The ICU special syntax lecture series III & IV

[Shigeto Kawahara]

MITの宮川繁先生のICU Syntax Lecture Seriesの３回目と4回目のご案内を

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慶應義塾大学

言文研

川原繁人

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May 20, 5:30-7:00, H-301
To introspect or not?: Invitation to experimental syntax Shigeto Kawahara, Keio University

Generative studies often build their theories based on intuitive grammatical judgments. It is not even uncommon that these intuition-based data come from authors themselves. Since the inception of Generative Grammar, there have been constant criticisms against this methodology, mainly from psychologists and other cognitive scientists. In this talk I would like to reexamine this issue from a modern perspective. In particular, I discuss what I think is the most constructive way to respond to the anti-generative criticisms; namely, showing by way of experiments that the intuition-based data are not necessarily unreliable. The talk heavily relies on the series of recent work by Jon Sprouse and his colleagues, augmented by my own experimental work.

May 27, 5:30-7:00, H-301 Nominative/Genitive Conversion Masao Ochi, Osaka University

Nominative/Genitive Conversion, also known as Ga/No Conversion (GNC), has received a great deal of attention in the generative literature, starting with Harada’s (1971) seminal work on this topic. In this presentation, I will first review three main proposals that have figured prominently in the past literature: D-licensing (Miyagawa 1993, 2011 and Ochi 2001 among many others), C-licensing (Watanabe 1996 and Hiraiwa 2001, 2005), and weak v licensing (in conjunction with dependent tense) (Miyagawa 2012). I will place them under careful scrutiny by highlighting their theoretical merits and potential drawbacks. Then I will discuss some GNC paradigms from some Kyushu dialects where GNC occurs quite extensively, much more so than in standard Japanese (where the domain of GNC is confined to adnominal clauses and a subset of temporal adjunct clauses). I will attempt to draw some theoretical conclusions about the nature of GNC in light of the commonalities that are observed between the GNC in such Kyushu dialects and the GNC in standard Japanese.