becoming a hot topic in recent years.
The basic issue has been whether Japanese has the kind of adnominal modification
structure found in languages like English and Italian. In this chapter, I will show that a
more fundamental question of identifying subclasses of adjectives must be addressed
before we can obtain meaningful results for adnominal modification in general. Different
semantically-defined classes of adjectives are recruited for particular purposes of
modification. An initial observation is that some basic classes can be recognized in
Japanese, but certain classes are absent. The source, and the extent, of variation are not
known yet. A preliminary conclusion, though, is that UG-based structure exists for
attributive modification. I will also argue that the conclusion about attributive
modification is significant in other areas of syntax involving extraction.
20. Relative Clause, Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka University
This chapter discusses syntactic properties of relative clauses in Japanese. In contrast to
their European counterparts, one notable characteristic of Japanese relative clauses is the
lack of overt relative pronouns (Fukui 2006, Fukui and Takano 2000, among others). One
other contrast to their European counterparts is the absence of island effects (Kuno 1973,
Murasugi 1991, among others). These observations already suggest the lack of the
position for a relative pronoun altogether (Murasugi 1991). In essence, Japanese relative
clauses have a categorial status contrasting with that of their European counterparts.
However, Hiraiwa (2001, 2002) argues that ga/no conversion in Japanese requires this
particular position, despite the absence of any overt relative pronoun. In light of such
debate, this chapter first reviews work on issues surrounding Japanese relative clauses,
and elucidates their syntactic properties, including the absence of island effects, the
unavailability of N’-ellipsis (Saito, Lin, and Murasugi 2008), and the presence of ga/no
conversion (Maki and Uchibori 2008, Miyagawa 1993, among others). The chapter then
shows that in order to account for these properties, the categorial status and the
derivational steps of Japanese relative clauses both need considering. On this basis, the
chapter proceeds by analyzing the properties of the clauses under discussion, paying
particular attention to the fact that the predicate of a Japanese relative clause is in the
noun-modifying form or the rentai form under traditional Japanese grammar. The
proposed analysis demonstrates intricate interaction between the categorial status and the
derivational steps in Japanese relative clauses.
21. Modality, Nobuko Hasegawa, Kanda University of International Studies
Modality in the traditional language research of Japanese is taken as an expression that is
concerned with the speaker’s attitude toward the propositional content and has two types;
epistemic and speech act. Epistemic modality, such as yoo-da ‘seem’, may constitute a
class of predicates that have to do with the probability of the proposition expressed. This
chapter, however, mainly deals with Speech Act modality that gives rise to different
sentence types, imperatives, volitionals, etc., which requires either the speaker or the
hearer as a subject. This requirement is analyzed as a process of the Spec-Head
agreement between the subject and the modality at the level of CP, accounting for the
phenomena of the so-called kakari-musubi. Then, it is extended to subordinate CPs,
where certain focus expressions correspond to particular subordinate markers.
22. Expressions That Contain Negation, Nobuaki Nishioka, Kyushu University
Linguistic phenomena involving negation manifest an intriguing aspect of clause
structures in Japanese, and previous analyses as well as the data involved still need to be
carefully examined. The phenomena include (i) the scope of negation (ii) the licensing
mechanism of negative sensitive items (NSIs) such as wh-MO (e.g. daRE-MO ‘who-MO’,
naNI-MO ‘what-MO), XP-sika and other elements whose distributions are limited only to
negative sentences. In this chapter, focusing on the syntactic aspects of the above-
mentioned phenomena, I attempt to demonstrate how the complexity of the phenomena
can be explicated with new data. After reviewing some previous analyses, I show the
elusiveness of the scope of negation in Japanese is resolved by observing data from the
Kumamoto dialect (KD) of Japanese. The data from KD clearly show us the syntactic
position of the subject as well as the syntactic position of Neg and contribute to
elucidating the clause structures of Japanese. After arguing that NSIs should be classified
at least into three types, following Miyagawa, Nishioka and Zeijlstra (2013), I suggest an
analysis in which the behaviors of NSIs naturally follow from the respective features of
the three types. The key notions of the analysis will be ‘focus’ and ‘topic’, as Miyagawa
(2010) argues that Japanese is a discourse-configurational language based on topic/focus.
Finally I discuss the implications of the analysis of NSIs in Japanese for the cross-
linguistic study of negative sentences since the study of negation in European languages
tends to classify NSIs only into two types, negative concord items (NCIs) and negative
polarity items (NPIs).
23. Morphology and Syntax, Yoko Sugioka, Keio University
Morphology-syntax interface has been the focus of the long-standing debates concerning
the place of morphology in grammar. While the lexicalists view words as syntactic
‘atoms’ listed in the lexicon that cannot be manipulated by syntactic rules, the
constructionists (or syntacticists) claim that words are built in syntax as phrases are.
Japanese as an agglutinative language has a wide array of word formation processes,
from those displaying lexical properties to a number of productive affixation processes
that involve interaction with syntax. After reviewing the discussion of each type and the
claims made in the past literature, this chapter explores special aspectual affixes in
Japanese as a major type of morphological operation on syntactic structure. The affixes
such as -tyuu (progressive), -zumi (perfective), mi- (imperfective) attaching to nominals,
and -kake (‘be about to’) and -tate (‘has just done’) attaching to verbs, will be discussed
in relation to selection of phrasal and lexical categories (VP, NP, N) as their host,
inducing or barring Genitive case alternations depending on their own category (N or
Asp), e.g. ronbun-o/no sippitu-tyuu (ni) ‘while writing a paper’ vs. ronbun-o/*no sippitu-
zumi da ‘has completed writing a paper,’ and forming property-ascribing predicates that
can form a compound noun as well (sippitu-zumi-genkoo ‘completed manuscript’). The
multiple facets of these affixes point to the difficulty of relegating morphology to one
component (syntax or the lexicon) as opposed to taking a modular view.
24. Syntax and Prosody, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Indiana University
This chapter investigates how prosody should be treated in the study of syntax. It first
reviews the major developments of the formal accounts of prosody-syntax interaction as
well as prosody-pragmatics correlation, taking up the wh-interrogatives of Japanese as a
case study. It then discusses how syntax can and should synchronize phonetic properties
of a sentence with its semantic interpretation while deriving them separately. The final
part of the chapter explores a future direction of generative syntax by extending the
analysis of prosody-syntax-semantics interaction to that of overt syntax in general. It will
be argued that such a move will allow us to achieve the proper association of various
surface forms and semantico-pragmatic interpretations appealing to a familiar
grammatical device and restriction on syntactic operations. The empirical coverage
encompasses the interaction of case morphology, adjacency, overt movement, and
prosody with thematic interpretation, predication and information packaging.
Subject index
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