The verb doubling construction in Japanese

Abstract

Abstract Japanese has expressions such as Basu-ga ki-ta ki-ta ‘A bus has finally come,’ where the verb-tense complex (ki-ta ‘came’ in this example) is doubled. This paper concentrates on these kinds of expressions, calling them the verb doubling construction (henceforth the VDC). The aim of this paper is to investigate the syntactic structure of the VDC in Japanese. Providing five pieces of evidence that the repeated verb-tense complex occupies the head of CP, we claim that the VDC constitutes a CP structure. We further point out that the analysis proposed here strongly supports the copy theory of movement (Chomsky, 1993).