University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Specificity effects for Japanese, an articleless language

Furuya, Kaori

Content Files
SLS2012-03Furuya.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/35299

Description

Title
Specificity effects for Japanese, an articleless language
Author(s)
Furuya, Kaori
Issue Date
2012-12-14
Keyword(s)
  • Japanese
  • Determiners
  • Specificity
  • Syntax
Date of Ingest
2012-12-14T18:56:13Z
Abstract
The Japanese language does not possess articles. Demonstratives do not obligatorily appear in the left periphery of noun phrases (NPs). Bare NPs can be definite and indefinite in a given context. However, when NPs combine with numeral classifiers (NCs), NPs encounter restrictions on interpretation. I account for them in the vein of specificity effects for this article-less language, in support of the phase DP theory (Chomsky 2004, 2008). The lack of an article is due to lexical reasons in the determiner system rather than due to a syntactic or semantic parametric difference in the Japanese language.
Publisher
Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISSN
0049-2388
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Article
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/35299
Copyright and License Information
Copyright © 2012 Kaori Furuya

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Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers PRIMARY
The online working papers of the UIUC Department of Linguistics