A constructional approach to Japanese internally headed relativization

This thesis analyzes the internally headed relativization (IHR) construction in Modern Japanese in comparison with other constructions which are related to it either formally or semantically.;The internally headed relative clause (HRC) is recognized as one type of relative clause and is attested in a number of languages. The IHR construction in Japanese is characterized by two properties: NP coreferentiality between the IHRC and the main clause, and 'case-matching' between the external case-marking on the IHRC and the case-marking required by the main predicate for the semantic target inside the IHRC. This thesis focuses on a common use of the IHR construction, the narrative IHRC, which has been studied extensively since Kuroda's pioneering work (1974-77).;An important research question concerning the IHR construction has been how to make sense of the relationship between the IHRC and another relativization strategy that Japanese uses, the externally headed relative clause (EHRC). Syntactically IHRCs and EHRCs both behave externally as NPs, and semantically IHR sentences and externally headed relativization (EHR) sentences have the same propositional content. Nonetheless, pragmatically they have different functions: EHRCs modify the head noun, and IHRCs assert or report an event. IHRCs, moreover, exhibit structural behavior which resembles that of coordinated clauses rather than EHRCs. It is argued that IHRCs share with coordinated clauses the event-reporting function and that the 'coordination-like' behavior of IHRCs may be seen as a structural correlate of this function.;Another question pertaining to the IHR construction is how to account for its restricted occurrence. It is suggested that it may be due to the construction's specialized function of advancing a narrative by reporting two events within a sentence. Structural and semantic evidence suggests that the IHR construction is being reanalyzed as a concessive construction and this may also be responsible for the restricted occurrence of IHRCs.;The Construction Grammar approach, which regards subtle semantic and pragmatic factors as crucial to understanding constraints on grammatical constructions, enables us to make sense of form-meaning-use corrnelations of the IHR construction and to show how it is related to the EHR construction, the concessive construction, and clausal coordination.