Locational verbs, agreement, and object shift in Japanese

Abstract

In Japanese, the locational verbs iru (animate) and aru (inanimate) can express locative-existential meanings when they are intransitive, and possessive meanings when they are transitive. The animacy alternation that occurs between aru and iru is conditioned by the subject of an intransitive locative-existential verb, and by the object of a transitive possessive verb. In Japanese, animacy agreement is generally obligatory, but when the inanimate verb aru is used transitively, agreement does not obtain (unless it is forced by other factors). This peculiar behavior of animacy agreement in Japanese is shown to follow straightforwardly on the assumption that the light verb associated with the animate verb iru has a strong D-feature to attract its nominative phrase overtly, while the light verb associated with the inanimate verb aru has a weak D-feature, which does not require its overt movement, and that instantiation of agreement is contingent upon whether or not the nominative phrase is overtly raised to [Spec, v]. This paper demonstrates that Japanese is a language which selectively induces overt object shift