Scrambling in Japanese as Pure Merge
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概要
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There is mounting evidence that scrambling in Japanese is an instance of Pure Merge, i.e., a movement that takes place without being motivated by the necessity of feature checking (cf. Fukui (1993) ; Saito and Fukui (1998) ; Saito (To appear)). However, a blind application of this approach predicts that anything can be scrambled anywhere in Japanese, which is not the case. There are restrictions on movable elements and possible landing sites. In order to explain away the restriction while maintaining the scrambling-as-Merge analysis, I propose that scrambling in Japanese is a syntactic operation that creates a predicate, of which a scrambled phrase becomes a subject at LF. I also show that scrambling in Japanese obeys an LF interface economy condition like the one proposed by Fox (2000). After demonstrating that the scrambling-as-Merge analysis is maintainable, I locate the availability of scrambling in Japanese in a larger picture envisaged by Saito (2002) under the name of the Derivational Conflgurational Parameter.
- Tokyo University English Linguistics Association,東京大学英語学研究会,Harvard University,University of Tokyoの論文