Prosody and the syntax of shika-NPIs in Tokyo Japanese and its implications for the theory of grammar ∗

要旨

A number of recent works have argued for the existence of the items bearing Focus Intonation Prosody (FIP) in Tokyo Japanese (e.g., Wh-phrases), which obligatorily exhibit distinctive prosodic properties. Prosodic properties play an important role in the interpretation of FIP bearing items (FBIs) that there is a correspondence between prosody and scope of FBIs (prosodyscope correspondence (PSC)). These works show that prosody must be taken into consideration in conducting syntactic analyses of FBIs, rather than restricting only to the syntactic factors. Through the investigation of shika-NPIs in Tokyo Japanese, I will give further credence to such an interdiciplinary approach to syntactic analyses, by showing that this construction also exhibits FIP and PSC.

主題