Contrastive syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic studies of noun phrases

1)我们将日语与英语、德语和其他语言在名词范畴方面进行比较，并研究它们的句法、语义和语用特性。Krifka（1989）、Chierchia（1998）等前人的研究认为，在分类系统丰富的语言（如汉语和日语）中，缺乏冠词和复数语素，只有一种质量名词类型作为名词范畴。他们声称这种语言类型的所有名词都表示种类（类）。然而，我们指出，尽管日语名词在句法上与质量名词类型相对应，但它们仍然表现出可数质量名词如“家具”和不可数质量名词如“水”的区别。前一种类型将最小单元引用为单个对象，并且从谓词类型而不是类类型开始。因此，应修改Chierchia的标称映射参数（1997）。此外，我们指出，同属日耳曼语言的德语和英语在定冠词的行为方面表现出句法和语义上的差异，这表明标称映射参数不足以解释这些特性。2)我们指出日语中有复数语素“-tachi”，并认为带有这种复数形式的名词表示复数物体或将复数物体联系起来，如“Taro and his friends”。3)对比分析了日语名词短语与英语、德语名词短语的一般意义。我们分析了日语数词分类词及其句法变化，如“三-九-二-九”或“三-九”（=三个学生），认为它们来源于不同的句法结构。

1)We compare Japanese with English, German, and other languages with respect to noun categories, and investigate their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties. Previous studies including Krifka (1989), Chierchia (1998) etc. argue that there is only a mass noun type as noun categories in languages with rich classifier systems (e.g. Chinese and Japanese) that lack both articles and plural morphemes. They claim that all the nouns of this language type denote kinds (classes). However, we point out that although Japanese nouns correspond to mass noun type syntactically, they nonetheless show distinction of countable mass nouns like "furniture" and non-countable mass nouns like "water". The former type refers to a minimal unit as an individual object and starts from a predicate type instead of a kind type. Therefore, Chierchia's nominal mapping parameter (1997) should be revised. Furthermore, we point out that German and English, which belong to Germanic languages, show syntactic and semantic differences with respect to the behavior of definite articles, suggesting that the nominal mapping parameter is not sufficient to explain these properties.2)We point out that Japanese has plural morphemes "-tachi" and argues that the nouns with this plural denote plural objects or associate plural objects like "Taro and his friends".3)We analyze generic meanings of Japanese noun phrases in comparison with English and German. We analyze Japanese numeral classifiers and their syntactic variations like "san-nin-no gakusei" or "gakusei san-nin" (=three students) and argue that they are derived from different underlying syntactic structures.