Passive, affective, and causative constructions in Japanese

0This dissertation explores the syntactic and semantic properties of passives, affectives, and causatives in Japanese. It is argued that although passives and affectives are expressed by using {dollar}rare{dollar}, the {dollar}rare{dollar}s that are employed in the two constructions should be identified as separate morphemes. I label these morphemes as {dollar}raresb1{dollar} in passives and {dollar}raresb2{dollar} in affectives. The former is an argument which requires a {dollar}theta{dollar}-role and a Case to be licensed. The latter, on the other hand, is a verb which takes an external argument and a clausal complement. {dollar}Raresb2{dollar} assigns an external {dollar}theta{dollar}-role and a structural (Dative) Case to an embedded subject. Structurally, passives are monoclausal while affectives are biclausal.; Just like affectives, causatives exhibit biclausal characteristics. The causative morpheme {dollar}sase{dollar} is a verb that takes an external argument and a clausal complement. The biclausal properties of both constructions are manifested in reflexive binding. However, affectives behave differently from causatives in pronominal binding and the negation of embedded sentences. That is, the governing category of a pronoun in causatives is the embedded clause while that in affectives is the entire sentence. Furthermore, an embedded sentence in causatives is negated; in contrast, that in affectives cannot be negated. I argue that such phenomena are manifestations of structural differences of their embedded clauses. More precisely, the embedded clauses of causatives contain a TP projection while those of affectives lack such a functional node. The fact that affectives show some biclausal characteristics and some monoclausal characteristics at the same time is argued to derive from the argument structure of affectives. That is, an affective sentence denotes a single event although {dollar}raresb2{dollar} adds its own external argument to the event which is denoted by the embedded verb to create a biclausal structure. Contrary to the case of affectives, a causative sentence always exhibit biclausal characteristics, because they denote two events. In the final chapter, I investigate the relationships among the three constructions from historical and pragmatic points of view.