Genitive quantifiers in Japanese as reverse partitives

Quantificational determiners in Japanese can be marked with genitive case. Current analyses (for example by Watanabe, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, to appear) treat the genetive case marker in these cases as semantically vacuous, but we show that it has semantic effects. We propose a new analysis as reverse partitives. Following Jackendoff (MIT-Press, 1977), we assume that partitives always contain two NPs one of which is phonologically deleted. We claim that, while in normal partitives the higher noun is deleted, in reverse partitives the lower noun is deleted

Remind-Me Readings: Evidence for Question Act Decomposition

Remind-Me Readings: Evidence for Question Act Decompositio

Not Eating Kein Veggies: Negative Concord in Child German

Contribution to Linguistic Evidence 202

Cross-linguistic patterns in the acquisition of quantifiers.

Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here, we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier's specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for "all," "none," "some," "some…not," and "most" in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-y-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the National Academy of Sciences via http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.160134111

A crosslinguistic study of symmetrical judgments

A longstanding puzzle in developmental linguistics is why children are more permissive than adults in assigning distributive interpretations to sentences with the universal quantifiers each, every, and all under certain experimental conditions. One well-known controversial issue in this area is children’s symmetrical judgments of universally quantified sentences. Symmetrical judgments are elicited when a child is asked to judge if a sentence including a universal quantifier describes a visual context depicting an incomplete distributive relation. The following three judgment types have been included in the set of symmetrical judgment types in the literature (examples from Kang, 2001).peer-reviewe

Case licensing and VP structure

In this thesis, I investigate where the Nominative Case of a DP is licensed in Japanese. It has been argued that Nominative Case is licensed only in the Spec of functional projections, such as TP/AgrP (Koizumi 1995). I argue that Nominative Case can be licensed by certain kinds of verbs/affixes within their local domain in Japanese. I propose that Case licensing takes place when a DP and a Case-licenser are in a local relation, such as Spec-Head or Head-Complement. I use the binding and scope relations, and VP-preposing to show the structural relation between Nominative phrase and another element in a structure, and what kind of structural position the Nominative phrase occupies. ^ In Chapter 2, I argue that Nominative Case is licensed by the unaccusative verbs in Japanese. The evidence for this claim comes from the scope relation between the Nominative and Locative phrases in the unaccusative and passive constructions. The difference between these constructions leads us to conclude that the Nominative phrase in the passive construction raises overtly over the Locative phrase, whereas that in the unaccusative construction does not. ^ In Chapter 3, I argue that Nominative Case of an object is licensed by the stative verbs/affixes (Kuno 1973). The evidence comes from the VP-preposing construction and the scope relation between the subject and the object. ^ In Chapter 4, I show that subjects of unergative and transitive verbs raise to the Spec of TP overtly. I further propose that there is only one position for the subject oriented depictive secondary predicate. ^ In Chapter 5, I discuss the structure within VP in Japanese, arguing that there is evidence for the Split-VP hypothesis proposed by Koizumi (1995), Lasnik (1995), Bobaljik (1996) among others. I also give additional evidence for a classic claim that the indirect objects are always base-generated higher than the direct objects, using the VP-preposing construction. ^ In Chapter 6, I show that there is covert raising of the Nominative phrase of the unaccusative construction in Japanese. I argue that this is due to the weak EPP feature in T in Japanese.