Invisible Agr in Japanese

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show that, even in a language like Japanese which lacks overt morphological agreement, Agreement Phrases not only exist, but also play an important role in the grammar. Evidence comes primarily from facts about scope interaction in certain complex predicate constructions. The article also presents indirect support for the core idea of Watanabe's (1993) three-layered Case theory.Since Pollock (1989) and Chomsky (1991), much work has been done on the Split Infl Hypothesis, according to which traditional Infl should be decomposed into several different syntactic categories including Tense and Agreement. There is, however, little agreement as to whether languages without overt agreement morphology have Agreement Phrases as characterized in , and two anonymous TLR reviewers. 2. In this paper, we will not be concerned with subject positions. Thus, they are not represented in structural descriptions (tree diagrams, etc.). For a recent discussion on subject positions, see Koizumi (1995). The Linguistic Review 15 (1998), 1-39 0167-6318/98/015-001 © Walter de Gruyter Brought to you by | University of Queensland -UQ Library Authenticated Download Date | 6/16/15 12:06 PM 3. If Case is an LF requirement (and not an overt one), word order facts would not provide us with such information anyway (Howard Lasnik, personal communication).Brought to you by |

On Comparative Quantification in the Verbal Domain

“…I assume that verbs have an extra slot for the event argument (Davidson 1967). Moreover, I adopt Kratzer's (1996, to (Sugioka 1985, Kageyama and Yumoto 1997, Koizumi 1998. In contrast, -sugiru with an adjective first combines with the adjective, and the complex predicate adjective+-sugiru combines with the subject.…”

The ingredients of comparison: The semantics of the excessive construction in Japanese

“…In addition, I assume that -sugi is a raising verb that takes a sentential complement (Sugioka 1985, Kageyama & Yumoto 2007, Koizumi 1998. Koizumi (1998) (Koizumi 1998: 5) Given the contrast above, -sugi is shown to be a raising verb.…”

“…Koizumi (1998) (Koizumi 1998: 5) Given the contrast above, -sugi is shown to be a raising verb. When it combines with the verb tabe 'to eat', the sentence is ambiguous between two readings, as shown in (20).…”

“…sugi > only (For too long a time, John ate nothing but meat) (Koizumi 1998: 5) It follows that a -sugi sentence has the structure in (21), where -sugi takes a sentential complement to form a VP. The subject of the vP is raised to the spec of the TP to receive nominative case (Sugioka 1985, Kageyama & Yumoto 2007, Koizumi 1998 8:12…”

“…First, following Sugioka (1985), Kageyama & Yumoto (2007), Koizumi (1998), Nakanishi assumes that -sugi, like 'seems' in English, is a raising verb that takes a sentential complement. In (6), this sentential complement is represented by the VoiceP.…”