WHAT IS QUANTIZED IN JAPANESE?

水口 志乃扶 (神戸大学)

The distinction between A-quantification and D-quantification is one of the general assumptions on quantifiers in the literature. In Japanese, D is not a concrete but a theoretical assumption and it exhibits different quantification phenomena from English-type languages with D; Japanese allows so-called Q-float, has many A-distributors, and has no equivalents to English every. Near equivalent to English every may be WH-MO phrases in Japanese, but as Yamashina and Tancredi (2005) correctly point out, the universal analysis of WH-MO phrases has to allow Japanese not to observe unselective binding. The universal analysis must explain why Japanese allows D-type quantifiers and A-quantifiers to cooccur, too. These facts make us suspect Japanese and English have different quantification systems, and this paper aims to explore the differences and their cause.