Paper

Parasitic gaps in Japanese: An MG-based approach

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Abstract

This paper aims to provide an account based on Minimalist Grammar (MG) for what are called parasitic gaps in Japanese, which we take as a null pronoun. The main goal of this paper is to provide a syntactic account of the environment in which a parasitic gap reading is licensed in Japanese. First, Japanese parasitic gaps are compared with English ones, illustrating the puzzle to be solved. We argue that the possibility of co-indexing between a parasitic gap (null pronoun) and wh-phrase is correlated with the point at which the wh-phrase enters the derivation. We also show that scrambling counterbleeds licensing of parasitic gaps by using extended Directional Minimalist Grammar. The proposed syntactic analysis has an advantage over a semantic analysis in that there is no need to postulate vacuous movement of the subject wh-phrase.

Keywords: Parasitic gap, Minimalist Grammar, Syntax

How to Cite:

Tomita, Y. & Hirayama, H., (2023) “Parasitic gaps in Japanese: An MG-based approach”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 6(1), 212-221. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/cvmz-jr53