Null-expletive Subject in Japanese
In the current Government and Binding framework, every sentence must have a subject. When the matrix subject position is non-thematic, it is filled by an expletive. Japanese, however, lacks an overt expletive. This raises the question of whether the language has an expletive which is null, or raises...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Kansas
1993-01-01
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| Series: | Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics |
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/313 |
| Summary: | In the current Government and Binding framework, every sentence must have a subject. When the matrix subject position is non-thematic, it is filled by an expletive. Japanese, however, lacks an overt expletive. This raises the question of whether the language has an expletive which is null, or raises an embedded subject to the matrix subject position. I will argue that Japanese does indeed have a null-expletive by discussing how a negative polarity item behaves |
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| ISSN: | 2378-7600 |