N'-ellipsis and the structure of noun phrases in Chinese and Japanese

Abstract

It has been widely assumed since Kitagawa and Ross (Linguist Anal 9: 19-53, 1982) that noun phrases in Chinese and Japanese are quite similar in structure. They are N-final in surface word order, they employ ''modifying markers'' (de in Chinese and no in Japanese) extensively, and they require classifiers for numeral expressions. In this paper, we argue that, contrary to appearance, they have quite distinct structures. We examine N¢-ellipsis in the two languages and present supporting evidence for the hypothesis argued for by Simpson (in: Tang and Liu (eds.) On the formal way to Chinese languages, 2003), among others, that Chinese noun phrases are head-initial. According to this hypothesis, de is D, and a classifier heads another projection within DP. Japanese noun phrases, on the other hand, are headfinal. No is a contextual Case marker, as proposed by Kitagawa and Ross (Linguist Anal 9: 19-53, 1982), and classifier phrases are adjuncts modifying nominal projections. Our discussion shows that Kayne's (The antisymmetry of syntax, 1994) analysis of N-final relatives applies elegantly to Chinese but not to Japanese. It thus suggests that Japanese relative clauses are head-final throughout the derivation.

Modifying plurals, classifiers, and co-occurrence: The case of Korean

“…Thus, the diagnostics that we employ in this section may apply to those languages. One thing to mention is that in Japanese, a CLP in a prenominal position is proposed to be a modifier which adjoins to a NP (Saito et al 2006). However, this analysis does not affect our proposal that a classifier is a head.…”

“…42 Like classifiers in Korean, classifiers in both Chinese (Cheng & Sybesma 1998;Li 1999) and Japanese (e.g., Saito et al 2006;Ochi 2012) are viewed as heads in the nominal spine, e.g., CL. Thus, the diagnostics that we employ in this section may apply to those languages.…”

“…However, this analysis does not affect our proposal that a classifier is a head. In Saito et al (2006), a classifier realizes a head, CL, although the phrase that it projects is a modifier.…”

Two nouns in partitives: evidence from Japanese

“…For interpretation, Sauerland & Yatsushiro (2004) observe that the interpretation of a Q+no structure sometimes differs from that of a corresponding phrase without no as we discuss below in section 4. Secondly, Saito et al (2008) and Watanabe (2010) show that Q+no-structures differ with respect to noun ellipsis from possessives as illustrated (27). In (27a), the ellipsis of ondo 'temperature', which is head of the possessor phrase, is licensed, whereas in (27b), where the noun hon 'book' is in Q+no strucutre, it cannot be elided.…”

“…The broad distribution of -no has generally motivated accounts where -no within the noun phrase has no specific semantic content, but should be analyzed as a morphological linker inserted at certain positions in the noun phrase (Kitagawa & Ross 1982;Saito et al 2008;Watanabe 2010). In addition, homonymous lexical entries would account for the occurrences in (23b) to (23d).…”