高見 健一

Kuno, Takami, and Wu (1999) showed that Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier scope interpretation in English, Chinese. and Japanese makes incorrect predictions about the grammaticality and ambiguity of certain types of sentences. They proposed instead an expert system based on the interaction of syntactic and other principles that ranks the relative strengths of the potential scope interpretations of a given sentence. Aoun and Li (2000) replied to Kuno et al. with a number of criticisms, which are refuted here.

This article critically examines Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier scope interpretations in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and it shows that (i) there are serious theoretical problems with Aoun and Li's account of scope interpretations for the double object and topicalization constructions; (ii) there are ambiguous sentences that Aoun and Li's analysis predicts to be unambiguous; and (iii) there are unambiguous sentences which their analysis predicts to be ambiguous. While problem (iii) makes their analysis insufficient, problems (i) and (ii) make it untenable. We propose a quantifier scope analysis that is free from any of the above three problems. We claim that the quantifier scope interpretations of a given sentence result from the interactions of various principles, some syntactic, others nonsyntactic. We propose an expert system that takes all these principles into consideration, and arrives at a composite opinion of the relative strengths of the potential scope interpretations of a given sentence. We speculate that wide idiolectal variations in quantifier scope interpretations are due to differences among speakers on the relative weights these principles receive in their respective expert systems.*

This paper attempts to provide a unified account of the acceptability of the three seemingly distinct phenomena in English: passivization, tough-movement and quantifier float. I argue that the acceptability of passivization and tough-movement is subject to the functional requirement that a predication relation be established between the subject and the rest of the sentence. It is further shown that the acceptability of quantifier float is dependent on the constraint that a predication relation be also established between floated quantifiers, which serve as (secondary) subjects, and the elements that follow them. © 1998, The English Linguistic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.

This paper discusses two well-known constructions in Japanese, namely, topicalization and multiple subjectivization, as typically illustrated in the following two examples cited from Mikami (1960) and Kuno (1973): (1) Zoo -wa hana -ga nagai. elephant-TOP trunk-NOM is-long 'Elephants have long trunks.' (2) Bunmeikoku -ga dansei-ga heikin-zyumyoo-ga mizikai. civilized countries -NOM male -NOM average life span -NON is-short 'It is civilized countries that men are such that their average life span is short' We will argue that the acceptability of the constructions in question crucially depends on whether the topicalized or subjectivized NP is characterized by the rest of the sentence, and propose the Characterization Condition for the 'Zoo-wa hana-ga nagai' Construction (CC) and the Characterization Condition for Subjectivization (CCS). We will also argue that the phenomenon of subjectivization, which seems more complex than that of topicalization, is subject to the requirement that 'Y' and 'Z' in the structure [X-ga Y-ga Z-ga...] be identified by 'X' and 'Y', respectively, which we will call the Identifiability Condition for Subjectivization (ICS). It will also be argued that the dine of acceptability often observed in the subjectivization phenomenon can be accounted for by the interaction between the CCS and the ICS.

This paper discusses the antecedent-contained deletion (ACD) construction and examines under what conditions the acceptability of the construction is decided. First, the paper critically examines previous syntactic analyses such as May (1985), Hornstein (1994, 1995) and Diesing (1992). Then, it alternatively argues that the acceptability of the ACD construction is primarily controlled by the functional notion of focus. It subsequently shows that the present functional analysis can deal with the fact that there is pure asymmetry concerning the distribution of determiners between the ACD construction on the one hand and wh-extraction from NP and extraposition from NP on the other.∗. © 1996, The English Linguistic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.