Volume 26, Issue 1

Kuroda (1965, 1972, 1992) pointed out the distinction between topicalized and nontopicalized sentences in terms of judgment styles, discussing what semantico/cognitive functions they express. His work has set the foundations for generative studies of Japanese; however, the differences in judgment styles have not been well-represented in syntactic structure. In particular, thetic judgment sentences seem to have been mis-treated, which have often been mixed up with neutral description sentences in the sense of Kuno (1973). In this paper, I argue that thetic judgment sentences constitute an independent syntactic representation that shares the characteristics of presentationals such as Locative Inversion in English. The apparent differences between thetic judgments in Japanese and presentationals in English are attributed to the differences in these languages with respect to how sentence types are syntactically represented; either at the right periphery (i.e., at Head of the C system) or at the left periphery (i.e., at Spec of the C system).

This paper explores how the hypothetico-deductive method can be applied to research concerned with the properties of the language faculty. The paper first discusses how we can try to identify informant judgments that are likely a reflection of properties of the Computational System (or properties of the language faculty that are directly related to the Computational System), proposes a method of hypothesis testing in line with the hypothetico-deductive method, and provides an illustration by examining the predictions made under the lexical hypothesis that otagai in Japanese is a local anaphor.

According to Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) languages with configurational structures are expected to derive fixed word order. Hungarian is a typical example, deriving a fixed word order while retaining configurational structures. The moment Hungarian loses its configurational structure it yields free word order. This paper claims that there are languages with configurational structures, yet which allow free word order. Kuroda's dichotomy into “agreement forced and non-forced” languages accounts for this phenomenon. Agreement forced languages like English keep fixed word order, because the subject must occupy the position of the Specifier of Tense Phrase (TP-Spec) to get its features to agree with those of Tense in terms of person, number and gender. Agreement non-forced languages like Japanese allow any argument to fill the TP-Spec position, giving rise to free word order with configurational structures. Contrary to LCA, configurational structures do not necessarily result in fixed word order.

In Kuno and Johnson (2004), it was proposed that the double subject construction in Japanese (e.g., John-ga otoosan-ga sinde simatta ‘John - his father has died’) has a complex sentence structure of the type of [ S1 NP 1 -ga [ S2 NP 2 -ga Verbal]]. This structure was intended to account for the unacceptability of Yamada-sensei-ga inu-ga o-nakunari-ni natte simatta ‘Professor Yamada - his dog has died’ (Shibatani 1976): Subject Honorific Marking is clause-bound, and therefore, it cannot apply to the embedded clause verbal with the main-clause subject NP1-ga as target of deference. It turns out that this analysis produces an apparent paradox with respect to the licensing of negative polarity items (NPIs), which is also a clause-bound rule: an NPI can show up in the main-clause subject position with a negative verbal in the embedded clause, as in Taroo-sika otoosan-ga hukeikai-ni syussekisi-nakatta ‘Taro was the only one whose father attended the teacher-parent meeting.’ That is, it appears that while Subject Honorific Marking calls for a complex-sentence structure for the double-subject construction, NPI Licensing calls for a simplex-sentence structure. This paper is intended to resolve this paradox on the basis of (i) the dual role the verbal in the [ S1 ... [ S2 ... Verbal]] construction plays, and (ii) the properties of NPI Licensing, including the notion of “clause-boundedness” as it applies to the rule, that are very different from those of Subject Honorific Marking.

This paper proposes that the Japanese complementizer to is not a comp for propositions as is widely assumed, but is a comp for reports of direct discourse. Plann (1982) argues that que in Spanish is ambiguous between a comp for propositions and a comp for reports. I first motivate the proposal by demonstrating the parallelism between to and que. Then, I show that to, unlike que, is employed specifically for reports of direct discourse. I argue that there is a division of labor between to and another complementizer no: the former is for reports and the latter is for propositions. Finally, I discuss the distribution of to in wider contexts, for example in adjunct CPs, and present further evidence for the proposal.