Abstract
‘Case’ and ‘grammatical relations’ are central to syntactic theory, but rigorous treatments of these concepts in surface-oriented grammars such as Dynamic Syntax are pending. In this respect, Japanese is worthy of mention; in this language, the nominative case particle ga, which typically marks a subject, may mark an object in certain syntactic contexts, and more than one instance of ga may be present within a single clause. These patterns cannot be captured if we simply assume that ga marks a subject. In the present article, we aim to advance formal aspects of the framework, especially the mechanism of ‘structural underspecification,’ by proposing that the parse of a case particle maximally excludes potential landing sites of an unfixed node at the time of parsing the case particle, delaying the resolution of the unfixed node until a subsequent stage of structure building. This maximal exclusion approach to structural underspecification accounts for a range of case marking patterns and their connections with grammatical relations.
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Notes
When the subject of certain types of predicate is nominative-marked, it has an ‘exhaustive’ implication (Kuno 1973: 38). Unless an appropriate context is set out, sentences with such implications are degraded. Since exhaustive implications disappear in embedded clauses, koto ‘comp’ is put at the end
Japanese exhibits Major Subject Constructions (Kuroda 1992: 248), as illustrated in (i). Although (i) resembles (3), they should be distinguished. In (i), the first ga-NP and the second ga-NP stand in a possessor-possessum relation.
(i)
Ken-ga
imouto-ga
yasashii
K-nom
younger.sister-nom
sweet
Lit. ‘It is Keni that hisi younger sister is sweet.’
Nakamura et al. (2009) address Major Subject Constructions within Dynamic Syntax, but their account is formally illicit, as pointed out in Seraku (2016); see also Kiaer (2014). We assume that the first ga and the second ga are distinct in that only the latter concerns grammatical relations. The account of ga, developed in this article, is fully consistent with Seraku’s (2016) analysis of Major Subject Constructions.
There have recently been debates about the axiom. For instance, though it is generally assumed that the node set out by the axiom occupies the root position (Kempson et al. 2001: 299), this assumption is challenged by Seraku (2013: 73), who claims that the position of the node introduced by the axiom may be determined later in the course of structure building.
(12)a may be comparable to search systems of library resources. Suppose that a library stores three books Food and Health, History of Japan, and History of Money. If one puts History in the search box, the system maximally excludes all book titles without History, in this case excluding Food and Health. If one puts Food in the search box, the system excludes all book titles without Food, excluding History of Japan and History of Linguistics (in which case the system happens to output the single title Food and Health.).
In a similar vein, Cann et al. (2005: 235) argue that an unfixed node introduced by local *adjunction is differentiated from an unfixed node introduced by another computational action *adjunction in that the tree-node statement for the former, <↑0↑1*>Tn(α), is distinct from that for the latter, <↑*>Tn(α).
Formally, ?Stative may be expressed as a requirement at a ‘situation’ node (Cann 2011).
One reviewer wondered whether our account predicts that example (ii), where the non-stative verb tatai ‘hit’ is involved, allows the ‘a’-reading alone. (Example (ii) was constructed by the author based on the reviewer’s comment.)
(ii)
Ken-ga
tatai-ta
(koto)
K-nom
hit-past
(comp)
a. ‘Ken hit (something).’
b. *‘(Someone) hit Ken.’
In our analysis, ga resolves the unfixed node for Ken as the subject or object node. If the unfixed node is resolved as the subject node, the ‘a’-reading arises. If the unfixed node is resolved as the object node, the root node is decorated with ?Stative but this requirement cannot be met by the non-stative verb tatai ‘hit.’ Thus, the ‘b’-reading is ruled out. (?Stative is posited only when the unfixed node is resolved as the object node; see Sect. 5.) I am grateful to the reviewer for bringing this issue to my attention.
The formulation of ?Stativedat is left for future work (see also footnote 6). The treatment of ni-object is more complicated because the predicates allowing ni-object constitute a heterogeneous set (e.g. ‘meet,’ ‘resemble’). As the number of predicates allowing ni-object is small, it might be reasonable to encode relevant constraints heterogeneously for each predicate allowing ni-object.
One reviewer wondered how to prevent the unfixed node for Naomi from being resolved at the subject node or the object node in (40) when Ken and ringo are covert. Firstly, our analysis correctly prevents the unfixed node for Naomi from being resolved as the subject node; if this happens, ?Stativedat is posited at the root node but this cannot be satisfied by the non-stative verb age ‘give.’ Secondly, the analysis is in principle capable of preventing the unfixed node for Naomi from being resolved as the object node, if we postulate lexically heterogeneous constraints encoded in the dative ni, as suggested in footnote 9. I thank the reviewer for his/her constructive question.
In (55), Ken-ga furansugo-o yom is parsed in the embedded structure. To this end, the parser needs to run generalised adjunction before parsing Ken. This action introduces an unfixed ?Ty(t)-node, which may be embedded in an arbitrary depth. See Cann et al. (2005: 242) for details.
It might be expected that the o-marked object takes scope under ‘can,’ whilst the ga-marked object takes scope over ‘can,’ provided that the node for ‘can’ appears in a higher structure only when the object is o-marked. Tada (1992) indeed observes this scope pattern. It has been pointed out, however, that despite a strong tendency for this scope pattern, it is no more than a tendency (Koizumi 2008).
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Acknowledgements
My sincere gratitude goes to Ruth Kempson, who provided me with constructive and stimulating comments on an earlier version of this article. I appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their valuable questions and suggestions.
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Seraku, T. A “Maximal Exclusion” Approach to Structural Underspecification in Dynamic Syntax. J of Log Lang and Inf 30, 407–428 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-019-09308-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-019-09308-0