November 26, 2004: Shinichiro Ishihara, Kayono Shiobara

Time:: 3:30pm, November 26, 2004
Place:: Conference room, 3rd floor, Building 10, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo Komaba campus.
Talk 1: 3:30pm
Speaker:: Shinichiro Ishihara, Universität Potsdam
Title:: Multiple Cleft in Japanese
Abstract:: In this talk, we discuss Japanese multiple cleft construction. Adopting Rizzi's (1997) articulated CP structure, we propose that Japanese cleft construction is derived from the so-called ``no da'' construction. This analysis is different from previously proposed analyses (Koizumi 1995, Takano 2002) in that it allows derivations violating the clause-mate condition. It has been claimed (Koizumi 1995) that multiple cleft exhibits the clause-mate condition (CMC). We show, however, that CMC disappears under a certain condition, namely, when the focused phrases are wh-phrases. We analyze this phenomenon by paying attention to the prosodic properties of the wh-questions and the information structure associated with them. We also extend our analysis to multiple sluicing, which shows all the characteristics parallel to the multiple cleft except that it does not exhibit CMC effect. Our analysis naturally explains the parallelism as well as the discrepancy between the two analysis.
Talk 2: 5:00pm
Speaker:: Kayono Shiobara, Ochanomizu University
Title:: From Focus, via Prosody, to Syntax
Abstract:: The main question I address in this talk concerns the possibility that linear order is determined by the distribution of prosodic prominence. On the basis of data taken from English and Japanese (particularly, linearization of verbal dependents), I argue that it is prosodic factors such as weight and sentence-level stress, rather than semantic/pragmatic factors such as focus, that directly determine a certain class of linearization. I attempt to reduce the differences between English and Japanese to the Lexical Accent Parameter, which differentiates languages according to whether their pitch accents are specified in the lexicon (Japanese) or not (English).

November 26, 2004: Shinichiro Ishihara, Multiple Cleft in Japanese; Kayono Shiobara, From Focus, via Prosody, to Syntax

November 26, 2004: Shinichiro Ishihara, Multiple Cleft in Japanese;
Kayono Shiobara, From Focus, via Prosody, to Syntax