Abstract
For a long time Japanese was taken to be a language lacking a subject-object asymmetry in subextraction. Two recent experimental studies have challenged this conclusion suggesting that Japanese complex NP (CNP) subjects are more opaque to subextraction than CNP objects (Jurka 2010; Jurka et al. 2011). Given the significance of this claim for the cross-linguistic landscape of subextraction phenomena, this study further explores the nature of subextraction phenomena in Japanese with three acceptability judgment experiments. We show that overt subextraction (scrambling) out of CNP subjects and objects results in similar acceptability ratings once the relative weight and order of constituents are properly controlled for. Recent experimental work which suggested that Japanese has a subject-object asymmetry to subextraction predicted that wh-in-situ adjuncts should lead to greater degradation for subextraction out of subjects as compared to subextraction out of objects. To test this prediction, we also present novel experimental data on wh-in-situ phrases inside subjects and objects in Japanese. Our results show that the argument/adjunct status of wh-in-situ phrases does not interact with the subject/object status of the CNPs, further invalidating the recent claims. Together these findings support the traditional view that Japanese has no subject-object asymmetry in subextraction, whether overt or covert. Having restored the status of Japanese as a language with no subject-object asymmetry in subextraction, we discuss possible reasons that could account for the absence of such an asymmetry. We suggest that the lack of asymmetry is due to Japanese subjects’ inability to satisfy the EPP on T/C; we further contend that cross-linguistic variation in subject transparency follows from whether or not the feature D comes from subjects.
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Notes
Rackowski and Richards (2005) argue that only constituents that enter into an Agree relation with a phase head (complements) are transparent to subextraction. This follows from the assumption that once a probe has entered into an Agree relation with a particular goal, it can disregard that goal for future Agree relations, i.e., it can enter into an Agree relation with a constituent internal to the former goal. Under their proposal, subextraction out of subjects is not permitted because subjects do not enter an Agree relation with v. For languages that allow for subextraction out of subjects, Rackowski and Richards (2005) suggest that subjects actually enter into an Agree relation with v (585; fn. 15). Under Müller’s (2010) proposal, in order for a phrase to move to a phase edge, an edge feature must be assigned to the phase head. Edge features can be assigned to a phase head freely as long as the head has an undischarged feature and therefore remains active in the derivation. Once a phase head has discharged all its features, it becomes inert and no edge feature can be assigned to it. This means that subextraction from a subject is blocked if the operation that merges a subject is the final operation taking place in a phase. Subextraction out of a moved phrase is blocked for the same reason.
Tamaoka et al. (2003) examined the effects of relative weight and order of constituents in processing and comprehension of Japanese sentences. Their results reveal no effects of constituent weight or order on either reading time or comprehension accuracy of Japanese transitive sentences, both at phrase- and sentence-levels.
We manipulated the relative order and length of constituents within the embedded clause since the CNP is always inside the embedded clause. While previous studies report the effects of the long-before-short preference in simple sentences (Dryer 1980; Hawkins 1994; Yamashita and Chang 2001; Yamashita 2002), we expected that the effects of the preference would be seen in embedded clauses as well.
Ross (1967, 1986) argues that Japanese CNPs with a complement clause headed by koto ‘fact’ are not islands (i) while CNPs with a complement clause headed by to yuu, literally ‘that say,’ are (ii), based on the observation that relativization out of CNPs results in unacceptability only with CNPs with to yuu, as in (ii-b):
- (i)
- (ii)
Haig (1976), on the other hand, argues that scrambling can occur from a CNP with a complement clause headed by by to yuu (iii-a), while scrambling out of a relative clause (RC) is impossible (iii-b).
- (iii)
Finally, Saito (1985) sides with Haig (1976) in that scrambling out of a RC (iv-a) is worse than that out of a CNP with a complement clause headed by to yuu (iv-b). Nevertheless, Saito considers both cases to instantiate island violations. Saito further notes that subextraction out of a CNP with a complement clause headed by to yuu is much more degraded if the CNP is definite, for instance, accompanied by a demonstrative.
- (iv)
Thus, a consensus in the theoretical literature appears to be that Japanese RCs are islands whereas the island status of the CNPs with koto ‘fact’ and to yuu ‘that say’ has remained controversial. More recently, Fukuda and Sprouse (2017) used a factorial design to systematically compare subextraction out of a CP complement with subextraction out of different structures including RCs and CNPs headed by to yuu. Their study found a significant interaction between the structure type (CNP vs. RC) and subextraction (no scrambling vs. scrambling), supporting the claim that RCs are islands in Japanese. The comparison between CPs and CNPs with to yuu, however, found no significant interaction between the structure type (CPs vs. CNPs with to yuu) and subextraction (no scrambling vs. scrambling), suggesting that CNPs with to yuu are not islands. Taken together with the observation that CNPs headed by koto are more transparent to subextraction than CNPs headed by to yuu, Fukuda and Sprouse’s (2017) results suggest that it is safe to assume that CNPs headed by koto are not islands.
- (i)
The results below will show that the baseline acceptability is actually much higher for A sentences than for B sentences, which indicates that the processing cost of CNP arguments is negligible.
But see below and also Sect. 7 for further discussions of this effect.
In Table 3, CNPS stands for “CNP subject.”
CNPO stands for “CNP object.”
A reviewer points out that the spell-out/phase constraint and the freezing constraint may be operating simultaneously; that much can be deduced from the findings reported in Jurka (2010) and Jurka et al. (2011) for German. Under such a scenario, 1A violates both of the constraints (i.e., subextraction out of a moved external argument) while 3A only violates the freezing constraint (i.e., subextraction out of a moved internal argument). We did not include our prediction under such a scenario in the table because it is not clear if and how acceptability judgments reflect simultaneous violations of multiple constraints: should we expect an additive effect? Our results in Experiment 1 and 2 show, however, that in Japanese neither the freezing effect nor the spell-out/phase effect is observed. Thus, we can conclude that a scenario where both effects are present is equally untenable.
Again, under the scenario in which both the positional constraint and the freezing constraint are simultaneously operating, (i) violates both of the constrains (i.e., subextraction out of a moved external argument) while (ii) only violates the positional constraint (i.e., subextraction out of a moved internal argument). As stated in fn. 10, we did not discuss the possibility of both constraints operating. First, it is not clear if and how acceptability judgments reflect the difference between a single violation of a constraint and simultaneous multiple violations of multiple constraints, and second, Experiments 1 and 2 show that neither the freezing effect nor the positional effect is observed with Japanese arguments.
The translation of this adjunct may be somewhat misleading, suggesting that the relevant PP is a parenthetical; however, these constituents in our stimuli are bona fide PPs and can be used as a signpost for short scrambling.
Here one may worry that the sentence-initial PP X-niyoruto ‘according to X’ may be interpreted as a part of the following CNP. Under such parsing of the experimental sentences, the scrambling could be analyzed as taking place inside the CNP, contrary to our intention. However, we believe that the suggested parsing of the PP as a constituent of the CNP is unlikely for several reasons. First, the experimental sentences were presented with punctuation which facilitates the intended parse. In particular, a comma was placed between the PP and the initial element of the CNP in all the experimental sentences, discouraging the parsing of the PP together with the following CNP. Second, all the experimental sentences involved X-niyoruto ‘according to X’ and an evidential marker such as yooda ‘seem’ in the matrix predicate. This is a very common pattern, and the presence of an evidential marker in the matrix predicate strongly suggests that the PP also belongs to the matrix clause. Finally, the CNPs in the experimental sentences all involved -koto ‘fact’, which triggers a presupposition that the proposition expressed by a -koto clause is true (e.g., Kuno 1973). In contrast, the PP Xniyoruto ‘according to X’ explicitly denies such a presupposition. This semantic mismatch between -koto and X-niyoruto makes the hypothesized constituent with the PP the CNP headed by -koto infelicitous. Thus, we believe that speakers are unlikely to have entertained a parse of X-niyoruro according to X as a part of a CNP headed by -koto.
These fillers are different from the fillers used in Experiment 1.
An anonymous reviewer questions whether null results can be taken as evidence for the null hypothesis (i.e., that there is no meaningful difference between two populations). Sprouse and Almeida (2017) provide a useful guideline for the minimum number of participants that acceptability judgment studies with different rating methods need in order to have sufficient statistical power for null results to be taken as evidence for the null hypothesis (80% or above). Their estimates indicate that, for a study that examines a medium-effect size acceptability contrast with a Likert scale, the minimum number of participants required to reach the 80% power is 37 under a conservative assumption that each participant rated only one item per experimental condition (Sprouse and Almeida 2017: 21, Fig. 3). Since the numbers of participants for the three experiments whose results are reported in this study are 62, 43 and 41, respectively, we contend that the null results that we obtained constitute evidence for the null hypothesis.
These fillers are different from the fillers used in Experiments 1 and 2.
Recall the argument in fn. 5 that Japanese CNPs headed by -koto ‘fact’ and by to yuu ‘that say’ are not islands. Given this claim, the degraded nature of ‘why’-sentences in Experiment 3 cannot be attributed merely to island-sensitivity; even embedding ‘why’ inside a non-island causes degradation. For future research, we would like to see whether naze ‘why’ becomes degraded even inside a simple embedded clause.
A ban on long-distance interpretations of why is also observed in English sluicing (although it is well-known that English sluicing is island-insensitive). Lasnik (2005) notes that the sluiced wh-phrase why in examples such as (i) only allows the ‘short distance’ reading in (b), suggesting that such why obeys a stricter condition than island effects.
- (i)
In sum, although naze ‘why’ inside a non-island CNP is degraded, there is no additional island effect for a subject CNP.
- (i)
Sprouse et al. (2015) found no interaction between argument types and extraction types with Italian relative clauses, while the interaction was significant with English relative clauses. This is compatible with the claim by Rizzi (1982) that subjects are not islands in Italian relative clauses, and Sprouse et al. argue that the dependencies in wh-questions and relative clauses cannot be assumed to be identical. While this conclusion potentially impacts the generality of subject island effects, the potential uniqueness of relativization is irrelevant to the current experiments that focus on scrambling and covert wh-movement.
The proposed distinction between Italian and Japanese is tentative, as we only examined subextraction out of moved vs. in situ unaccusative subjects in Japanese with Experiment 1, and we do not have data on subextraction out of moved and in situ external arguments (i.e. transitive and unergative subjects) in Japanese.
Following Chomsky (2000, 2001), some freezing-based accounts restrict freezing to movement for case and/or agreement, on the assumption that criterial properties such as [focus] or [topic] do not influence minimality considerations (cf. Gallego and Uriagereka 2008). On this particular approach to freezing, the transparency of Japanese subjects may be taken to follow from the absence of phi-feature agreement (Kuroda 1985, 1988; Fukui 1986, 1995, 2006).
We would like to underscore that in Jurka’s model, the subject condition that cannot be reduced to freezing effects is universal. That is why the results obtained by Jurka and colleagues for Japanese were of such importance.
With respect to non-agreeing subjects in Hindi, it has been claimed that they satisfy the EPP on T but that their movement to T is EPP-driven, not Agree-driven (Anand and Nevins 2006); evidence for that comes from the lack of reconstruction for scope, along the arguments developed by Miyagawa (2001) for Japanese. Hindi ergative expressions are islands (Alok 2016), but their island status may be independently motivated by their status as PPs, not DPs, with the ergative exponent ne being a postposition (see Mahajan 1997 for arguments supporting this analysis).
There are two main proposals concerning the EPP on T in Russian. According to Bailyn (2004, 2012), a designated A-position in [Spec, T] can host a variety of arguments. According to Slioussar (2011) and Krejci et al. (2018), only agreed-with arguments appear in that position, whereas all other arguments are in a different, higher, A-bar position.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out these potential problems.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ken Hiraiwa, Hideki Maki, and Hajime Ono, for allowing us to run our pilot studies and experiments with their students, and Ted Levin, Kamil Deen, and Julie Jiang for reading earlier drafts of this paper and providing us with valuable comments and suggestions. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers, Caroline Heycock, and Julie Legate for their helpful suggestions and comments that greatly improved the content, organization and presentation of this paper. Many thanks are also due to the audiences at the 10th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL10) and the 8th Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics (FAJL8), where earlier versions of this study were presented. This work is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). It was also supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17K02823 to Chizuru Nakao and NSF grant BCS-1619857 to Maria Polinsky.
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The first author of this paper, Akira Omaki, passed away on August 6, 2018, following complications from lymphoma. Akira worked on this project while fighting cancer, until early June 2018, when he had to put his research activities on hold to focus on a new treatment. We feel honored and privileged to have been able to share this piece of research, one of Akira’s last, with him. We hope that those who knew Akira can see his passion, dedication, and professionalism in this paper.
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Omaki, A., Fukuda, S., Nakao, C. et al. Subextraction in Japanese and subject-object symmetry. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 38, 627–669 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09449-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09449-8