The syntax of Japanese nominal projections and some cross-linguistic implications

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the syntax of Japanese noun phrases and their interpretations from the cross-linguistic point of view. It has been argued that argument noun phrases contain functional heads such as D, Num(ber), and Q(uantifier) as well as a lexical projection, NP (Abney 1987; Ritter 1991, 1992, Giusti 1991, etc.) across languages. This thesis shows that argument noun phrases in Japanese can also contain heads corresponding to D, Num and Q, and that the variety of their interpretations can be explained in terms of the positions of those heads and their semantic interaction with each other. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical background of the syntax of noun phrases and provides a review of the literature concerning Japanese noun phrases. Chapter 2 focuses on the distribution of numeral classifiers (NC) and quantifiers (Q) that can appear within noun phrases in Japanese. I propose that NC and Q can head projections, NCP and QP, and can appear either DP-internally or -externally. Chapter 3 focuses on NCs and Qs with a partitive interpretation. I argue that a partitive interpretation is obtained as the head NC or Q assigns a theta-role to its complement DP within partitive constructions. English partitive and pseudo-partitive constructions and Finnish partitives are also discussed. Chapter 4 discusses ablative partitives in Turkish and another type of partitive constructions in Japanese called the "nominal partitive constructions". I argue that a sequence of an ablative partitive and an NC in Turkish and a nominal partitive construction in Japanese are both DPs, where D takes a partitive construction, namely an NCP as its complement, giving rise to a partitive interpretation. In Chapter 5,1 demonstrate that Japanese "bare" arguments have layered structures proposed in Chapter 2, containing empty heads, i.e., D and/or NC. Four possible interpretations of bare arguments are discussed. Chapter 6 concerns predicate nominals in copular constructions. It is shown that predicate nominals in Japanese are just NPs, lacking D and NC, whereas predicate nominals in Romance and Germanic may be NPs, NumPs or DPs

Quantifier scope in non-native Japanese : a comparative interlanguage study of Chinese-, English- and Korean-speaking learners

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The 101 translation problems between Japanese and German/English

We investigate differences between Japanese and German/English and explain characteristic phenomena to Japanese. The study helps us to realize what can be problematic when translating Japanese into German/English and vice versa

Second language acquisition of the features of dou in Mandarin Chinese, by L1-English and L1-Japanese speakers

This thesis reports a study on the acquisition of the features of the quantifier dou, in particular the feature [+Dist] in Mandarin Chinese, by L1-English and L1-Japanese learners. Dou, which is usually on paralleled with all, essentially differentiates from all on both semantic and syntactic properties. These differences partially reflect on the meanings and interpretations of sentences at the syntax-semantics interface. In the light of Features Reassembly Hypothesis, the successful acquisition of dou requires the remapping or reconfiguration of the feature bundles that have already been assembled in the L1 grammar into a new formal configuration in the target language. To explore how L1 English-L2 Mandarin and L1 Japanese-L2 Mandarin learners establish the initial mapping between L1 and L2 forms and how the features are being reassembled, two experimental tasks were conducted: a sentence-picture matching task and a picture-based acceptability judgment task. A total of 51 native English speakers and 18 native Japanese speakers, learning Mandarin as their second language, participated in this study. Their interpretations of dou-quantified subject/numeral-quantified object sentences with mixed predicates and dou-quantified subject/wh-object interrogatives were examined through the two tasks, respectively. The results indicate that in the stage of mapping, most L2 Mandarin learners chose the universals and their relevant features as the starting point (i.e. [+universal] and [+universal, ∨]). Learners with lower proficiency encountered difficulties in overcoming the influence of L1 transfer, whereas those with higher proficiency, who underwent the stage of reassembly, were capable of assigning dou a [+Dist] feature, as the equivalents in their native languages. Additionally, the poverty of the stimulus problem at the interpretive interface can be overcome with the Universal Grammar access