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Honorific agreement in Japanese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Hideki Kishimoto
Hideki Kishimoto*
Affiliation:
Kobe University
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Extract

Subject honorification is one well-known diagnostic for subjecthood in Japanese, and is often thought to target “subjects”. In this squib, I will provide a little more structurally oriented characterization of subject honorification, and propose that subject honorification involves agreement licensed at the level of vP: that is, subject honorification is rendered licit when an honorific head successfully agrees with an argument located in Spec of vP, comprising the honorific verb. It is suggested that the target of subject honorification can be defined without reference to the notion of “subject”, and that the “subject” orientation of subject honorification emerges as a natural consequence of vP-level agreement. The proposed analysis can capture one important exception for the “subject-orientation” generalization on subject honorification, which would remain unaccounted for if subject honorification were held to target only subjects. The facts of subject honorification also lead to the conclusion that when arguments undergo A-movement to TP, they need to go through all types of vPs in the clause.

Type
Squibs/Notules
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 405 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2010 

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