Empty categories and focus in Japanese.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how subject and object empty categories (ECs) in Japanese behave with respect to anaphoric construal in the focus construction, and how their interpretive behavior can elucidate the syntactic identity of ECs. The thesis also presents discussion of the syntactic and semantic behaviors of the following three constructions: (i) the behavior of the focused phrases themselves; (ii) the behavior of the reciprocal expressions; and (iii) the behavior of another focus construction, pseudo-clefts (PCs), in Japanese. As for (i), we explore the differences between association-with-focus (AWF) and in-construction-focus (ICF), based on island effects, and conclude that the former, but not the latter, is subject to Quantifier Raising. This follows from Chomsky's (1991, 1992) economy principle which prohibits unnecessary movement. In the case of (ii), the Japanese reciprocal expressions with otagai (each other) and sorezore (each), a nonmovement analysis such as Heim, Lasnik and May's (HLM's; 1991b) is found more desirable than a movement analysis as in HLM (1991a), though there is still a problem, i.e. the interpretation of ECs in the sentences with the interaction of reciprocals and focus. And for (iii), we argue that there are two types of PCs, ga-PCs and wa-PCs, based on semantic differences and movement effects. The construal of ECs in the AWF construction, the ICF construction, and PCs exhibits some subject/object asymmetries with respect to the bound variable (BV) reading vs. the referential reading, i.e. while a subject EC allows something like a combined reading of the BV reading and the referential reading, an object EC does not allow the BV reading. We discuss the two analyses of the syntactic identity of ECs, one by Hasegawa (1984/85, 1988) and the other by Hoji (1985), neither of which gives a full account of the data given, and conclude that a subject EC can be some kind of pronominal but not an object EC.