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Theoretical Comparative Syntax

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Theoretical Comparative Syntax Theoretical Comparative Syntax Theoretical Comparative Syntax brings together, for the first time, profoundly influential essays and articles by Naoki Fukui, exploring various topics in the areas of syntactic theory and comparative syntax. The articles have a special focus on the typological differences between English (-type lan- guages) and Japanese (-type languages) and abstract parameters that derive them. Linguistic universals are considered in the light of cross-linguistic variation, and typological (parametric) differences are investigated from the viewpoint of universal principles. The unifying theme of this volume is the nature and structure of invari- ant principles and parameters (variables) and how they interact to give prin- cipled accounts to a variety of seemingly unrelated differences between English and Japanese. These two types of languages provide an ideal testing ground for the principles and their interactions with the parameters since the languages exhibit diverse superficial differences in virtually every aspect of their linguistic structures: word order, wh-movement, grammatical agree- ment, the obligatoriness and uniqueness of a subject, complex predicates, case-marking systems, anaphoric systems, classifiers and numerals, among others. Detailed descriptions of the phenomena and attempts to provide principled accounts for them constitute considerable contributions to the development of the principles-and-parameters model in its exploration and refinement of theoretical concepts and fundamental principles of linguistic theory, leading to some of the basic insights that lie behind the minimalist program. The essays on theoretical comparative syntax collected here present a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics. Naoki Fukui is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Linguistics Department at Sophia University, Tokyo. He is the author of several books and has been an editorial board member of various international journals. Routledge leading linguists Series editor Carlos P. Otero University of California, Los Angeles, USA 1 Essays on Syntax and Semantics James Higginbotham 2 Partitions and Atoms of Clause Structure Subjects, agreement, case and clitics Dominique Sportiche 3 The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads Collected essays of Hilda J. Koopman Hilda J. Koopman 4 Configurations of Sentential Complementation Perspectives from Romance languages Johan Rooryck 5 Essays in Syntactic Theory Samuel David Epstein 6 On Syntax and Semantics Richard K. Larson 7 Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition Luigi Rizzi 8 Minimalist Investigations in Linguistic Theory Howard Lasnik 9 Derivations Exploring the dynamics of syntax Juan Uriagereka 10 Towards an Elegant Syntax Michael Brody 11 Logical Form and Linguistic Theory Robert May 12 Generative Grammar The theory and its history Robert Freidin 13 Theoretical Comparative Syntax Studies in macroparameters Naoki Fukui Theoretical Comparative Syntax Studies in macroparameters Naoki Fukui I~ ~~o~fJ;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by Routledge Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2006 Naoki Fukui First issued in paperback 2013 Typeset in Garamond by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978-0-415-34103-5 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-415-86012-3 (pbk) Contents Original publication details viii Introduction 1 1 Specifiers and projection 9 2 LF extraction of naze: some theoretical implications 38 3 Strong and weak barriers: remarks on the proper characterization of barriers 55 4 Parameters and optionality 69 5 A note on improper movement 87 6 The principles-and-parameters approach: a comparative syntax of English and Japanese 100 7 Symmetry in syntax: Merge and Demerge 132 8 Order in phrase structure and movement 179 9 An A-over-A perspective on locality 209 10 The uniqueness parameter 224 11 Nominal structure: an extension of the Symmetry Principle 229 12 Phrase structure 258 13 The Visibility Guideline for functional categories: verb-raising in Japanese and related issues 289 Appendix: on the nature of economy in language 337 Notes 354 References 392 Index 415 Original publication details Chapter 1 “Specifiers and projection” is reprinted from N. Fukui, T. Rapoport, and E. Sagey (eds) MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: Papers in Theoretical Linguistics, 8: 128–172, 1986. Chapter 2 “LF extraction of naze: some theoretical implications” is reprinted from Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 503–526, 1988, by per- mission from Kluwer Academic Publishers. Chapter 3 “Strong and weak barriers: remarks on the proper characterization of barriers” is reprinted from H. Nakajima (ed.) Current English Linguistics in Japan, 1991: 77–93, by permission from Mouton de Gruyter. Chapter 4 “Parameters and optionality” is reprinted from Linguistic Inquiry 24: 399–420, 1993, by permission from MIT Press. Chapter 5 “A note on improper movement” is reprinted from The Linguistic Review 10: 111–126, 1993, by permission from Walter de Gruyter. Chapter 6 “The principles-and-parameters approach: a comparative syntax of English and Japanese” is reprinted from M. Shibatani and T. Bynon (eds) Approaches to Language Typology, 1995: 327–372, by permission from Oxford University Press. Chapter 7 “Symmetry in syntax: Merge and Demerge” is reprinted from Journal of East Asian Linguistics 7: 27–86, 1998, by permission from Kluwer Academic Publishers. Chapter 8 “Order in phrase structure and movement” is reprinted from Lin- guistic Inquiry 29: 439–474, 1998, by permission from MIT Press. Chapter 9 “An A-over-A perspective on locality” is reprinted from E. Iwamoto and M. Muraki (eds) Linguistics: In Search of the Human Mind, 1999: 109–129, by permission from Kaitakusha. Chapter 10 “The uniqueness parameter” is reprinted from Glot International 4, 9/10: 26–27, 1999, by permission from Blackwell Publishers. Chapter 11 “Nominal structure: an extension of the Symmetry Principle” is reprinted from P. Svenonius (ed.) The Derivation of VO and OV, 2000: 219–254, by permission from John Benjamins. Chapter 12 “Phrase structure” is reprinted from M. Baltin and C. Collins (eds) The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 2001: 374–406, by permission from Blackwell Publishers. Original publication details ix Chapter 13 “The Visibility Guideline for functional categories: verb-raising in Japanese and related issues” is reprinted from Lingua 113: 321–375, 2003, by permission from Elsevier. Appendix “On the nature of economy in language” is reprinted from Cogni- tive Studies 3: 51–71, 1996, by permission from the Japanese Cognitive Science Society. Introduction This volume is a collection of articles I have written over the years concern- ing linguistic theory and comparative syntax. The study of the principles of Universal Grammar (UG), as they have been discovered in the tradition of modern generative grammar, has always been the major object of my research. Given the diversity of natural languages, however, the discovery of the principles of UG cannot be the sole object of inquiry in linguistic theory, a situation which makes the field more challenging and even more interesting, at least to me, than, say, arithmetic or physics. Thus, compara- tive syntax comes into play. Comparative syntax is concerned with the prop- erties of languages that are not universal, and it attempts to discover “natural classes” of syntactic properties that can be traced back to a single (usually quite abstract) parameter that yields observed differences among target languages. In the principles-and-parameters model assumed through- out the whole book, the study of comparative syntax proceeds hand in hand with the study of general principles of UG that interact with language- specific parameters to induce observed variation. All of the essays contained in this volume deal with comparative syntax as it pertains to the study of invariant principles of UG, with a special focus on the in-depth comparative analyses of English (-type languages) and Japanese (-type languages). Before giving a summary of the articles, let me briefly sketch the develop- ment of my thought on the issues of comparative syntax and syntactic theory over the period in which the articles were written. (References to important work by others are largely omitted in the following discussion. See the ori- ginal articles in this volume for detailed references.) The peculiar properties of subjects in Japanese, as compared to those in English, first attracted my attention. On the one hand, they behave like subjects of noun phrases in English, in that they are truly optional and can be syntactically absent (unlike subjects of clauses in English, which cannot be completely absent but require an empty category). In this respect, subjects in Japanese seem to be more closely connected to a lexical category. On the other hand, a subject in Japanese shares certain properties with a topic and the head of a relative clause. For example, the subject is a default candidate for a topic, and all three elements (subject,
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