On the peculiar nature of double complement unaccusatives in Japanese

Abstract This paper attempts to elucidate the peculiar nature of double complement unaccusatives (DCUs). Among the two widely-held diagnostics for subjecthood in Japanese, i. e. zibun-binding and subject honorification, the subject of DCUs passes the former but not the latter. First, recognizing two subtypes of ditransitive verbs, verbs of change of possession (VCPs) and verbs of change of location (VCLs), we will note that DCUs are generally formed on VCPs. Next, given our layered verb phrase hypothesis, the ni-phrase in DCUs as well as VCPs is base-generated in Spec of Low Applicative (L-Appl), and it is moved to Spec of v for dat case marking. Spec of v is high enough for zibun-binding. However, since the target of subject honorification is licensed in Spec of High Applicative (H-Appl), the ni-phrase, base-generated in Spec of L-Appl, should further move to Spec of H-Appl. This is prohibited due to a feature-based version of theta criterion.