Examines the so-called internally headed relative construction in Japanese, with particular focus on new data that involve quantificational noun phrases and wh-phrases. Data provide arguments for representations in which the internal head remains internal at LF, and it is also shown that the interpretation of this construction involves E-type…

Investigates deverbal nominalization involving the suffix "kake" in Japanese. Argues that kake nominalization induces two different meanings, the halfway and the inception reading, and different constraints are called for depending on these two meanings. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the distribution of existential polarity wh-phrases (EPWs) in Chinese that behave like negative polarity items, examining the distribution of Chinese EPWs and arguing that using EPWs is felicitous if the local propositions in which they appear do not entail existence of a referent satisfying the EPW description. The paper considers…

Develops an argument for a pied-piping approach to the apparent absence of island effects in Japanese, along the lines of Nishigauchi (1986, 1990). Investigates the nature of pied-piping, developing a theory that accounts for the fact that wh-islands cannot be pied-piped. (Author/VWL)

Shows that there are at least two types of gapping in natural languages: canonical gapping and LPD. Argues that Chinese has some gapping sentences that result from ATB movement from V to "v." Data from Chinese affirm Johnson's (1994) theory of gapping that gapping occurs in those languages only with verb movement. (Author/VWL)

Examines Ga/No conversion in Japanese under the Move F theory of movement (Chomsky, 1995). Building on Miyagawa's (1993) analysis, argues that a genitive phrase raises out of a prenominal gapless clause in either overt or covert syntax. (Author/VWL)

Proposes that the bei-construction, a Mandarin Chinese passive construction, is not derived uniformly, but rather, three types of bei-sentences must be recognized. Presents basic facts about bei-construction; shows consistent structural differences between bei-sentences with and without the lexical logical subject, discussing A-dependency and…

Argues that a classifier language can have a plural morpheme within a nominal expression, suggesting that -men in Mandarin Chinese is best analyzed as a plural morpheme, in contrast to a regular plural on an element in N, such as the English -s. The paper makes a prediction about the structures of nominal expressions in classifier and…

Shows that the high-ranking syllable contact constraint is the driving force behind the well-known nasalization and lateralization phenomena in Korean. Develops an optimality-theoretic analysis of Korean nasalization and lateralization in which SyllCon is an undominated constraint. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the word order characteristics of "hentai Kambun, the archaic Japanese writing styles employed for recording Japanese in a way that outwardly resembles Chinese. Proposes that hentai kambun word order can receive a systematic account by assuming that Japanese has underlying head-initial word-order, and that it is a representation of this…

Analyzes two seemingly different types of adjectives in Japanese and claims they share fundamentally similar phrase structures. Discusses the hypothesis that there is a phrase for predication. Japanese adjectives show morphological corroboration for this phrase, which is referred to as the predicative copula. (Author/VWL)

Elucidates the syntactic properties of the dative-subject constructions that occur in Japanese and Korean. Gives a consistent account, with the aid of the Agr-less checking theory, of their syntactic properties. (Author/VWL)

Proposes that the distinction between syntactic and nonsyntactic use of reflexives is not necessarily one of lexical ambiguity, positing one type of referentially dependent element (reflexives) which have two options for being related to their antecedents (syntactic binding and discourse conference). The paper focuses on Chinese reflexive ziji and…

Presents the case for treating the "ba" construction in Mandarin Chinese as a verb, considering both language-internal arguments and arguments from universal properties of parts of speech. (Author/VWL)

Proposes that, with Fiengo and May's (1994) indexing theory, a full-fledged reconstruction approach to null argument phenomena in such languages as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is possible. Argues that null noun phrases in these languages must be empty phrase markers underlyingly, not empty pronouns, and their reference properties can be…