On so-called “gapless” constructions in Japanese

Abstract

Abstract It has been claimed (Inoue, Kazuko. 1976. Henkei Bunpō to Nihongo. [Transformation grammar and Japanese]. Tokyo: Taishūkan.; Kuno, Susumu. 1973. The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.; Saito, Mamoru. 1985. Some asymmetries in Japanese and their theoretical consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.) that Japanese “gapless” topic constructions and relative clauses are derived by base-generation. Evidence in favor of the base-generation analysis comes from the observation that there does exist any derivational source of the “gapless” construction. Contrary to this widely accepted view, this paper argues that the Japanese “gapless” construction is derived in terms of movement enforced by labeling. Under the proposed analysis, obligatory raising of a phrase to the topic/relative head position, which is required by labeling, accounts for the fact that there does not seem to exist any derivational source of the “gapless” construction at first sight. It is shown that our movement analysis is supported by island, reconstruction, and parasitic gap facts. If our analysis is on the right track, it gives further support for the Free Merge coupled with a labeling algorithm approach (Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49. and Chomsky, Noam. 2015. Problems of projection: Extensions. In Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann & Simona Matteini (eds.), Structures, strategies, and beyond: Studies in honor of Adriana Belletti, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.).