The purpose of this paper is to show that there is a striking difference in word order between Modern Japanese and Early Old Japanese. Early Old Japanese lacks the canonical transitive pattern [Subject-ga Object-o V]. The basic word order in Early Old Japanese is [Subject-ga/no Object-B V], in which the subject is marked by the genitive ga or no and a morphologically unmarked object must appear immediately adjacent to the verb. When the object is marked by wo, it is obligatorily moved over a subject, resulting in [Object-wo Subject-ga/no V]. Following Miyagawa (1989) and Miyagawa and Ekida (2003), I argue that a bare object is assigned abstract case under the strict adjacency requirement, but that wo in Early Old Japanese does not function as an accusative case. The particle wo differs crucially from the case particle o in Modern Japanese in that it marks not only the direct object of a transitive verb, but all kinds of internal arguments of both transitive and intransitive verbs. Furthermore, wo conveys a definite interpretation. An element marked by wo moves to a particular structural position, namely Spec(vP) or Spec(CP), where it is assigned definite/topic interpretations.

This paper argues that Old Japanese (eighth century) had split alignment, with nominative-accusative alignment in main clauses and active alignment in nominalized clauses. The main arguments for active alignment in nominalized clause come from ga-marking of active subjects and the distribution of two verbal prefixes: i-for active predicates and sa-for inactive predicates (cf. Yanagida, In: Hasegawa (ed.) Nihongo no shubun genshô [Main clause phenomena in Japanese], 2007b). We review the treatment of non-accusative alignment and argue that active alignment should be analyzed as as a distinct type. We propose a formal analysis of active alignment in nominalized clauses in Old Japanese. The external argument is assigned inherent case, spelled out as ga, in situ in Spec, v. Object arguments are licensed by several distinct mechanisms, including incorporation (Yanagida, In: Miyamoto (ed.) MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 2007a) and case assignment by a functional head above vP. The latter accounts for the distinctive O wo S ga V word order of OJ nominalized clauses noted by Yanagida (J. of East Asian Linguistics, 2006). Inability to assign object case is a property of [nominal] v, as proposed by Miyagawa (Structure and case marking in Japanese. Syntax and Semantics, vol. 22, 1989). We discuss the diachronic origins of the OJ active alignment system and point out that it exemplifies a cross-linguistically attested pattern of non-accusative alignment in clauses that originate from nominalizations.

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