Topics in Constraint-Based Grammar of Japanese (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy)

This book is a collection of articles on Japanese grammars written in a framework broadly construed as constraint-based. Having evolved from a progress report on the Japanese phrase structure grammar (JPSG) project, it implements ideas from recent developments in phrase structure grammar formalism, such as head-drive phrase structure grammar (HPSG). Part I gives an overview of JPSG, introducing fundamental assumptions and discussing mostly syntactic and semantic aspects of Japanese in the constraint-based formalism, as well as the implementation of a parser based on the grammar. The papers in Part II discuss mostly pragmatic aspects of Japanese. Innovative concepts are introduced in Part I, such as the concept of cost, which plays a central role both in the treatment of quantifiers and phonology, and is used extensively in the treatment of conditionals in Part II. Stress is also placed on the role of discourse participants; the analysis of relativization adopted in Part I is partly based on zero pronominals, whose interpretation is left to pragmatics. This issue is further pursued in Part II and may serve as one possible avenue to explore pragmatics.