A Dual Function of tokoro in the CENP Construction

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss the semantics of the Japanese so-called "Counter-Equi NP" (henceforth, CENP) Construction, given in (I). (1) CENP Construction Keisatsu-wa [ doroboo-ga nige-ru ]-tokoro-o tsukamae-ta. police-TOP burglar-NOM escape-PRES-occasion-ACC arrest-PAST 'The police arrested a burglar on the occasion during which he/she was escaping.' The CENP construction is similar to the so-called "internally headed relative clause" (henceforth, IHRC) construction, given in (2), in that, in the CENP construction, an NP within the embedded tokoro-clause is interpreted as an argument of the matrix verb. (2) IHRC Construction Keisatsu-wa [ doroboo-ga nige-ru ]-no-o tsukamae-ta. police-TOP burglar-NOM escape- PRES-NO-ACC arrest-PAST 'The police arrested a burglar on the occasion during which he/she was escaping.' In both (1) and (2), the embedded subject doroboo 'burglar' is interpreted as an object of the matrix verb tsukamaer 'arrest'. In this paper, I argue that the noun tokoro semantically has a dual function. To be more specific, it is a generalized quantifier over an entity and at the same time an event when it combines with the tokoro-clause, adopting Srivastav's (1991) generalized quantifier approach to Hindi correlatives.