Embedded Topicalization in Tibetan
Daojicao and Hideki Makia
Gifu Universitya
1. Introduction
This paper investigates the distribution of the topic marker -ni in Tibetan, and comparesits distribution with that of Japanese topic marker -wa, and shows two findings. First, in Tibetan,
an ergative language, the ergative case marker -kyis cannot be replaced by the topic marker -ni.
On the other hand, in Japanese, an accusative language, the nominative case marker -ga can be
replaced by the topic marker -wa. Second, in Tibetan, embedded topicalization is possible
within non-L-marked clauses, while it is impossible in Japanese. We will consider what thesefindings might suggest for the theory of (Tibetan) grammar.
2. Background
The Tibetan data examined in this paper is from the Amdo dialect of the Tibetan language.
Tibetan is an ergative language, with an SOV order, as shown in (1). The subject of a transitive
verb is marked ergative -kyis, and the object of a transitive verb is makred absolutive, which
does not have a phonetic content, as shown by -ø. A sentence with an intransitive verb is shownin (2). In (2), the subject is not marked ergative -kyis, but marked absolutive -ø.
(1)

Bkrashis-kyis dpecha-adi-ø nyos.
Bkrashis-Erg book-the-Abs bought‘Bkashis bought the book.’(2)

Dering Bkrashis-ø
slebssong.
today
Bkrashis-Abs came
‘Today Bkrashis came.’

3. DataFirst, in (3), when the subject in the embedded clause is marked by the topic marker, thesentence is totally ungrammatical.
(3) * Bkrashis-ø[Sgrolma(-kyis)-ni dpecha-adi-ø bklagsyod]-par yidchasbyasyod.
Bkrashis-Abs Sgrolma-Erg-Top book-this-Abs read-at
believe‘Bkrashis believes that Sgrolma read this book.’
In contrast, the embedded object, when fronted to the initial position of the embedded clause,
can be marked by the topic marker, and has a topic meaning, as shown in (4).
(4)

Bkrashis-ø[dpecha-adi-ni Sgrolmas
t bklagsyod]-par yidchasbyasyod.
Bkrashis-Abs book-this-Top Sgrolma.Erg
read-atbelieve‘Bkrashis believes that this book, Sgrolma read.’

Second, the same pattern is also observed within a relative clause. When the subject of therelative clause in (5) is followed by the topic marker, the sentence is totally ungrammatical.

(5) * Sgrolmas[Bkrashis-ni dpecha-adi-ø nyos-b’inyin
Sgrolma.Erg Bkrashis-Top book-this-Abs bought-Gen day
yid la bzungyod.
remember‘Sgrolma remembers the day when Bkrashis bought this book.’de]-ø
that-Abs

However, when the object is moved to the initial position of the relative clause, it has a topic
reading, as shown in (6).
(6)

Sgrolmas[dpecha-adi-ni Bkrashis-kyis t nyos-b’i
Sgrolma.Erg book-this-Top Bkrashis-Erg
bought-Gen
yid la bzungyod.
remember‘Sgrolma remembers the day when Bkrashis bought this book.’nyin de]-ø
day that-Abs

Third, the same pattern is also observed within a relative clause, where the head noun of therelative clause is mi ‘man.’ In (7), the object in the relative clause has a contrastive meaning,
while in (8), it has a topic reading.
(7)

Bkrashis-ø[NP [IP khasangdpecha-adi-ni bklagspa]-’iBkrashis-Abs
yesterday book-this-Top read-Gen‘Bkrashis met the man who read this book, as opposed to....’(8)

Bkrashis-ø[NP [IP dpecha-adi-ni khasangt bklagspa]-’iBkrashis-Abs
book-this-Top yesterday
read-Gen‘Bkrashis met the man who read this book yesterday.’mi]-laman-tomi]-laman-to

thug.
met
thug.
met

4. Discussion
Let us now consider what the newly solicited examples might suggest for the theory of(Tibetan) grammar. First, the case marker facts in Tibetan and Japanese suggest that in Tibetan,
the ergative Case feature is on the ergative case marker itself, but in Japanese, the nominative
Case feature is on the NP. Therefore, while in Tibetan, once the ergative case marker -kyis isreplaced by the topic marker -ni, the ergative Case feature on the predicate/INFL cannot belicensed, so that the sentence is ruled out, in Japanese, even if the nominative case marker -ga
is replaced by the topic marker -wa, the nominative Case feature on the predicate/INFL can belicensed, so that the sentence is ruled in. Second, embedded topicalization is possible within
non-L-marked clauses in Tibetan, while it is impossible in Japanese. Note that while theJapanese counterpart of (4) is grammatical, the Japanese counterparts of (6) and (8) areungrammatical. Following Maki et al. (1999), we argue that while in Japanese, a topic inembedded contexts should be subject to two conditions (i) that a topic is licensed in the
projection of Infl, and (ii) that Infl is licensed by adjoining to Comp in LF, in Tibetan, a topic
in embedded contexts should only be subject to condition (i). Given Maki and Ó Baoill’s (2014)claim that in Irish, a topic is licensed in the Spec of Comp, the facts in Tibetan suggest that
there is a three-way language variation in terms of licensors of embedded topicalization:
languages like Japanese require the two licensing conditions in (i) and (ii); languages like
Tibetan only require the licensing condition in (i); and languages like Irish require the third
condition that a topic is licensed in the Spec of Comp.

Relative Clauses in Buyi
Xiao-Yu Jin and Hideki Maki
Gifu University
1. Introduction: This paper investigates properties of relative clauses in Buyi, a language
spoken in Guizhou Province of China, and elucidates the mechanism behind relative clauseformation in the language. Buyi allows relative clauses to follow or precede the relative heads.
Focusing on prenominal relative clauses, we will argue that feature movement originallyproposed in Chomsky (1995) does exist in grammar, as Takahashi (1997) demonstrated basedon independent examples, and that feature movement is independent of the operation Agreeproposed in Chomsky (2000).
2. Background: Edmondson and Solnit (1997) state that Buyi is one of the Thai-Kadai
languages. This section provides basic syntactic properties of Buyi as background to subsequent
sections. First, Buyi is an SVO language, as shown in (1).
(1)

Zhangsan chengzan Lisi.
Zhangsan praise
Lisi‘Zhangsan praised Lisi.’
Second, a modifier to a noun is placed after the noun in Buyi, as shown in (2).

(2)

shu
Zhangsanbook Zhangsan‘Zhangsan’s book’
Third, a relative clause follows the head noun in Buyi, as shown in (3)(3)

Shu [Lisi zai na jia dian mai] shi zhe gebook Lisi at the Cl store buy be this Cl‘The book which Lisi bought at the store is this book.’

shu.
book

3. Data: Let us examine relative clauses in Buyi in more detail. Buyi is a head-initial language,
and a relative clause follows the head nominal, as shown in (3) and (4)–(6).
(4)

Ren [zai na jia dian mai na ben shu] shi Zhangsan.
manat the Cl store buy the Cl book be Zhangsan‘The man who bought that book at the store is Zhangsan.’(subject)(5)

Tian [Zhangsan
mai na ben shu] shi qiantian.
(time adverb)
day
Zhangsanbuy the Cl book be the.day.before.yeseterday‘The day when Zhangsan bought the book is the day before yesterday.’(6)

Liyou [Zhangsan mai na ben shu] shi zhe ge liyou. (reason adverb)
reason Zhangsan buy the Cl book be this Cl reason‘The reason why Zhangsan bought the book is this reason.’Interestingly enough, relative clauses may precede the head nominals only when they
involve object relativization, as shown in (7)–(10).
(7)[Lisi zai na jia dian mai] shu
shi zhe ge
Lisi at the Cl store buy
book be this Cl‘The book which Lisi bought at the store is this book.’

shu.
book

(object)(8)*[Zai na jia dian mai na ben shu] ren
shi Zhangsan.
at the Cl store buy the Cl book man be Zhangsan‘The man who bought that book at the store is Zhangsan.’(subject)(9)*[Zhangsan mai na ben shu] tian shi qiantian.
(time adverb)
Zhangsan buy the Cl book day be the.day.before.yeseterday‘The day when Zhangsan bought the book is the day before yesterday.’

(10)

*

[Zhangsan mai na ben shu] liyou shi zhe ge liyou. (reason adverb)
Zhangsan buy the Cl book reason be this Cl reason‘The reason why Zhangsan bought the book is this reason.’

Furthermore, relativization of this type is also possible when the predicates in the relative
clauses are unaccusative or passive, as shown in (11)–(13).
(11)[Daoda Beijng zhan] huoche shi zhe liang huoche. (unaccusative)
arrive Beijing station train
be this Cl
train‘The train that arrived at Beijing Station is this train.’(12)[Bei dajia
chengzan] ren
shi zhe ge ren.
by everyone praised
person be the Cl man‘The person who was praised by everyone is this man.’(passive)[Dasheng ku]
ren
shi zhe ge ren.
loudlylaugh person be the Cl man‘The person who laughed loudly is this man.’(unergative)

(13)

*

4. Discussion: Let us now consider what the observed facts might suggest for the theory of(Buyi) syntax. The examples seem to show an asymmetry between base-generation sites of therelative heads: when the relative head is associated with a complement position, relativizationis possible, but when it is associated with a non-complement position (a subject or an adjunct),
relativization is impossible. This reminds us of Takahashi’s (1997) Move-F analysis ofasymmetries of null operator constructions, according to which movement of a feature out of anull operator that corresponds to an adjunct or a derived subject is banned due to a constraint
on movement such as Chomsky’s (1973) Subjacency Condition. If we assume that prenominal
relative clauses in Buyi involve a base-generated null operator, and only the relevant feature
moves out of the null operator to the relative head, the fact that (7), (11) and (12) are
grammatical, while (8)–(10) and (13) are ungrammatical is precisely predicted. Note here that
Chomsky’s (2000) Agree alone does not predict the asymmetry. Therefore, the Buyi examples
investigated in this study provide another piece of evidence for the hypothesis that feature
movement is real, and is independent of Agree.

Issues of image-based instruction: Focusing on errors of Japanese EFL learners
Tomoki Kano (University of Tsukuba, Graduate Student)
1. Introduction
Nowadays, researches are conducted which take into account the utility of linguistics
in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings. In particular, cognitive linguistics is a
new area of enquiry that informs mainstream EFL pedagogy and research (Tanaka, Satoand Abe, 2006). These studies crucially assume that participants actively refer to theimage schema in recognizing or producing prepositions. Many experimental studies,
therefore, suggest that the instruction based on a cognitive linguistic perspective has morepedagogical effects on learning than traditional instruction.
Results from previous studies indicate that the instruction of English prepositions is
one area where a cognitive linguistics view and the use of images have been particularly
beneficial. Previous experimental studies have employed the image diagrams of Tanaka
and Matsumoto (1997) or Tyler and Evans (2003), and have investigated theireffectiveness on learners’ acquisition of English prepositions.
2. Issue of Image-use Based Instruction
Many of the previous experimental studies rely on image diagram (citations) but
Kano (2018) claims “image-use” has two issues to be dealt with. First, it may fossilize
learners’ understanding of more extended prepositional usage. The second issue is related
to feedback to learners. When learner make an error of the figurative use of a preposition,
instructors have difficulty in explaining why it is ungrammatical through the use of animage.
3. Pilot study
In order to examine how Japanese EFL learners understand the usage of certain
prepositions, a survey was conducted on what image Japanese learners have in mind whenchoosing appropriate new prepositions in a multiple-choice test situation. Participantsconsist of 72 Japanese university students. The procedure of the study is as follows.
(I) Participants answered 25 questions containing target prepositions such as over,
above, under, and below, and also dummy prepositions such as on, and in. The usageof target prepositions was categorized into three types; spatial, temporal and abstract.
Each question consists of an English sentence which included one blank and aJapanese translation of it. Some examples were shown below in (1-3):
(1)
(2)
(3)

There’s a bridge ( ) the river. (spatial usage of over)( ) the next few days, I learned all about the new project. (temporalusage of over)I think I’m () my cold now. (abstract usage of over)(II) Participants were asked about the awareness in answering the last six questions.
They chose the most appropriate one from five choices of “by intuition”, “byreferring to the image of a preposition”, “I memorize the usage in question”, “I chose‘I don’t know’ in the question”, and “etcetera”.
(III) Follow-up interview was conducted to investigate what kind of image they referto in answering questions. Test answers were analyzed by hierarchical cluster
analysis (Ward’s method) with R (R core team, 2018) and three clusters were
produced. Two or three participants were randomly chosen from each cluster, and atotal of eight participants were interviewed.
The result of the present study revealed two points. One is the fact that, in all the last
six questions, over half of the participants were aware of the image of the preposition inanswering the question. Of 72 students, 53 students (73.6%) referred to the image in thefirst question of the last six items, 41(56.9%) in the second question, 56 (77.8%) in thethird question, 44 (61.1%) in the fourth question, 40 (55.6%) in the fifth question, and 40(55.6%) in the sixth question. It is found that many of the participants depend on theimage for answering the questions.
The other finding is the fact that participants were aware of the wrong image of
certain prepositions in the context where another one should be selected instead, thus
produced a wrong answer. An example of the wrong image is shown below for thequestion “The issue is () discussion”.

Figure 1. The image wrongly drawn by a participant
In this case, under should be selected instead of on. In the interview, he/she said she
selected on because she had a kind of image of “The issue is put on a discussion”. The
author considers this happens because the semantic network of the student is not yet fullybuilt. This kind of error is seen in various cases.
4. Future Research Implications
In the future research, a potential of alternative teaching method which overcome
issues of the image-use, such as DDL (Data Driven Learning) which Chujo et al. (2016)
propose, should be explored in order to probe how L2 learners are constructing the image
schema; the contact between bottom-up and top-down approaches.
References
Chujo, Kiyomi, Kobayashi Yuichiro, Mizumoto Atsushi, and Oghigian, Karthryn (2016)“Exploring the effectiveness of combined web-based corpus tool for beginner EFL
DDL,” Linguistics and Literature Studies 4, 262-274.
Kano, Tomoki (2018) “Issues of teaching English preposition to EFL learners: Focusing
on the image schema of English preposition,” Data Science in Collaboration 2, ed.
by Yuichi Ono and Masaharu Shimada, 122-129, General Affair Supporting Center,
Tsukuba.
R Core Team (2018) R: A language and environment for statistical computing.
R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.
R-project.org/
Tanaka, Shigeaki, and Matsumoto Yo (1997) Kukanto ido no hyogen (Expression about
space and movement), Kenkyusha, Tokyo.
Tanaka, Shigeaki, Sato Yoshiaki, and Abe Hajime (2006) Eigo kankaku ga minitsuku
jissenteki shido (Practical instruction to acquire English senses), Taishukan, Tokyo.
Tyler, Andrea, and Evans Vyvyan (2003) The semantics of English preposition: Spatial
scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Select as MERGE
Daiki MATSUMOTO Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University
Whether a Select-like operation is necessary (for example, Collins & Stabler 2016), or dispensable(see Bošković & Messick to appear among others) has been a matter of debate in Generative
Grammar (GG). Under the strong minimalist thesis SMT, Merge (more recently, MERGE; see
Chomsky et al. 2017) is claimed to be the only simplest operation in Universal Grammar (UG) (seeChomsky 2005 among others). But Merge in current sense is not the simplest at all, as it also tacitly
plays the role of Select. A significant amount of researchers have actually proposed to “decompose”
Merge into a set of suboperations like Concatenate and Select (Boeckx 2009) or 0-Merge and 0Search (Narita et al. 2017), but this is not a popular move in the literature since it apparently
increases the complexity of UG, and therefore should be avoided as much as possible under SMT.
To surmount this dilemma, I claim the following in this paper: (I) Select differentiates a set offeatures from others, making it mergeable. (Ⅱ) This effect of Select suggests that it is just the otherside of Merge, securing its computational efficiency. (Ⅲ) Accordingly, there is no violation of SMT.
Before analyzing the Select operation, let us first see the computational substance of MERGE. It
is the operation on a workspace WS which “represents the stage of the derivation at any given
point” (Chomsky et al. 2017). It takes two sets of atomic concepts = feature bundles forcomputation, which are called syntactic objects SOs, and combines them to make an unordered set.
The output of MERGE is also an SO. This is described in (1) below1 .
(1) For any accessible terms P, Q in a WS, MERGE(P, Q, WS) = [{P, Q}, X1, … Xn] = WS’, where(i) Y ∈ WS and Y ≠ P, Q → Y ∈ {X1, … Xn}(ii) accessible terms appear only once in WS’(iii) {X1, … Xn} minimal
Three questions immediately arise; (i) What guarantees that X and Y are actually SOs? (ii) How
does MERGE know these two are actually distinct? (iii) Why X1 …… Xn are already in the WS?
To answer question (i), let us tentatively suppose the Select operation serves as a “decomposer.”That is to say, Select generates mergeable objects from a messy stack of atomic concepts (i.e., theLexicon LEX)2 by mapping its copy onto the WS3, as in (2).
(2) In the lexicon LEX{X1……Xn}, SELECT(Xi) → WS[Xi] vs LEX({X1…Xn} — Xi)4

1 See Komachi et al. 2018 for the formalization of this MERGE operation.
2 A reviewer questioned what “a messy stack of atomic concepts” is, and here is the answer; the LEX. It is messy in the sense that all

the concepts stored there are undistinguished from one another; after Selection, the Selectee is differentiated and hence gets
“linguisticized.” From a biolinguistic viewpoint, I assume these undistinguished concepts are to some extent shared with otheranimals, which I put aside here for reasons of space. I thank Koji Fujita (p.c.) for suggesting this point to me.
3 Note that Select does not map the Selected bundle of concepts per se onto the WS; otherwise, all the Selected computational atoms

would disappear every time we generate a linguistic expression, apparently contrary to fact.
4 To be precise, there is no such thing as X1……Xn in the LEX as the concepts are messily mingled up before any Select application.

(2) illustrates that Xi is Selected and hence differentiated from {X1…Xn} in the LEX, and the
Selectee Xi is mapped onto the WS as an LI. Given that Select is a syntactic operation on atomic
concepts, Selected items are obviously SOs = bundles of concepts. In this sense, Select serves as adifferentiator of an arbitrary bundle of semantic features SEM-F from others. Call this SELECT.
Witness already that this SELECT solves all the questions (i) to (iii) casted above; SELECT
differentiates a bundle of SEM-Fs and hence makes it mergeable by mapping its copy onto the WS,
and hence the distinctness of mergeable items is safely secured by this SELECT operation. In
addition, SELECT also serves as the function which maps SEM-Fs onto the WS.
This SELECT is the same as MERGE in that both generate an SO, a bundle of features =expressions with internal hierarchical structure. Moreover, SELECT always yields binary outputs
from unitary inputs as in (2), while MERGE generates unitary outputs from binary inputs generated
via SELECT. This factual assumption reveals that SELECT is the flip side of MERGE. So theevolutionary explananda will not be increased and there is no violation of SMT.
It is worth noting here that SELECT also secures the computational efficiency of MERGE.
Chomsky (2000) claims that “[o]perative complexity is reduced if L(anguage) makes a one-time
selection of a subset [F] of F, dispensing with further access to F.” If this is correct, the operativecomplexity of MERGE is reduced by a Select-like operation. Chomsky does not discuss any
computational substance of this Select operation, but now it is clear that SELECT is the one thatbundles up the semantic features to generate an SO in the WS without MERGing each one of themsuccessively; hence it serves as a computational efficiency securer of MERGE by reducing thenumber of its application in the WS. So SELECT serves as a mapping function of mergeable SOs
onto the WS for MERGE in an efficient way.
Based on these observations, I will argue from an evolinguistic perspective that this SELECT
operation gave rise to the mind-dependency of the human language concepts (Berwick & Chomsky
2016), which harmonizes with core ideas in Distributed Morphology (Marantz 2000 et seq.).
References
Berwick, R. C. & Chomsky, N. (2016). Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press / Boeckx, C. (2009). On the nature of merge. In M. Piattelli-Palmarini, P. Salaburu, and
J. Uriagereka (Eds.), Of Minds and Language: a Basque Encounter with Noam Chomsky (pp. 44–
57). Oxford: Oxford University Press / Bošković, Z. & Messick, T. (to appear). Derivational
economy in syntax and semantics. In M. Arnoff (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia ofLinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press / Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The
framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (Eds.), Step by Step (pp. 89–155).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press / Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic
Inquiry, 36, 1–22 / Chomsky, N., Gallego, Á. J., & Ott, D. (2017). Generative grammar and thefaculty of language: Insights, questions and challenges. Unpublished manuscript. lingbuzz/003507 /Collins, C. & Stabler, E. (2016). A formalization of minimalist syntax. Syntax, 19, 43–78 /Komachi, M., Kitahara, H., Uchibori, A., and Takita, K. (2018). Generative procedure revisited.
Paper presented at the 36th Conference of the English Linguistic Society of Japan, November 24–
25, 2018, Yokohama National University / Marantz, A. (2000). Words. handout, MIT / Narita, H.,
Kasai, H., Kato, T., & Zushi, M. (2017). 0-search and 0-merge. In N. Fukui (Ed.), Merge in the
Mind-Brain, Routledge, London.

Quantificational Reading as Implicature
Kazushige Moriyama (Kobe University/JSPS)
1. Introduction
This paper argues that the so-called quantificational reading (Q-reading) of null arguments(Takahashi 2008, Şener and Takahashi 2010) should be analyzed by conversational
implicature (Grice 1975). (1) is a quintessential example of the Q-reading, and the omittedsite in (1)b is ambiguous between two readings: Taro respects most teachers that are identicalto the teachers Hanako respects (E-type reading); Taro respects most teachers that are not
identical to the teachers Hanako respects (Q-reading). (Note that e stands for an empty site.)
Takahashi (2008) proposes, based on the observation, that the Q-reading in (b) is derived byeliding the quantified object at PF under identity, as in (2), and as such the Q-reading isclaimed to be licensed by argument ellipsis.
(1) a.
b.

(2) b.

Hanako-ga
taitei-nosensei-osonkeisiteiru.
Hanako-NOM
most-GEN
teacher-ACC
respects“Hanako respects most teachers.”
Taro-moesonkeisiteiru.
Taro-also
respects“lit. Taro respects e, too.”(Adapted from Takahashi 2008:310)
Taro-motaitei-nosensei-osonkeisiteiru.

The central goal of this paper is to challenge such a view in favor of a pragmatic
solution. Specifically, it is shown that the Q-reading should be attributed to conversational
implicature, primarily because the Q-reading is cancellable given appropriate contexts. Thisconclusion further lends support to Saito’s (2017) generalization to null arguments.
2. Proposal
The proposal is that the Q-reading of null arguments falls under conversational implicature.
Before going into the details of the analysis, let us confirm a distinction between entailment
and implicature in terms of cancellability (Grice 1975). To take (3) for example, the sentenceJohn has three cows entails that John has two cows, and conversationally implicates that Johnhas only three cows and no more. Of significant importance is that, while this sentence mustnot be followed by in fact none, which is intended to cancel the entailment, as in (4)a, it canbe followed by in fact ten, which cancels the implicature, as in (4)b. Thus, cancellability isclaimed to be a useful diagnostic test for conversational implicature.
(3) John has three cows.
ENTAILMENT: John has two cows.
IMPLICATURE: John has only three cows and no more.
(Based on Levinson 1983:115)(4) a.
b.

*John has three cows, in fact none.
John has three cows, in fact ten.

(Levinson 1983:115)

Interestingly enough, it can be confirmed that the Q-reading of null arguments in Japanese iscancellable, and in fact, the meaning of the quantifier taitei-no “most” disappears given sucha context as in (5). This example is formed by adding to (1) the information that Taro only

respects some teachers, which cancels the meaning of taitei “most,” but this context is judged
fully acceptable. If, on the other hand, the quantified object taitei-no sensei-o “most teachers”
is phonetically realized, unacceptability emerges, as in (6). This amounts to saying that
Takahashi’s (2008) PF-deletion under identity erroneously outputs the interpretation in (6).
Taking this into consideration, it is better to view the Q-reading as a by-product ofconversational implicature without recourse to ellipsis/deletion.
(5) a.
b.

(6) b.

Hanako-wa
taitei-nosensei-osonkeisiteiru.
Hanako-TOP
most-GEN
teacher-ACC
respects“Hanako respects most teachers.”
Taro-moesonkeisiteiru
kedo,
Taro-also
respects
thoughTaro-wananninka-no
sensei-sika
sonkeisiteinai.
Taro-TOP
some-GEN
teacher-only
does.not.respect“lit. Taro also respects e, but Taro only respects some teachers.”#Taro-motaitei-nosensei-osonkeisiteiru
kedo,
Taro-also
most-GEN
teacher-ACC
respects
thoughTaro-wananninka-no
sensei-sika
sonkeisiteinai.
Taro-TOP
some-GEN
teacher-only
does.not.respect“Taro also respects most teachers, but Taro only respects some teachers.”

By the same logic, the interpretations of null arguments with numeral quantifiers and withadverbial particles like -sae “even” are also considered to be involved with conversational
implicature, but the relevant data cannot be listed here due to space limitations.
3. Implication
Saito (2017) explores the interaction between null arguments and quantified expressions (e.g.,
wh-phrases, exhaustive dake “only”), drawing a descriptive generalization that
operator-variable relations resist being null. As Saito (2017:724, footnote 11) acknowledges,
however, taitei-no “most” does not appear to fall within the generalization. There is a way outof this, however. That is, it is the case that quantified expressions including taitei avoid
ellipsis/deletion, and the seemingly exceptional reading of taitei is induced with the help of
conversational implicature independently of ellipsis/deletion.
4. Conclusion
The alleged quantificational reading of null arguments has, in light of cancellability, turned
out to come from conversational implicature, but not ellipsis/deletion, and this implies thattaitei “most” falls under Saito’s (2017) generalization.
References (Selected)
Grice, Paul H. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, ed. by Peter Cole andJerry Morgan, 41–58, New York: Academic Press.
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saito, Mamoru. 2017. Ellipsis. In Handbook of Japanese Syntax, ed. by M. Shibatani, S.
Miyagawa, and H. Noda, 701–750. Dordrecht: Mouton de Gruyter.
Şener, Serkan and Daiko Takahashi. 2010. Ellipsis of arguments in Japanese and Turkish.
Nanzan Linguistics 6:79–99.
Takahashi, Daiko. 2008. Quantificational null objects and argument ellipsis. Linguistic
Inquiry 39:307–326.

On the Role of Adjacency in Morphophonological Changes.
Tetsuo Nishihara (Miyagi University of Education)
This paper focuses on the role of “ Adjacency” in morphophonologicalalternations (Sato (1990), Nishihara and van de Weijer (2012)) as analternative to using levels or strata as in Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky (1982)),
using word boundaries (#) and morpheme boundaries (+).
Sato (1990) pointed out that some phonological changes are explained byappealing to the syntactic notion of “Adjacency”. For instance, the [n] of theprefix in- assimilates to any following consonant (e.g., impossible, irregular,iŋcoherent), while the [n] of un- does not (unknown, unnecessary, withgeminate [nn], and no place assimilation in unpopular). This receives astraightforward explanation in the “adjacency” theory, as seen in (1):(1) impatient vs. unpopular
affixation & assimilation (applied)[in [ patient] → [impatient]
affixation & assimilation (not applied)[un [φ[popular]]] → [ unpopular](Sato 1990)

As seen in (1), since the [n] of in- is directly adjacent to the root, [in] is changed
to [im] by assimilation rule, while there is an empty category that prevents
this in [un]φ[popular].
The same structural approach explains the presence vs. absence of stressshift in derived words. Cf. the words defínitive and définiteness in (2) (bothfrom définite, with initial stress), with their morphological structure:(2)[[deFInite] ive]φ][[DEFinite]φ[ness]]

Just like in the case of assimilation, if there is an empty position φ between
the morphological constituents, no rule applies (resulting in absence of stressshift in definiteness), while if there is a closer connection between theconstituent parts (as in definitive) stress shift applies (in other words, in thelatter case, the two constituents are more likely to be treated as one stressdomain).

In this presentation I consider some alternatives to the Adjacency
approach to phonological and morphological structure outlined above. The
rule of velar softening is formulated as follows: k → s / ___ + i(3) electric [ k ] : electri c ity:[s]With respect to this change, it is necessary to specify an internal boundary(+) between [ k ] and [ i ]. Otherwise, the velar softening would also apply inexamples such as:(4) “kill”, “key”, “kit” and “spook#y”, “hawk#ish”.

(Hyman 1975)

I can explain (3) with adjacency as follows：(4)[ [ electri [ k ] ] ity ] → [ s ]On the other hand, “spook#y” and “hawk#ish” (Hyman (1975)), have a #boundary, so that the rule does not apply:(5) [[ spook ]φy]] , [[ hawk ]φish ]Words like “kill” and “key” also do not cause velar softening, and for thesecases I suggest that these need a bracket ] with adjacency. If the rule isformulated like this, with “no adjacency (condition)” and “bracket ( ] ), it
applies as follows:(6) a. [ [ electri [ k ] ] ity ] → [ s ]b. [[ spook ]φy]] , [[ hawk ]φish ]Therefore, my new proposal is that we need both the “no adjacency (condition)”and the “bracket specification” ( ] ) in the rule. In this way, in underived words
the rule will not apply, since there is no bracket ( ] ):(7) [ k ill ], [ k ey ]In sum, the velar softening alternation can be explained by invoking bothan “adjacency condition” and a “bracket specification”.
References
Kiparsky, Paul (1982) “Lexical Morphology and Phonology.” In I. S. Yang (eds.)

Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Hanshin, 3-91.
Hyman. Larry (1975) Phonology: Theory and Analysis. Rinehart and Wilson.
Sato, Yasushi (1990) “Adjacency in Phonology,” The Meiji Gakuin Review 75.
85-99. [“On-inron ni okeru Rinsetsusei,“ The Meiji Gakuin Ronso 75]
Nishihara, Tetsuo and Jeroen van de Weijer (2002) “On the Role of Adjacency
Morphological Stress Shift.” JELS 29, 293-296.

Tense/aspect-agreement violations in Japanese L2 English
Neal Snape1, Makiko Hirakawa2 and John Matthews2
Gunma Prefectural Women’s University1, Chuo University2
Tense/aspect agreement has been of interest to SLA scholars for many years (e.g., Sugaya & Shirai, 2007).
The current study investigates the acquisition of English past simple tense and present perfect aspect byJapanese second language (L2) learners. We examine sensitivity to tense/aspect mismatches between a fronted
temporal adverbial (e.g., Last year) and a following inflected verb, as illustrated in (1) and (2).
(1) Past simple: matcha. Three days ago, Tom missed the bus to the main station.
Past simple: mismatchb. * Since last year, Kate studied Dutch and German at Oxford University.
(2)

Present perfect: matcha. Since last year, Kate has studied Dutch and German at Oxford University.
Present perfect: mismatchb. * Three days ago, Tom has missed the bus to the main station.

(stimuli based on Roberts & Liszka, 2013)
Japanese marks past tense/perfective aspect with the suffix −ta, inducing consistent temporal interpretations
regardless of the verb to which it attaches, but the imperfective marker –te i-ru prompts different
interpretations depending on the lexical aspect of the verbal predicate it appears with (Ogihara, 1998). Thus,
our research investigates whether Japanese L2 learners are equally capable of distinguishing matched andmismatched temporal adverbials with past simple tense (1) and present perfect aspect (2) in English, using
both off-line and on-line measures.
We recruited 16 Japanese learners of English and 18 English native speakers. Participants completed a selfpaced reading (SPR) task followed by an untimed acceptability judgment task (AJT). Five versions of the AJT
were created, each with 24 test items and 26 distractors. The SPR task included four versions, each with 24
test items and 16 distractors. Preliminary analysis reveals that Japanese L2 learners process the past simple
items on the SPR task in a manner consistent with their judgments on the AJT (Table 1, Figure 1). However,for present perfect items, they fail to distinguish match and mismatch conditions on the AJT but exhibit aprocessing cost only for the match condition on the SPR task (Table 2, Figure 2). We suggest that theperformance differences between the Japanese L2 learners and native control group follows from L1 influenceamong the learners due to differences between L1 and L2 lexical semantics: Japanese L2 learners areinsensitive to present perfect aspect as form and meaning align differently in their L1 and L2 (Gabriele,
Martohardjono & McClure, 2005). We present the Japanese L2 learner results in the context of Lardiere’s(2009) feature reassembly hypothesis.
Gabriele, A., Martohardjono, G., & McClure, W. (2005). Evaluating the role of the L1 in the L2 acquisitionof aspect: A study of Japanese learners of English. Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on
Bilingualism (pp. 808-826). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition.
SLR, 25, 173-227.
Ogihara, T. (1998). Tense and aspect. In Tsujimura (ed.), The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, 326-348.
Blackwell.
Roberts, L. & Liszka, S. (2013). Processing tense/aspect violations on-line in the second language: A selfpaced reading study with French and German L2 learners of English. SLR, 29, 413-439.
Sugaya, N. & Shirai, Y. (2007). The acquisition of progressive and resultative meanings of the imperfective
aspect marker by L2 learners of Japanese. SSLA, 29, 1-38.

Table 1. Acceptability judgments for past simple conditions on the AJT
past simple (SD)Match
Mismatch
NS controls
1.72 (0.8)-1.10 (1.4)
Japanese L2 learners
1.27 (1.5)-1.18 (1.2)

Figure 1. Mean response time (RT) differences between conditions (match minus
mismatch) for past simple items across 4 critical segments (see (1) above)

Table 2. Acceptability judgments for present perfect conditions on the AJT
present perfect (SD)Match
Mismatch
NS controls
Japanese L2 learners

1.57 (1.0)
1.06 (1.2)-1.44 (1.2)
0.85 (1.4)

Figure 2. Mean response time (RT) differences between conditions (match minus
mismatch) for present perfect items across 4 critical segments (see (2) above)

140

140

120

120

100

100

80

80
60

60
NS controls past
simple

40
20

40

0

0

-20

-20

Japanese L2
learners past
simple-40-60

NS controls
present perfect

20

Japanese L2
learners present
perfect

-40
-60

-80

-80

-100

-100

-120

-120
-140

-140
verb

verb+1

verb+2

verb+3aux

verb

verb+1

verb+2L2 learners: 5.1% = outliers, 67% accuracy on questions; NS controls: 2.2% = outliers, 84% accuracy on questions