The peculiar syntactic and semantic properties of locative inversion (LI) have been a central research topic in the generative framework. It is argued that LI has a semantic/cognitive function of expressing a directly perceived situation that is about to happen, is happening, or has happened before the speaker' s eyes (Fukuchi (1985) and Hasegawa (2010)). Unifying LI and Japanese thetic judgment sentences into the presentational clause type, Hasegawa (2010) proposes a cartographic analysis to account for their syntactic and semantic/cognitive properties. According to Hasegawa's analysis of LI, the preposed locative PP occupies [Spec, ForceP], thereby encoding the clause type as presentational. The aim of this paper is to develop Hasegawa’s analysis of LI by elaborating on the information-structural status of the locative PP. More specifically, I propose that the locative PP may target either [Spec, ModP] or [Spec, FocP]: In the former, the postverbal NP carries focus; in the latter, the preposed locative PP carries focus. Extending the proposed analysis to quotative inversion (QI), I further argue that the derivation of QI may involve focus fronting, concluding that LI (/Deictic Inversion) involving focus fronting is theoretically treated on par with QI. This study thus makes a theoretical contribution to the unified approach to LI and QI that has been motivated on different grounds in previous studies (e.g., Collins (1997) and Wu (2008)).
リポジトリのご案内
Notes on Deictic Inversion and Quotative Inversion in English
宮崎大学教育学部紀要100号_p21-40.pdf
(1.72MB)
