Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

In this talk, I will discuss some non standard questions such as rhetorical, surprise, disapproval, reproach, exclamative, etc. (Obenauer2006), which is created by clause final particles in Japanese in the framework of the cartography of syntactic structures. After briefly introducing some basic ideas of the cartographic approach by using some wh-expressions asking for reasons such as why, what…for, how come, etc. of familiar languages like English to show what expressive meanings in questions look like, I will turn to the main topic of examining various types of particlesin the right periphery in Japanese to show how they contribute to creating expressive meanings in questions,where Agree-based Relativized Minimality (RM) regulates the constellation of various types of  clause final particles in the right periphery.

To be more specific, I will pay special attention to the configuration in (1) (cf. Rizzi 2017, Shlonsky 2017), where the matrix verb selects the complementizer with the interrogative feature [+Int], which Agrees with a question element if. The real example in Japanese, for instance, is seen in (2).

(1) …ask        [Force_+Int         …Z…if+_Int 

(2) John-wa    [Mary-ga          kuru  ka        Z         to]       tazuneta.

  John-Top      Mary-Nom come  if+_Int                      Force_+Int          asked 

  ‘I asked if Mary will come’

I will examine three types of particle in the position of Z to see what type of properties block Agree relation between the matrix verb/Force and ka ‘if’ by RM: argumental particles, quantificational particles, modal particles that create expressive meanings in questions. It will be shown that by Agree-based RM, the following constellation of particles seen in non standard questions are created, where expressive meaning in question forms such as surprise, reproach, disapproval, regret, etc. are associated with various types of functional head around the question particle ka:

(2) dake                      ka        sira/yo                                    ne                    to

   Regret          Int       Disapproval/Exclamation       New/Reproach           Force  

 Time permitting, I will also discuss the nature of unique question particles like yara, which are exclusively used for monologue and thus is compatible with a speaker oriented clause final particle like naa, not with a addressee oriented clause final particle like nee.