Takashi Nakajima

Toyama Prefectural University · Arts and Sciences

All the previous analyses on the passive construction in Japanese crucially rely on two tacit assumptions; (i) (r)are is a single morpheme that uniquely derives passive construction, and (ii) passive involves movement. This work argues that these assumptions are unfounded and shows that (r)are consists of two parts: (r)ar and e. The former is a pur...

Using deadjectival psych verbs with -garu in Japanese, this study shows that agglutinative complex predicate formation is done by recursive application of Merge to roots and functional heads. This process creates a layered syntactic structure, with each layer providing the computational system with (i) specific semantic features, (ii) arguments, an...

This paper shows that a root in Japanese could be derived to an adjective or a verb from the common root by "little" a and "little v". Importantly, the little heads are homophonous /k/: in the case of adjective, it is unvoiced but in the case of verb, it becomes /g/ under the structurally conditioned voicing assimilation. Thus, the morpheme "-garu"...

About half of world’s languages derive predicates by some degree of agglutination. Precisely how it is done, however, has not been made clear in the literature. One of the most crucial problems is that no theory has successfully treated agglutinating functional categories in compositional morpho-syntax and morpho-semantics. I propose a theory that...

Some grammaticalized roots have the phonological representation VC that is not permitted under the conventional (C)V form of mora. The C segment of VC is crucially underspecified, and filling this segment plays a significant role for the wellformedness of complex predicates.

The causative morpheme /(s)ase/ in Japanese is not a single morpheme as previously assumed but is the amalgam of the following independent heads with respective phonetic representations; ‘little’ v /a/, Voice /ø/, Eff /s/ and Get /e/. They are grammaticalized verbal roots and license relevant arguments in their specifier positions to build the synt...

Breaking syntactic symmetry is a crucial issue in the Minimalist theorizing due to the role it plays for labeling and the visibility at the interfaces (Kayne 1994, Collins 2002, 2014, Moro 2000, Rizzi 2010, Chomsky 1995, 2008, 2013, Hornstein 2008, Cecchetto & Donati, 2015 and many others). In this talk, I will show that some heads lack w-features...

The paper reveals how the development of the new (s)ase causative in Japanese set the course for the old form simu to be marginalized.

膠着語の述「語」形成過程とその統語的・意味的関連を明らかにする。

A radically different approach to the syntax and semantics of causative and passive in Japanese has been proposed following Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, Marantz 1997, 2007) and the Phase based syntax in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 2001 et seq.). The approach takes a ‘decompositional’ or ‘combinatorial’ view of complex predicate...

There is a long held assumption that passives in Japanese are derived with a single morpheme (r)are that is taken either as a suffix or a verb. This paper argues that analyses that are based upon this assumption cannot adequately explain the true nature of the constructions. It argues instead that (r)are must be decomposed into constituting parts,...

This paper proposes a novel approach that uniformly accounts for the in-choative–causative alternations and the causative formation in Japanese. The crucial idea lies in the realization that /a/, /s/ and /e/ that compose so-called causative morpheme (s)ase is not mono-morphemic: i.e. they are heads with their own morphosyntactic and semantic import...

This paper proposes a novel analysis on the light verb construction (LVC) based upon the Root Hypothesis (Halle and Maranz 1993, Maranz 1997, Arad 2003) and Aktionsart- based syntax (Ramchand 2001). It is shown that verbal nouns (VNs) are category neutral words that are subject to (de)nominalization and (de)verbalization processes. These processes...