Semantics and Syntax of Japanese Formal Nouns

本研究的目的是说明形式名词的基本用法是由它们的词汇属性和句法位置之间的相关性派生出来的。作为案例研究，我们已经检查了形式名词短语tokoro-da和N-no koto，如下所示。a）tokoro-da条件句的属性是tokoro的词汇属性和copula的属性的函数，适用于条件域。tokoro-da条件句表示：当前的情况是唯一的世界，可以通过属性“如果p，那么q”来识别。为了保持这一点，当前的情况必须是{W：不是p也不是q}。因此，tokoro-da条件句强调存在一个导致q的p因果链，从而产生了强调p的值对结果q至关重要的语用效果。B）我们已经考察了no koto的强制性和选择性用法的性质，观察到选择性no koto仅限于直接宾语位置，而强制性no koto可以出现在其他位置。我们已经证明，我们可以解释的主宾不对称的可选没有koto。我们提出N-no kotoop中的N必须是指称的，N-no koto是由N，no，koto构成的广义量词。我们把N-no koto作为广义量词来处理的分析，可以解释任意no koto和强制no koto的所有性质，把它们之间的区别归结为以它们为补语的谓词的选择性质。作为结论，我们提出了一种方法来推导如何选择没有koto有效地作为一个扩展操作。

The purpose of this project is to show that the basic usages of formal nouns are derived by the correlation between their lexical properties and syntactic positions. As case studies, we have examined the formal noun phrases tokoro -da and N-no koto as shown below.a) The properties of tokoro-da conditionals are the function of the lexical property of tokoro and that of the copula, as applied to the conditional domain. The tokoro-da conditionals denotes : The present situation is the unique world identifiable by the property 'if p, then q'. For this to hold, the present situation must be {W : not p and not q}. The tokoro-da conditional, thus, stresses the existence of a causal chain of p leading to q, thereby creating the pragmatic effect of stressing that the value of p is crucially important for the consequent q.b) we have examined the properties of obligatory and optional uses of no koto, observing that the optional no koto is restricted to direct object position, while obligatory no koto can appear in other positions. We have shown that we can account for the subject/object asymmetry of optional no koto. We proposed that N in N-no kotoop must be referential and N-no koto is a generalized quantifier constructed compositionally from N, no, koto. Our analysis to treat N-no koto as a generalized quantifier can account for all the properties of optional and obligatory no koto, reducing the differences between them to the selectional properties of the predicates taking them as complement. As a conclusion we have proposed a way to derive how the optional no koto effectively functions as an extensionalizing operator.