Abstract
AbstractUsing deadjectival psych verbs with-garuin Japanese, this study shows that agglutinative complex predicate formation is done by recursive application of Merge to roots and functional heads. This process creates a layered syntactic structure, with each layer providing the computational system with (i) specific semantic features, (ii) arguments, and (iii) phonetic form (PF) exponents at conceptual–intentional (CI)/sensory motor (SM) Interfaces. The whole amalgam of the root and the functional heads is interpreted as a “word” at PF. Following the general architecture of Distributed Morphology, I will show that the morpheme that derives deadjectival verbs-garuis underlyingly-k-ar-u(k-Copula-T), wherekis “little” v that originates in the verbal rootk-o“come” andar-is a copula. They are now grammaticalized functional heads that extend adjectival roots. Crucially, thiskis homophonous with “little” a, which makes-garuand the adjective-deriving morpheme-karu(k-Copula-T) parallel.kis voiced in-garudue to a structurally conditioned assimilation rule (Embick 2013). This analysis reveals the mechanisms of agglutinative predicate formation in a precise and detailed manner. Similarly, it gives natural solutions to some of the long-standing problems including how adjectives modify N such asutukusii dansaa“beautiful dancer,” which is ambiguous between attributive modification and a relative clause.
Highlights
The question What are words? is very critical in the agglutinative languages like Korean and Japanese, where morphologically complex predicates are considered as a “word” as far as the phonetic form (PF) component is concerned (Kitagawa 1986, Kageyama 1993)
The entity-denoting first argument in (14) is Hanako, and the property-denoting second argument is the VoiceP. 14 Note that the analysis presented here in (14) differs from the approaches for the Subject Experiencer (SE) psych predicates in other languages such as the FEEL-LIKE construction in Slovenian (Marušič and Žaucer 2006), or the ones in English and Mandarin (Baker 2003, Larson et al 2018, Cheung and Larson 2014) in one crucial point in that the complemented deadjectival verb in the Japanese -garu construction is always overt, while the SE psych verb constructions in these languages may not be
If something can intervene between functional heads that are lined up, that is a strong indication that these heads are divided into separable units as we have seen above where the inflectional phrase (IP) in (22) is either the Irrealis (Mizen) or the Adverbial (Renyo) form
Summary
The question What are words? is very critical in the agglutinative languages like Korean and Japanese, where morphologically complex predicates are considered as a “word” as far as the PF component is concerned (Kitagawa 1986, Kageyama 1993). The last view combines the previous two, so to speak, and treats a as a part of the negation as in (a)nai (e.g., Narrog 2005, Narrog and Ohori 2011) Under this conception, the negation shares the basic morphological composition that is seen in other functional morphemes (s)ase (the causative morpheme) and (r)are (the passive morpheme) where the initial a, s, and r are reduplicated when they suffix to certain roots. I will argue that (i) the agglutinating functional morphemes including the inflectional vowels are heads, (ii) together with roots, they create a layered predicate structure that feeds the predicate “word” formation at PF and clausal syntax, and (iii) the relationships among the functional heads and the arguments they license in the layers derive morphosyntax, morphophonology, and semantics of the agglutinative predicates Under this theory, the inflectional vowel a in √sak-a-na-i is “little” v in the sense of DM that types the root to V (Nakajima 2011, 2014a, 2015a, 2016, 2019, 2020), and the predicate in (1) should be analyzed as [[[[[√sak]√Root -a]Stem -n]Neg -a]Stem -i]TImpft. A crucial piece of evidence comes from the three-way ambiguity found in simple A-N structure such as utukusii dansaa “beautiful dancer.” Other longstanding issues on adjectives (Namai 2002, Nishiyama 2005) will be resolved in a natural way
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