Speakers: Kazuko Yatsushiro & Uli Sauerland (ZAS Berlin)
Title: Genitive Case on Japanese Quantifiers: The Place of the Reverse Partitive Analysis
Date: Thursday April 9th
Venue: Eyckhof 2/ room 006
Time: 15:15 – 16:30 hrs
Abstract
In Japanese noun phrases, quantificational expressions are frequently marked with genitive case. Genitive case attached to nouns marks possession or partitivity, but on quantifiers it has been re- garded as purely morphological. We show that genitive case on quantifiers can be analyzed as regular genitive case, and identify three distinct derivations. Two of these derivations proceed from an underlying partitive structure. We claim that the genitive particle can be stranded by NP ellipsis, and then attaches to a quantifier. Our analysis therefore supports an analysis of partitives assuming two NP positions where ellipsis can target one or both of those two NPs.