1st Edition

Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order

By Shigeru Miyagawa Copyright 2012
    328 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    336 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Over the years, a major strand of Miyagawa's research has been to study how syntax, case marking, and argument structure interact. In particular, Miyagawa's work addresses the nature of the relationship between syntax and argument structure, and how case marking and other phenomena help to elucidate this relationship. In this collection of new and revised pieces, Miyagawa expands and develops new analyses for numeral quantifier stranding, ditransitive constructions, nominative/genitive alternation, "syntactic" analysis of lexical and syntactic causatives, and historical change in the accusative case marking from Old Japanese to Modern Japanese. All of these analyses demonstrate an intimate relation among case marking, argument structure, and word order.

    Introduction  1. Numeral quantifiers and thematic relations  2. Telicity, stranded numeral quantifiers, and quantifier scope  3. Argument structure and ditransitive verbs in Japanese with Takae Tsujioka  4. Nominalization and argument structure: Evidence for the dual-base analysis of ditransitive constructions in Japanese Appendix to chapter 4: Challenges to the dual-base analysis of ditransitives  5. Genitive subjects in Altaic and specification of phase  6. The genitive of dependent tense in Japanese and its correlation with the genitive of negation in Slavic  7. Blocking and Japanese causatives  8. Blocking and causatives revisited: Unexpected competition across derivations  9. Historical development of the accusative case marker  10. The Old Japanese accusative revisited: Realizing all the universal options  Notes  References  Index

    Biography

    Shigeru Miyagawa is Professor of Linguistics and Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture, Head, Foreign Languaages and Literatures, MIT. He works on issues of syntax and morphology using a variety of languages including those in the Altaic family and particularly Japanese.

    "An excellent piece of scientific writing... The work goes beyond the limits of the study of an individual language being, in fact, a study about universal grammar. In this sense, the book is a source of inspiration for students and researchers of linguistics of every theoretical persuasion and linguistic background." - Stella Markantonatou, LINGUIST List