Publication |Sophia Linguistica
Koji Kamada
Japanese Postverbal Constructions and Language Processing
In this paper, I argue, through analysis of Japanese postverbal constructions (JPVCs), that the human parser should undertake explanations of part of the output of the competence system. I therefore propose and adopt certain parsing principles. Some researchers (e.g. Simon, 1989; Whitman, 2000; Tanaka, 2001; and Abe, 2003, to name but a few) claim that movement is involved in the derivation of JPVCs because postverbal elements obey island constraints. There are, however, acceptable examples of JPVCs that violate island constraints. Hence, I argue in favor of non-movement approaches that the presence or absence of island effects in JPVCs follows from the interaction of parsing strategies with the licensing condition for adjoined elements. Furthermore, I demonstrate that when a nominative case-marked, quantified NP appears in postverbal position, the preferred reading of scopally ambiguous JPVCs can be accounted for by language processing.