The syntax of external possession: Its basis in theta-theory

This thesis examines the phenomenon of external possession, in which a possessor of a verb's argument is licensed syntactically as an argument of the verb. I provide a uniform account of external possession in Japanese and Korean in terms of a thematic operation. I develop a theory of θ-role assignment which takes seriously the widely held assumption that θ-roles are purely syntactic objects and hence exist independently of the semantics associated with them. This view suggests that θ-roles can be dissociated from the semantics determined by the predicate's lexical meaning and be re-associated with distinct semantics made available during the course of a derivation. (Samek-Lodovici 2003). In external possession, I argue that the semantic role Possessor is re-associated with a θ-role of the verb. This process is possible when the possessor is realised as a resumptive pro within the projection of the possessee argument, which has the consequence that the semantic representation of the possessee argument contains a variable corresponding to the possessor. Under this specific circumstance, a verb's θ-role can be re-associated with the role Possessor. The verb subsequently assigns the re-associated θ-role to the external possessor. I show that the present theory can explain the well-known obligatory 'affected' reading of the external possessor of an object and the lack of it for the external possessor of a subject. I argue against analyses which postulate movement of the external possessor or attribute its construal to purely semantic or pragmatic inferences, as the phenomenon is more restricted than such analyses suggest. External possessors in Japanese and Korean take on the case of their possessees. In discussing other types of multiple nominative constructions, I demonstrate that such constructions do not necessarily involve a thematic operation. I also show that for case-licensing in these constructions, structures containing multiple specifiers as well as those with multiple copies of the licensing head are required

A syntactic typology of topic, focus and contrast

In this paper we argue for a typology of various information-structural functions in terms of three privative features: [topic], [focus] and [contrast] (see also Vallduv'i and Vilkuna 1998, Molnar 2002, McCoy 2003, and Giusti 2006). Aboutness topics and contrastive topics share the feature [topic], new-information foci and contrastive foci share the feature [focus], and contrastive topics and contrastive foci share the feature [contrast]. This typology is supported by data from Dutch (where only contrastive elements may undergo A'-scrambling), Japanese (where aboutness topics and contrastive topics must appear sentence-initially), and Russian (where the new-information foci and contrastive foci share the same underlying position). To the best of our knowledge, there are no generalizations over information-structural functions that do not share one of the features adopted here

Negation and the functional sequence

There exists a general restriction on admissible functional sequences which prevents adjacent identical heads. We investigate a particular instantiation of this restriction in the domain of negation. Empirically, it manifests itself as a restriction the stacking of multiple negative morphemes. We propose a principled account of this restriction in terms of the general ban on immediately consecutive identical heads in the functional sequence on the one hand, and the presence of a Neg feature inside negative morphemes on the other hand. The account predicts that the stacking of multiple negative morphemes should be possible provided they are separated by intervening levels of structure. We show that this prediction is borne out

On the position of topics in Japanese

Contrastive topics and non-contrastive topics in Japanese generally receive separate treatments in the literature: although they are both marked by the particle wa, the former carry tone prominence and only optionally move to clause-initial position, while the latter (Kuno's [1973] 'theme') do not carry tone prominence and typically occupy clause-initial position. This paper presents arguments that contrary to this standard view, topics in Japanese, contrastive or non-contrastive, must occupy clause-initial position. Evidence comes from examining the syntactic and interpretive properties of both types of wa-marked phrases in various discourse contexts. First, a tonally prominent wa-phrase must move to clause-initial position in contexts that require a contrastive topic. Second, in contexts that allow a tonally prominent wa-phrase to remain in situ, the relevant phrase is not interpreted as a topic and cannot move to clause-initial position. Third, tonally prominent wa-phrases displaced to clause-initial position show the syntactic distribution of topics that are predicted by considerations at the syntax-information structure interface, but those in situ do not. Finally, despite the general consensus, there are limited circumstances in which tonally non-prominent wa-phrases can occupy a non-initial position. The article presents syntactic and interpretive evidence that such wa-phrases are also not topics