2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Syntax of nominative objects: A view from comparative study between English and languages that bear nominative objects

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24720224
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	English linguistics
Research Institution	Chukyo University
Principal Investigator	NOMURA Masashi 中京大学, 国際教養学部, 准教授 (60410619)
Project Period (FY)	2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	言語学 / 統語論 / 比較統語論 / 格
Research Abstract	In this research project, I first investigated so-called long distance reflexives in Icelandic, where nominative objects are observed and I claimed that a functional category T is related to the licensing mechanism of long distance reflexives which agree with nominative subjects. Then I scrutinized syntactic structures of complex predicate constructions in Japanese, where nominative objects are observed and I argued that the Case of the nominative object is licensed by T, which licenses the Case of the nominative subject. Therefore, I concluded that nominative Case is universally licensed by T and that languages like Icelandic and Japanese, unlike English, have a v which does not license Case but has an external argument and this syntactic object enables T to license nominative Case of the object.