A syntactic account of light verb phenomena in Japanese

Abstract

A syntactic account of light verb phenomena in Japanese is proposed in preference to Grimshaw and Mester's (1988) argument transfer account. A close examination of the suru construction (in which the light verb suru occurs with a verbal noun) suggests that the argument transfer account cannot explain certain facts of this construction (e.g., “transfer” of adjuncts). In addition, contrary to a previous assumption, many verbs other than suru - all raising or control verbs — exhibit the crucial properties of a light verb. Light verb properties of these raising and control verbs can be explained once these light verb constructions are recognized as raising or control constructions, in which the verbal noun heads a syntactic predicative complement of these verbs. In the proposed analysis, “transferred” arguments are syntactically displaced out of the predicative complement, as is generally possible with raising/ control constructions. This view, together with independently motivated Japanese phrase structure rules, accounts for all the light verb properties of those verbs without any special mechanism such as Argument Transfer. This analysis can also be extended to suru, which can function as a control verb. An LFG analysis incorporating this idea is proposed, utilizing the notion of Functional Uncertainty.