A Statistical Analysis of the Nominative/Dative Alternation in Japanese
Hideki Maki, Tamami Morishima, Eiko Goto, and Kana Ito (University of Gifu)
This paper investigates the Nominative/Dative alternation of the subject of the nonfinite clause of the predicate hoshii 'want' in Japanese statistically. The main findings of the research are (1) that a very large number of native speakers of Japanese do not allow the subject of the nonfinite clause of hoshii 'want' to be marked Nominative, and (2) that this is true irrespective of whether or not the verb of the nonfinite complement clause is intransitive or transitive. One of the implications of the findings is that the nonfinite complement clause of the predicate hoshii 'want' should be a CP, given Chomsky's phase theory, and the particle te, which attaches to the verb of the complement is an infinitival complementizer.
