Chapter published in:
Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography: A crosslinguistic perspective
Edited by Fuzhen Si and Luigi Rizzi
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 267] 2021
► pp. 161–180

Chapter 8
Another argument for the differences among wa-marked phrases

| Meio University
The aim of this paper is to argue that the focal stress and structural position determine the interpretation of wa-marked phrases in a Japanese sentence. Namely, our argument is, based on, and extended out of Nakamura (2017: 356–359), that in sentence initial position, wa-marked phrases denote Thematic Topic (tt) or Contrastive Topic (ct). Besides, our claim is that within vP domain, focally-stressed wa-marked phrase, denoted here as wa-marked phrase, signals Contrastive Focus (cf). In (1a), wa-marked phrase denotes exhaustivity. On the other hand, wa-marked phrase in (1b), which occurs below the VP adverb majimeni (=seriously), signals contrast.
(1)
  1. Iya,
    no,
    demo
    but
    ano-ronbun-wa
    that paper-ei Focus
    Taro-ga
    T-Nom
    yon-da
    read-Past
    (yo).
    Par
    ‘Not, but Taro read that paper, and he read nothing more.’
  2. Majimeni
    seriously
    Taro-wa
    t-tt
    hon-4-satu-wa
    book-4-cl-cf
    yon-da
    read-Past
    ‘Taro seriously read the four books (, opposed to four papers).
Through the examples of the scopal interactions between negation, verbs and focus particles and wa-marked phrases, we demonstrate that the wa-marked phrase in vP domain denotes contrastive focus (cf). We go on to propose the following elaborated left peripheries for both CP and vP territories.
(2)
  1. [TopP [FocP [TopP [TP [ vP [VP ….]]]]]: CP periphery
  2. [TopP [FocP [TopP [ vP [VP ….]]]]: vP periphery
Keywords: wa-marked sentences, contrastive focus (cf), left periphery, CP periphery, vP periphery, Japanese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous analyses on the Japanese particle wa
  • 3.Japanese data
    • 3.1Types of adverbs and their structural positions
    • 3.2 wa-marked phrases and their structural positions
    • 3.3Scopal interactions between negation and wa-marked phrases
    • 3.4Scopal interactions between verbs and wa-marked phrases
    • 3.5Scopal interactions between focus particle and wa-marked phrases
    • 3.6Scopal interactions between DPs in DOC
  • 4.Hungarian and German data
    • 4.1Hungarian data
    • 4.2German data
  • 5.Elaborated left periphery in both CP and vP domains
  • 6.Conclusion, apparent problems, and theoretical implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.267.08nak
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