HPSG Analysis of Topicalization and Contrastivization

by HASHIMOTO Chikara

Constructions exhibiting unbounded dependency, such as topicalization and relativization, have often been analyzed as containing syntactic a gap. This paper shows that adopting Shirai and Gunji (1998) proposal on relativization, it is possible to analyze topicalization and contrastivization in Japanese without syntactic gaps. In addition, the analysis presented in this paper is able to account for the following differences between the two constructions:

• Topic wa phrases are prohibited from appearing in a relative clause whereas contrastive wa phrases are not.
• Topic constructions allow a resumptive pronoun to appear in an embedded clause, whereas contrastive constructions do not.
• So-called reconstruction effects are observed only in topic constructions, but not in contrastive constructions.

My assumptions and proposals are as follows:

• Arguments of a predicate are raised by the tense morpheme which the predicate attaches to. (Shirai and Gunji, 1998)
• Raised arguments don't appear in the argument structure of the raising verb. (Uda, 1996)
• Syntactic-semantic structure is not affected by scrambling. (Gunji, 1999)
• Topic wa phrases are licensed by being semantically bound by the tense morpheme which is assertive form.
• Contrastive wa phrases are analyzed as phonological variants of ordinary arguments.