S.-Y. Kuroda

Whether We Agree or Not: A Comparative Syntax of English and Japanese

English has visible wh-movement; Japanese doesn’t. Japanese scrambles and word order is free; English doesn’t scramble and has an orderly word order. The topic is prominent in Japanese; it is not in English. Japanese has double or multiple subject structures; English does not. Such are the major typological differences between English and Japanese, and some linguists entertain the idea that parametric differences concerning Deep Structure exist between English and Japanese which are responsible for these differences. It has been proposed that English is configurational while Japanese is nonconfigurational; cf: Hale (1980), Chomsky (1981), among others. Or it has been suggested that Japanese clauses are Max(V), while English ones are Max(I); for example, Chomsky in a lecture at UCSD, 1985. I would like to sketch in this paper a claim to the contrary that there is no parametric difference between English and Japanese that results in essentially different deep structure configurations. Instead, the parametric difference between English and Japanese consists simply of the following: Agreement is forced in English, it is not in Japanese. 1

ENGLISH RELATIVIZATION AND CERTAIN RELATED PROBLEMS

It is claimed that what and which, both as interrogatives and as relatives, are derived from the same underlying representations, WH + SOME and WH + THAT, respectively. It is assumed that, in the basic form of relativization, the two occurrences of the noun modified by a relative clause, in the matrix and the constituent sentences, may take different determiners. Indeed, all of the four possible ways of distributing the two basic determiners in the matrix and the constituent sentences are claimed to be realized in certain types of relativization. A transformation called DEFINITIZATION which transforms indefinite determiners into definite ones is substantiated in the course of the argument. Some considerations of semantic character are also added.

On Japanese Passives

1. Two treatments of passive sentences have been proposed in recent years in the transformational syntax of Japanese. Following Howard and Niyekawa-Howard (1976), I refer to them as the ‘uniform’ and the ‘nonuniform’ theory of Japanese passives.

Movement of Noun Phrases in Japanese

This paper is devoted to a study of the movement of noun phrases in Japanese in general and an analysis of so-called ‘tough’ sentences in particular. * Contrary to the widely held view that Japanese lacks movement in syntax, I wish to claim that ‘tough’ sentences involve movement of noun phrases. The study of ‘tough’ sentences will then lead us to the problem of multiple ga sentences and to that of ‘topic’. Again, contrary to the prevailing view that topics are generated in situ, I will contend that topics, or topics that in a certain sense deserve to be so named, are derived by movement.

Pivot-Independent Relativization in Japanese

It has generally been assumed that Japanese relativization consists of a simple process of deletion, in the relative clause, of a noun phrase coreferential with the noun phrase that the clause modifies. Thus, it has been believed that, as McCawley puts it, “a relative clause, whether restrictive or nonrestrictive, consists of a truncated sentence (specifically, a sentence which lacks the NP that is relativized over and any case markers that go with that NP”, and “the relative clause precedes the NP which it modifies”. 1 In a series of articles, I will present and discuss the claim that alongside this familiar type of relativization Japanese also possesses the type of relative clause which recently has increasingly drawn linguists’ attention and which is commonly referred to as ‘headless relative clause’.

What can Japanese Say About Government and Binding

For some years Japanese has been cited as a prime example of a nonconfigurational language. This idea was put forth independently of the main ideas of the government and binding theory and developed in parallel to it at first. What is claimed in essence is that (1) Japanese sentences have a flat structure, lacking the category VP, (2) not only are they flat, but they are like mobiles, lacking linear word order, and (3) finally, sentences with so-called complex predicates like causatives are further flattened, since complex predicates are stored in the lexicon and sentence-embedding is not recognized. This last point is the influence of lexicalism. Descriptively at least, then, the nonconfigurational Japanese syntax appears to be a total return to structuralism: see Farmer (1980), Miyagawa (1980).

Complex predicates and predicate raising

This paper discusses major issues that have arisen in the analysis of sentences with complex predicates in Japanese from early transformational grammar to the present minimalist program. Particular emphasis is placed on the treatment of the causative construction to assess the influence of the lexicalist hypothesis and its aftermath. One recent development in the minimalist program that relates the issue raised by the light verb construction to the problem of complex predicates in general is surveyed. The paper ends by hinting at the human language faculty consisting of two overlapping but distinct grammars, a natural grammar of human instinct and a rational grammar of human intellect.

Lexical and Productive Causatives in Japanese: an examination of the theory of paradigmatic structure

In t roduc t ion Part I. The causa t ive s u f f i x e s -(s)ase and -(s)as 1. T w o types of causa t ives 1 1 . Lexica l and p roduc t ive causa t ives 1.2. The p roduc t ive causa t ive su f f i xe s -(s)ase/-(s)as 2. T h e s u f f i x -(s)as 2.1 . The lexical causa t ive su f f ix -as 2.2 . The l ex ica l -p roduc t ive causa t ive ambigu i ty 2 .2 .1 . The doub le causa t ive test 2 .2 .2 . The honor i f i c test 2 .2 .3 . Tes ts fo r p roduc t ive causa t ives 2 .2 .4 . The id iom test 3 T h e s u f f i x -(s)ase 3.1. The su f f ix -ase in the lexicon 3.2. Lex ica l -p roduc t ive ambigu i ty 3.2.1. Genera l cons ide ra t ions 3.2.2. The doub le causa t ive test 3.2.3. The honor i f i c test 4. T h e lexical in tegr i ty pr inc ip le for id ioms 4 .1 . A plausible basis for a genera l id iom test 4 .2 . A revis ion of the lexical in tegr i ty pr inc ip le 5. The re fu ta t ion of an a rgument agains t the t r ans fo rma t iona l app roach

Judgment Forms and Sentence Forms

I would like to examine the functional differences associated with the formal contrast between the topicalized and the nontopicalized sentences in Japanese. In the course of the arguments that follow, I am going to draw on the distinctions between judgment and proposition, between the categorical and the thetic judgments, between asserting and affirming, and between predication and nonpredicational description. This is a study as much of the function of Japanese sentence forms as of the significance of such cognitive notions and distinctions as these mentioned above in the linguistic science. The reader may wish to look at the last subsection of this Introduction (subsection 1.5) and the last section of this Chapter (Section 12, Summary and Conclusion) in order to anticipate where this study leads us.

The Categorical and the Thetic Judgment Reconsidered

In the early seventies I published three articles related to Anton Marty: ‘Anton Marty and the transformational theory of grammar’. The categorical and the thetic judgment’; and ‘Edmund Husserl, Grammaire Generale et Raisonnee, and Anton Marty.’ My involvement with Marty came about rather accidentally. When I was a graduate student at MIT, I took a course from Noam Chomsky that later became his Cartesian Linguistics. For the required paper, I decided to look at Husserl’s work on pure logical grammar, a section of his Logical Investigations. Why I did so, I no longer recall. Perhaps Professor Chomsky suggested it, perhaps I had heard about it, perhaps both. There was no particularly good reason. I had not studied phenomenology, or for that matter any philosophers particularly. Professor Chomsky lent me a French translation of Husserl, there being no English translation then. I went to the Widener Library at Harvard University to borrow the German original. It turned out that the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen was not available; someone had taken it out. I came back with the first German edition, and set out to read Husserl, consulting the French translation, based on the second edition, since my French was better than my German. I soon began to notice differences between the two editions, both major and minor.