| This thesis is about Tense systems within noun phrases and elliptical constructions. The first half of the thesis concerns the interpretive differences on Tenses caused by Specificity of object NPs.;In chapter 2, I argue that one of the differences between a specific NP and a non-specific NP is related to another temporal phrase that a specific NP has but a non-specific NP does not have. In Chapter 3, a few other differences between a specific and a non-specific object NPs are discussed; in other words, I argue that a specific object NP ends up occupying a different syntactic position than a non-specific object NP does. In doing so, I will focus on Japanese, in which there has been very little discussion about Specificity.;In the second half of the thesis, I will discuss the temporal interpretations in ellipsis constructions; namely, Antecedent-Contained Deletions and Sluicing. ACDs are claimed to be only made with a specific NP object; hence, the temporal system within a specific NP that is discussed in Chapter 2 and 3 becomes crucial in this chapter. After discussing Tense systems in ACDs, I will move my discussion to Tense and Aspect Parallelism that is observed in ACDs. There has been a lot of disputation concerning how ellipsis sentences are constructed. One side argues that it is a deletion process that takes place in PF under identity and the other side argues that it is a copying process that takes place in LF. Looking at some semantic phenomenon such as Tense, I will claim that LF-copying is necessary to account for this phenomenon. In the last chapter, I will discuss the similar line of comparison of Tense and Ellipsis---Sluicing. I propose that we can find a strong relationship between Tense and Pronouns in Sluicing examples. |
