Introduction

Abstract

Japanese is full of syntactic phenomena that are not found in English and other European languages. The papers in this issue examine those phenomena in Minimalist perspective. The Minimalist Syntax as proposed in Chomsky (2013, 2015) consists of two basic components. One is the fundamental operation Merge, which takes two elements α, β and forms a constituent γ= {α, β}. It accompanies a labeling algorithm that specifies the nature of the formed object γ. For example, when α is verbal and β is nominal, the algorithm decides which property γ inherits. The other is Transfer, which sends the structures constructed by Merge to the interpretive components. The standard hypothesis is that Transfer does not take place all at once after a derivation is completed but applies throughout the derivation in units called phases. Merge and Transfer are indeed two operations that are minimally required of syntactic theory. One of the main goals of research in Minimalism is to eliminate stipulated syntactic principles. Thus, the distribution of DPs and the obligatory application of movement (Internal Merge) as well as its last resort property, for example, are argued to follow from the nature of Merge and the accompanying labeling algorithm. Transfer, on the other hand, is claimed to be responsible for the locality observed in movement as well as anaphor binding. (See, for example, Quicoli (2008) and Charnavel and Sportiche (2016) for attempts to derive Condition (A) effects from Transfer.) This makes the analysis of parametric variation among languages more challenging and poses new problems to be addressed in language acquisition. A unique property of a language or of a group of languages cannot be accounted for by a parameter attached to a stipulated principle. It must be derived from the universal mechanisms of Merge and Transfer. On the other hand, the Minimalist Program makes investigation into parametric variation more rewarding as well. An analysis of a unique property of a language in Minimalist perspective is automatically a proposal on the fundamentals of the general syntactic theory. The papers in this issue are all on Japanese but aim at this goal. They concern how Merge applies, how ellipsis takes place in a derivation, how movement chains are interpreted, what labels are for, and how the labeling mechanism is acquired by children.