Bare nouns are the nouns that are generally used by themselves without a determiner or a quantifier, such as children in Children are energetic. Although the study of bare nouns, together with the issue of the presence or absence of articles, has received extensive attention in the fields of linguistics and grammatical theory, no unified view has yet been established on how bare nouns in Japanese, which does not have articles, can be interpreted as definite or indefinite, depending on the context. The purpose of this study is to reexamine the mechanism by which the basic form of Japanese noun phrases, such as hon (lit. book), through the forms of English noun phrases that appear as a book, books, the book(s), is implicitly inherent in the basic form itself. The study revisits the reason it is necessary to assume the distinct Japanese grammatical categories of plain noun phrase and non-plain noun phrase with regard to predicational copula sentences. In particular, the study examines the validity of the idea that the mechanism represents a “procedural meaning.”

This article first reviews the 30-year history of the recurring nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula, focusing on the U.S. policies, and attempts to find out the reasons why the successive administrations showed a similar pattern of trial and error. From Clinton, who had to deal with the first nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, to Trump who was faced with North Korea armed with almost operational nuclear-tipped ICBMs, U.S. presidents would begin with strong words and actions, but ended in diplomatic compromises. Most of them even contemplated military options, but they had to back down due to the staggering risks and costs of the possible outbreak of the second Korean War. The compromised deals would also turn out to be insufficient to resolve the crisis.

In terms of foreign policy orientation and personnel, the new Biden Administration has a strong link and continuity with the Clinton and Obama eras. By analyzing the discussions on North Korea by the foreign policy experts in the Biden camp, and influential thinktanks such as the Center for a New American Security, this article offers some insights into how the experiences in the previous administrations would affect the future policies on the issue of denuclearization, such as the change of focus to “threat reduction” by applying the arms control paradigm.