Over the past twenty years or so, the work on Japanese within generative grammar has shifted from primarily using contemporary theory to describe Japanese to contributing directly to general theory, on top of producing extensive analyses of the language. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Linguistics captures the excitement that comes from answering the question, "What can Japanese say about Universal Grammar?" Each of the eighteen chapters takes up a topic in syntax, morphology, acquisition, processing, phonology, or information structure, and, first of all, lays out the core data, followed by critical discussion of the various approaches found in the literature. Each chapter ends with a section on how the study of the particular phenomenon in Japanese contributes to our knowledge of general linguistic theory. This book will be useful to students and scholars of linguistics who are interested in the latest studies on one of the most extensively studied languages within generative grammar.
Introduction , Shigeru Miyagawa and Mamoru Saito ; 2. On the Causative Construction , Heidi Harley ; 3. Japanese -Wa, -Ga, and Information Structure , Caroline Heycock ; 4. Lexical Classes in Phonology , Junko Ito and Armin Mester ; 5. On Verb Raising , Hideki Kishimoto ; 6. Nominative Object , Masatoshi Koizumi ; 7. Japanese Accent , Haruo Kubozono ; 8. Ga/No Conversion , Hideki Maki and Asko Uchibori ; 9. Processing Sentences in Japanese , Edson T. Miyamoto ; 10. The Acquisition of Japanese Syntax , Keiko Murasugi and Koji Sugisaki ; 11. The Syntax of Semantics of Floating Numeral Quantifiers , Kimiko Nakanishi ; 12. V-V Compounds , Kunio Nishiyama ; 13. Wh-Questions , Norvin Richards ; 14. Indeterminate Pronouns , Junko Shimoyama ; 15. Noun Phrase Ellipsis , Daiko Takahashi ; 16. Ditransitive Constructions , Yuji Takano ; 17. Prominence Marking in the Japanese Syntax Intonation System , Jennifer J. Venditti, Kikuo Maekawa, and Mary E. Beckman ; 18. The Structure of DP , Akira Watanabe ; Author Index ; Subject Index
