Hideki Kishimoto

Binding of Indeterminate Pronouns and Clause Structure in Japanese

This article shows, on the basis of indeterminate pronoun binding, that tense-related elements are checked in the checking domain of T and that other elements are checked in the checking domain of the topmost light verb v. The data pertaining to indeterminate pronoun binding, coupled with the data on focus particles, reveal that in Japanese, checking configurations are established in LF. LF movement employed for Case checking is argued to involve the raising of a phrasal category, on the basis that it displays properties different from those of nonphrasal movement in LF. The newly attested data from Japanese lead to the conclusion that constituents can be reordered after narrow syntax and that strict locality is required for checking to take place, contrary to Chomskys (2000, 2001) proposal.

Indefinite Pronouns and Overt N-Raising

INDEFINITE PRONOUNS AND OVERT N-RAISING Hideki Kishimoto Hyogo University of Teacher Education Chomsky, Noam. 1995. Categories and transformations. In The Minimalist Program, 219–394. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Collins, Chris. 1996. Local economy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Johnson, Kyle. 1991. Object positions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9:577–636. Lasnik, Howard. 1996. On certain structural aspects of anaphora. Paper presented on the Internet during the online conference on Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding, October 31, 1996. [Available at http://linguist.emich.edu/linconf/lasnik/] Lasnik, Howard, and Mamoru Saito. 1991. On the subject of infinitives. In CLS 27. Part 1, The General Session, 324–343. Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. Pesetsky, David. 1994. Some long-lost relatives of Burzio’s Generalization. Paper presented at the Conference on Burzio’s Generalization, Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht. Ura, Hiroyuki. 1993. On feature-checking for wh-traces. In MIT working papers in linguistics 18: Papers on Case and agreement I, 241–280. MITWPL, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

Locational verbs, agreement, and object shift in Japanese

In Japanese, the locational verbs iru (animate) and aru (inanimate) can express locative-existential meanings when they are intransitive, and possessive meanings when they are transitive. The animacy alternation that occurs between aru and iru is conditioned by the subject of an intransitive locative-existential verb, and by the object of a transitive possessive verb. In Japanese, animacy agreement is generally obligatory, but when the inanimate verb aru is used transitively, agreement does not obtain (unless it is forced by other factors). This peculiar behavior of animacy agreement in Japanese is shown to follow straightforwardly on the assumption that the light verb associated with the animate verb iru has a strong D-feature to attract its nominative phrase overtly, while the light verb associated with the inanimate verb aru has a weak D-feature, which does not require its overt movement, and that instantiation of agreement is contingent upon whether or not the nominative phrase is overtly raised to [Spec, v]. This paper demonstrates that Japanese is a language which selectively induces overt object shift

Topic prominency in Japanese

Abstract In light of the data regarding the focusing of the particle dake ‘only’, this article shows that in Japanese, wa-marked topic phrases are placed in the CP domain, and argues that this can take place either in overt constituent structure or in LF. Other ordinary phrases – including ga-marked major subjects that are sometimes assumed to reside in the same clause-peripheral position as topics – are shown to be located within TP. It is also argued that Japanese shows no evidence for “overt” wh-movement, despite Takahashis claim (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 11: 655–678, 1993, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3: 265–300, 1994) to the contrary. The discussion suggests that the prominent use of the CP domain is subject to typological variation, and that Japanese, unlike English, is a topic-prominent language, in which a topic is placed in the CP domain – i.e., TopP located above TP – by the LF output in order to form a topic-comment structure.

On the Existence of Null Complementizers in Syntax

ON THE EXISTENCE OF NULL COMPLEMENTIZERS IN SYNTAX Hideki Kishimoto Kobe University Ohta, Kaoru. 1997. Tense in the subject raising constructions. In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 6, ed. by Ho-min Sohn and John Haig, 353–368. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Postal, Paul M. 1974. On raising. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sakai, Hiromu. 1996. Clause reduction in Japanese. In Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 2, ed. by Masatoshi Koizumi, Masayuki Oishi, and Uli Sauerland, 193–212. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 29. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MITWPL. Sakai, Hiromu. 1998. Raising asymmetry and improper movement. In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 7, ed. by Noriko Akatsuka, Hajime Hoji, Shoichi Iwasaki, Sung-Ock Sohn, and Susan Strauss, 481–497. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stowell, Tim. 1983. Subjects across categories. The Linguistic Review 2:285–312. Stowell, Tim. 1989. Subjects, specifiers, and X-bar theory. In Alternative concepts of phrase structure, ed. by Mark Baltin and Anthony S. Kroch, 232–262. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stowell, Tim. 1991. Small clause restructuring. In Principles and parameters in comparative grammar, ed. by Robert Freidin, 182–218. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tada, Hiroaki. 1992. Nominative objects in Japanese. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 14:91–108. Takahashi, Daiko. 2002. Determiner raising and scope shift. Linguistic Inquiry 33:575–615. Tanaka, Hidekazu. 2002. Raising out of CP. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 637–652. Uchibori, Asako. 1997. Opacity and subjunctive complements in Japanese. In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 6, ed. by Ho-min Sohn and John Haig, 399–414. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Zamparelli, Roberto. 1995. Layers in the Determiner Phrase. Doctoral dissertation, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.

Subjects and constituent structure in Japanese

Abstract In this article, on the basis of a set of new data that allow us to assess the position of subjects, it is shown that in Japanese, ordinary subjects (which are marked with either nominative or dative case) are moved to Spec of TP, while the subjects of oblique-subject constructions do not undergo subject raising. We argue that subject raising to TP is motivated if the clause is constrained by the nominative-case requirement, which dictates that a clause must have at least one nominative argument. Nevertheless, there are also cases among idioms where nominative subjects remain in vP-internal position; that is, idiom subjects, which are interpreted non-compositionally as part of clausal idioms, do not undergo subject raising. In Japanese, subject raising to TP motivated by the EPP requirement of T is most typically instantiated, owing to the fairly persistent nominative-case requirement, but still, it is not unitarily implemented, since subjects do not undergo raising to TP if they receive oblique marking, which brings out the effect of voiding the nominative-case requirement, or constitute part of idiomatic expressions.

Honorific agreement in Japanese

Subject honorification is one well-known diagnostic for subjecthood in Japanese, and is often thought to target “subjects”. In this squib, I will provide a little more structurally oriented characterization of subject honorification, and propose that subject honorification involves agreement licensed at the level of vP: that is, subject honorification is rendered licit when an honorific head successfully agrees with an argument located in Spec of vP, comprising the honorific verb. It is suggested that the target of subject honorification can be defined without reference to the notion of “subject”, and that the “subject” orientation of subject honorification emerges as a natural consequence of vP-level agreement. The proposed analysis can capture one important exception for the “subject-orientation” generalization on subject honorification, which would remain unaccounted for if subject honorification were held to target only subjects. The facts of subject honorification also lead to the conclusion that when arguments undergo A-movement to TP, they need to go through all types of vPs in the clause.