2015 Volume 32 Issue 2 Pages 261-292
Japanese has a counterpart of the English Exceptional Case-marking (ECM) construction: Raising-to-Object construction (RTO). Over the years various analyses and proposals have been presented for this construction, reflecting the theoretical frameworks of the times. But there still remain some unsolved/challenging phenomena, which may serve as tests for the principles of UG. Especially when coupled with Indeterminate Pronoun Binding and bound pronoun interpretation, RTO shows peculiar behavior which has challenged previous analyses. The aim of this paper is to show that these peculiarities can be straightforwardly explained, given Reuland’s (2001, 2011) Agree-based Construal, under the assumption that φ-feature agreement is involved in Japanese Case licensing.
