We are happy to announce a talk by Viktor Köhlich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium.
The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301
Date: December 18, 2023
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Title: „te-no clauses in Japanese”
Abstract:
In this talk, I look at a type of noun-modifying clause in Japanese that has not received much
attention in the literature. Although verbs can DP-internally never co-occur with the element
-no, which is otherwise obligatory with most other word classes, they do when the suffix -te
is attached beforehand, normally used for coordination of clauses among others. An example
is (1).
(1) [masuku-wo tsuke-te-no] jugyō
mask-ACC put.on-TE-NO class
`a class in which you wear your mask‘
Compared to ordinary relative clauses, this type of clauses is subject to more restrictions. The
modified noun for instance cannot be an argument of the modifying clause and needs to depict
an event.
After presenting all relevant facts about this construction, I will attempt at a tentative analysis.
Specifically, I will propose that these clauses are instances of TPs but crucially lack a CP-layer
which is the reason why they, contrary to ordinary relative clauses, can be selected by -no. This
talk thus complements the earlier analysis of -no as a syntactic head licensing modification in
my dissertation.