Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the so-called “potential” constructions in Japanese within the framework of the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1993). Of particular concern is how the Nominative objects in these constructions are licensed. We argue that AGRs is responsible for the licensing of the Nominative object and show that the Case realizations in potential constructions are explained straightforwardly on the assumption that the Japanese potential verb -eru has syntactic properties similar to “psych-verbs” in Italian discussed in Belletti and Rizzi (1988). We also argue that our analysis leads to a unified account of the passive constructions in Japanese.
