Japanese 'tough' Sentences Revisited

概要

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On the basis of the review of Inoue (1978) and reorganization of its contents, this paper arrives at a new proposal for an analysis of the four types of `tough' sentences previously proposed by the author. Some important works on both English and Japanese `tough' sentences are referred to as important theoretical and empirical sources. This paper is based on the following basic assumptions of crucial syntactic mechanisms: (i) the choice of nitotte as a matrix adjunct, (ii) the choice of vP. The choice of both (i) and (ii) derives Type I. The choice of only (ii) leads to the sentences like the following: Momenmono-wa kawak-asi yasu-i ("Cotton textiles are easy to dry"). Choosing neither (i) nor (ii) results in Type III. Type IV is derived without choosing (i), (ii), and Verb-raising. Type II is exceptional in choosing a matrix subject, which is coreferential with the complement subject. It is further assumed that topic phrases (Topes} and focus phrases (FPs) as well as grammatical subjects play the function of sentence building in Japanese. The particle ga marking a focus is treated as one of the delimiters. Both topics and foci, marked with wa and ga respectively, are raised to Tope and FP respectively. It is assumed that these phrases carry specific features attracted by the same features in Tope and FP
神田外語大学の論文
2004-03-30