Analyzing the Verbal Noun: Internal and External Constraints

Japanese verbal nouns such as sakugen`reduction' and saikuringùcycling' appear initially noun-like, in morphology and distribution. They normally take adjectives and nominal case marked arguments (that is, preceding arguments and modiiers are case marked with the genitive-no or an oblique particle followed by-no, such as-e-nòto-gen'), as in (1a). 1 In such a sentence, verbal case marked arguments (by which I mean use of particles like-ga and-o to mark subject, object and oblique grammatical roles) is impossible, as shown in (1b). (1) a. Nihon-no Japan-gen bb oeki-kuroji-no trade-surplus-gen ohaba-na drastic sakugen-ga] reduction-nom nozomarete-iru desire.pass-prog. pres`Japan is required to drastically reduce its trade surplus.' 0 My thanks to the many people who have helped me with this paper. First and foremost should be mentioned Peter Sells and Masayo Iida upon whose work this paper builds. I have also received advice and comments(relatingto data or linguistic analyses, though generally the latter) from 1 Verbal nouns are written in small capitals in all the examples. I will largely restrict myself to discussing non-native verbal nouns (of Chinese and Western origin). See Tsujimura (forthcoming) for a discussion of native deverbal nouns.