Research Topics

1. Parameters and Comparative Syntax:

I have been working on the comparative syntax of Japanese and English and received my Ph.D. on this topic under the supervision of Professor Naoki Fukui (Sophia University) in 2022. Specifically, I argue that there is no Φ-feature agreement in Japanese and conducted several case studies on expressions and constructions that exist in Japanese, but not in other languages such as English. The revised version of my dissertation has been published as Kobayashi 2022.

2. Syntactic Operations (Merge/MERGE, Search, Agree, Transfer, etc.):

I am also interested in the nature of syntactic operations, such as Merge/MERGE, Search, Agree, and Transfer. In particular, I have been studying how Pair-MERGE, Transfer, and Labeling influence cross-linguistic differences.

3. Head Movement (Verb-raising) in Japanese:

The debate over whether Japanese has syntactic verb-raising has not been settled. Even if such verb-raising in Japanese exists, it would be string-vacuous and not show overt evidence. Under these circumstances, I have been conducting my research, claiming that there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of syntactic verb-raising in Japanese. My recent paper, published in The Linguistic Review, critically examines the verb-raising analysis of Japanese Non-constituent Coordination.

4. Ellipsis Phenomena in Japanese:

I propose, in collaboration with Tomoya Tanabe (Hokkaido University), an analysis of ellipsis that does not assume syntactic verb-raising in Japanese. We focus on null adjuncts, which are usually considered to be independently unelidable. The adjunct-inclusive interpretations have been used as evidence for Head-stranding Ellipsis. In our paper accepted for publication in Syntax, we explore the possibility that adjuncts can be elided independently. We propose syntactic and pragmatic analyses of ellipsis that do not assume syntactic verb-raising.

5. Coordination:

I have been researching the coordinate structure, focusing on Japanese and English. In particular, I am interested in whether coordination projects ConjP, or &P, even in Japanese, a strictly head-final language. My research focuses specifically on repetitive/correlative coordinators, such as either and both in English and -to and -ka in Japanese, repeated at the right end/edge of coordination.

6. Path/Range (from-to and kara-made) Constructions:

I pointed out that from-to constructions behave in parallel with coordination cross-linguistically and conducted a syntactic study focusing on kara-made in Japanese and from-to in English. However, at this point, I am not sure if the coordination analysis of from-to constructions is the best way to go. Therefore, I am currently considering a new analysis of from-to constructions in my ongoing research.

7. Syntax of Passives:

There is a long debate as to whether the NP movement is involved in the derivation of Japanese passive sentences. In my study, I attempted to treat so-called direct passives and indirect passives in Japanese in a unified manner by assuming movement into θ-positions.

8. Intervention Effects:

In contrast to pragmatic analyses, I argue that polarity sensitivity is the key factor that causes syntactic LF-intervention effects. I suggest that the LF-intervention effects in Japanese may also be reduced to the Focus Intervention Effects (Beck 2006).

9. Semantics of Plurality (-toka, -tari, and -ya in Japanese):

In collaboration with Ryan Walter Smith (University of Manchester), I worked on the semantics of -toka, -tari, and -ya in Japanese. This research has been further developed in Ryan's doctoral dissertation and his other publications.

10. Syntax-Morphology Interface:

In connection with the study of head movement and verb-raising in Japanese, I am exploring a morphological analysis of how to guarantee the agglutinative nature of the Japanese language. I believe that it will ultimately lead to simpler syntax by eliminating head movement from narrow syntactic operations.

11. Syntax-Prosody Interface:

I am also interested in the prosodical licensing conditions of XP-shika in Japanese, and have conducted some experiments using Praat. I have further developed this research on the Syntax-Prosody Interface with a comparative study of Japanese XP-shika and Korean XP-pakkey.