Lexical categories in Japanese

Abstract The lexical feature system proposed by Chomsky (1970), [+/-V, +/-N], makes it possible to capture a number of significant syntactic and morphological generalizations. The feature system can minimally distinguish the four major English categories, but in Japanese, there are six categories commonly recognized. It is shown that the feature system is capable of dealing with the Japanese lexical categories. Those properties that resist ready categorization by the feature system are shown to derive from general principles of the grammar, thus making categorial distinction based on those properties unnecessary.