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Part of
Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. Whitman
Edited by Kunio Nishiyama, Hideki Kishimoto and Edith Aldridge
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 250] 2018
► pp. 45–72

Chapter 3
Displaced modification

Picture-noun constructions in Marathi and Japanese

| Kobe University | Universities of Virginia and Michigan | NINJAL
| Kobe University | Universities of Virginia and Michigan | NINJAL
| Kobe University | Universities of Virginia and Michigan | NINJAL

The picture-noun construction in Marathi has a constituent structure in which the imagee-NP marked with genitive case appears outside the participial complement clause, i.e. it does not appear as a direct argument to the verb in the complement clause. It is shown that Japanese has the same type of picture-noun construction, which is not an instance of the genitive-subject construction derived by nominative-genitive conversion. In the picture-noun construction, the genitive NP, which is structurally related to the picture noun head, is interpreted as the subject of the complement clause. We argue that the imagee NP controls an invisible pronoun residing in the complement clause, and is thus understood as the subject of that clause. We discuss a number of empirical facts regarding the picture-noun complements in Marathi and Japanese that provide support for this analysis.

Keywords: picture noun, participial complement, imagee NP, control, Marathi, Japanese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Marathi and Japanese picture-noun constructions
    • 2.1The basic properties
    • 2.2The structure
  • 3.Genitive subjects in Japanese
    • 3.1Nominative-genitive conversion
    • 3.2Clausal idioms
  • 4.Sensorial nouns
  • 5.Theoretical implications
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.250.04kis
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