Topic prominency in Japanese

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20344105
AutoresHideki Kishimoto (Kobe Pharmaceutical University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen26
Número4
Fecha de publicación2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Linguistic Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0167-6318 • E-ISSN: 1613-3676
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tlir.2009.017
OpenAlexW2080162270
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas18

In light of the data regarding the focusing of the particle dake ‘only’, this article shows that in Japanese, wa-marked topic phrases are placed in the CP domain, and argues that this can take place either in overt constituent structure or in LF. Other ordinary phrases – including ga-marked major subjects that are sometimes assumed to reside in the same clause-peripheral position as topics – are shown to be located within TP. It is also argued that Japanese shows no evidence for “overt” wh-movement, despite Takahashi's claim (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 11: 655–678, 1993, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3: 265–300, 1994) to the contrary. The discussion suggests that the prominent use of the CP domain is subject to typological variation, and that Japanese, unlike English, is a topic-prominent language, in which a topic is placed in the CP domain – i.e., TopP located above TP – by the LF output in order to form a topic-comment structure

Linguistics · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Philosophy · Speech and dialogue systems · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation