Head-Movement and Case-Marking in Japanese

This paper proposes a new system of Case-marking in Japanese which freely interacts with head-movement. Two different processes involved in Case-marking are clearly distinguished in the proposed system: Case-indexing and Case-assignment. Case-indexing takes place under government which is defined by c-command, rather than by m-command as is widely assumed, and constitutes a necessary condition for the fulfillment of Case theoiy. All major categories, lexical or functional, assign Case-indices. On the other hand, only the categories having Case-grids actually "assign" Case. Thus, functional categories in Japanese, having no features relevant for Case-assignment, do not assign Case, although they do assign Caseindices. In the proposed Case-marking system for Japanese, the role of functional categories in the language with respect to Case-marking is to license the realization of "default Cases" on unmarked phrases. It is shown that the Case-marking system successfully captures the nature of Caseparticles ga and no, as they contrast with other Case-particles such as o, in a more straightforward way than some of the previous analyses. It is also argued that the proposed Case-marking system makes possible a unified analysis for a number of constructions in Japanese, including nominal constructions, complement structures, control structures, and ga-no conversion. (Area of interest: formal syntax) 1. Introductory Remarks This paper proposes, in a preliminary form, a new system of Case-marking in Japanese by introducing the notion of "Caseindexing." It a l so s h o w s how the processes relevant to the assignment of Case interact with modules of grammar, in particular, X° -movement , an instance of M o v e -