Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese
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Noriko Kawasaki
Abstract
Back in the 1970s, Kazuko Inoue observed that some active sentences in Japanese allow a prepositional subject. Along with impersonal sentences pointed out by S.-Y. Kuroda, such examples suggest that the nominative subject is not an obligatory element in Japanese sentences. While this observation supports the hypothesis that important characteristics of the Japanese language follow from its lack of (forced-)agreement, Japanese potential sentences require the nominative ga on at least one argument. The present article argues that the nominative case particle ga is semantically vacuous even where a ga-marked phrase is indispensable or the ga-marked phrase is construed as exhaustively listing. Stative predicates require a ga-marked phrase because they can ascribe a property to an argument only by function application. The exhaustive listing reading arises by conversational implicature when the presence of a ga-marked phrase signals that a topic phrase is being avoided. The discussion leads to a semantic account of subject honorification whereby the honorification only concerns the semantic content of the predicate, and does not involve agreement with the subject. It is also shown that sentences with a prepositional subject allow zibun only as a long-distance anaphor, which indicates that they do lack a subject with the nominative Case.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Yasuo Ishii for discussion, the editors of the volume for their kind support, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, especially those that urged me to explore the topics discussed in Section 5.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Guest Editors’ Notes
- Obituary: Dr Kazuko Inoue (1919–2017)
- Articles
- On so-called “gapless” constructions in Japanese
- Tonal alignment and preaccentuation
- Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese
- Floating quantifiers in Japanese passives and beyond
- Strong and weak pronouns in the covert system of pronouns
- On some constraints on right dislocation in Japanese
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Guest Editors’ Notes
- Obituary: Dr Kazuko Inoue (1919–2017)
- Articles
- On so-called “gapless” constructions in Japanese
- Tonal alignment and preaccentuation
- Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese
- Floating quantifiers in Japanese passives and beyond
- Strong and weak pronouns in the covert system of pronouns
- On some constraints on right dislocation in Japanese
