The "te-i(ru)" construction in Japanese : interaction between aspect and syntax

要旨

This thesis is a study of one aspectual construction, the "te-i(ru)" construction, in Japanese. This construction posed a serious problem for the study of Aspect in Semantics. That is, it seems to allow two contradictory interpretations: progressive and perfect of result. We argue that the the two distinct readings are the result of the syntactic interaction of the morpheme "te", the aspectual predicate, and the aspectual auxiliary verb "i-(ru)". Adopting the framework proposed by Travis (1991, 1994), we argue that the semantic operators, "BECOME" and "CAUSE", originally proposed by Dowty (1979), are actually generated in Syntax as the aspectual predicate, Asp$ sp0$, and the higher V$ sp0$ of a double VP structure, respectively. The event argument (Higginbotham 1985) is, we claim, subcategorized for and $ theta$-marked by the aspectual predicate. Further, we demonstrate that a morpheme "te" is an imperfective marker, and show that the two readings, progressive type and perfect type, arise because this morpheme is generated in the higher aspectual category, EP, in Japanese. The auxiliary verb "i-(ru)" connects the embedded event noted by EP to an interval time through the control of the event argument. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that Aspect is a syntactic category.

主題