Passive-rare and Honorific-rare in Japanese

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the syntactic properties of the passive and the hon-orific morpheme -rare in Japanese,and to show the differences between the two morphemes. The claim is that the differences are attributed to the structural positions in which the morpheme is realized. More specifically,the passive-rare can be realized in two positions,which are both below vP,while the honorific 0rare is Located in AGR,which functions as a type of agreement in Japanese(Niinuma(2003,2005),Niinuma and Maki(2006,2007).Finally,I discuss the implication of the proposed analysis and consider the main properties morpheme -rare withe the different meanings,such as the spontaneous and the potential