This paper investigates the mechanism of θ-marking. Given the feature approach to θ-marking that states that θ-marking is performed by the general mechanism of feature checking, I will propose that θ-marking takes place via Agree, and provide conceptual and empirical arguments in favor of this view of θ-marking, based on data from control constructions in English and Japanese that indicate that a controller is θ-marked in the embedded [Spec, C] (precisely, [Spec, Fin]) by a matrix predicate.

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This paper presents an analysis of the passive construction in the Minimalist Program. It has been assumed that passives and unaccusatives take the light verb v because there is no accusative Case assignment in either construction. By demonstrating passive examples in which an accusative Case value is assigned, I claim that passive sentences in fact take the transitive light verb v* in the same way as active transitive sentences do. It is also well known that passives can be compatible with a rationale clause while unaccusatives cannot. I propose that v* in the passive functions as the assigner of the accusative Case value as well as the external θ-role.

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This paper attempts to clarify the development of the determiner system by examining the distribution of elements within noun phrases in the history of English, arguing that their word order patterns are basically the same in Present-day English and early English, except possessive pronouns, which have been grammaticalized into a central determiner. The unique behavior of possessive pronouns was responsible for a variety of word order patterns and the cooccurrence of articles/demonstratives and possessive pronouns in early English: the base-generated position of possessive pronouns was Spec-NumP in Old English and the head of NumP in Middle English and Early Modern English. Finally, grammaticalization of possessive pronouns in Late Modern English led to the establishment of the determiner system as in Present-day English.

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This paper, based on the tense theory presented in Wada (2001a), offers a comparative study of differences and similarities between sentences containing the present progressive with future time reference and those containing be going to. The reason for adopting this theory is not only because it has provided systematic explanations for several English tense phenomena, but also because it has analyzed the mechanism of interpreting sentences containing other future time expressions such as will and the simple present with future time reference. It is shown that the temporal structures of sentences containing the present progressive and be going to provide a basis for explaining the differences and similarities between their tense phenomena.

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In Present-day English, some motion verbs including come and go can be followed by the bare form of another verb, forming so-called “Double Verb Constructions," which have some unique properties like the inflectional restriction, the selectional restriction on their subjects, and the single event interpretation. These properties are argued to be closely related to their development from V and V constructions in infinitive and imperative uses through grammaticalization in Middle and Modern English. It is shown that as a result of grammaticalization, the relevant motion verbs have been reanalyzed into light verbs located in v that take an infinitival VP complement.

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After briefly describing each article contained in the volume under review, this review article closely examines four articles out of the volume, which address important issues in current syntactic theory: Riemsdijk's article, Lechner's article, Cecchetto and Percus's article, and Rizzi and Shlonsky's article. The discussion includes how Free Relatives, Transparent Free Relatives and Horn Amalgams are unified in terms of grafting, whether head movement can have effects on semantic interpretation, what mechanisms are involved in VP-anaphora and VP-ellipsis, and how the Subject Criterion in the sense of Rizzi (2006) is satisfied in Locative Inversion.

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The present book under review deals with the development of the progressive in the 19th century English of England. The basic argument of the author is that quantitative developments indicate that the progressive became more fully integrated into the English language in this century. The strong point of this research is that this is the first comprehensive, cross-genre, corpus-based study of the progressive, something we have so far lacked. The weak point is that the author's reasoning about the relation between quantitative developments and integration is not sufficient. Overall, the results presented are quite valuable and will stimulate further research.

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This paper considers two topics. One is the acquisition of quantifier-negation interaction. In the book under review, Musolino discusses quantifier-negation interaction in child language based on data obtained from English and Kannada. Taking into consideration data obtained from Japanese as well, this paper points out problems with Musolino's paper and presents a new analysis. The other topic to be considered is the acquisition of additive particles. In the book under review, Nederstigt and Bergsma investigate German and Dutch additive particles and take different positions as to whether children are adult-like in the interpretation of the particles. This paper shows that data obtained from Japanese support Nederstigt's claim.

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This paper investigates the relevance of verbal inflection to the verb second (V2) phenomenon in the history of English. Focusing on the close connection of V2 with the presence of a distinctive number agreement morpheme on verbs, I claim that in early English, the person and number features are located on the categories Fin and low-Top, respectively, in the fine CP structure advocated by Rizzi (1997), and that the finite verb raises to Fin. Under the proposed mechanism, the loss of V2 in English is considered a natural consequence of the decline of verbal inflection, which forces the person and number features to be jointly carried by Fin, and the finite verb to raise no higher than to T.

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