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This thesis examines the phenomenon of external possession, in which a possessor of a verb's argument is licensed syntactically as an argument of the verb. I provide a uniform account of external possession in Japanese and Korean in terms of a thematic operation. I develop a theory of θ-role assignment which takes seriously the widely held assumption that θ-roles are purely syntactic objects and hence exist independently of the semantics associated with them. This view suggests that θ-roles can be dissociated from the semantics determined by the predicate's lexical meaning and be re-associated with distinct semantics made available during the course of a derivation. (Samek-Lodovici 2003). In external possession, I argue that the semantic role Possessor is re-associated with a θ-role of the verb. This process is possible when the possessor is realised as a resumptive pro within the projection of the possessee argument, which has the consequence that the semantic representation of the possessee argument contains a variable corresponding to the possessor. Under this specific circumstance, a verb's θ-role can be re-associated with the role Possessor. The verb subsequently assigns the re-associated θ-role to the external possessor. I show that the present theory can explain the well-known obligatory 'affected' reading of the external possessor of an object and the lack of it for the external possessor of a subject. I argue against analyses which postulate movement of the external possessor or attribute its construal to purely semantic or pragmatic inferences, as the phenomenon is more restricted than such analyses suggest. External possessors in Japanese and Korean take on the case of their possessees. In discussing other types of multiple nominative constructions, I demonstrate that such constructions do not necessarily involve a thematic operation. I also show that for case-licensing in these constructions, structures containing multiple specifiers as well as those with multiple copies of the licensing head are required.

This dissertation attempts to demonstrate that Luchuan is a language which has a grammatical category of evidentiality. Luchuan is the only sister language of Japanese; however, since they are considered to have diverged as early as the beginning of the 8th century, their vocabularies and grammars have developed in somewhat different directions. The grammatical category of evidentiality is one of the categories which Luchuan has developed in different ways from Japanese. Evidentiality is a linguistic category which marks source of information. Evidentials have often been overlooked in the study of Luchuan, and the morphology has often been misanalysed as belonging to other grammatical categories because of failure to take account of the concept of evidentiality. On the one hand, some existing studies classify these evidential markers as temporal categories, such as tense or aspect, and on the other hand, some studies claim that these evidential markers should belong to the category of modality. I argue that both approaches have failed to describe Luchuan grammar accurately, and that the concept of evidentiality can resolve problems which other existing approaches could not deal with adequately. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the evidentials in Luchuan systematically and to formulate a model of the evidential system of this language. The proposal I make and defend in this dissertation is that Luchuan has a grammatical evidential system which contains one direct evidential and three indirect evidentials (Inference, Assumed, and Reportative). I argue that these four evidential markers should be considered to belong to a single grammatical category. Further, I discuss the relation between evidentials and other grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, and modality. It is obvious that these categories are closely related in Luchuan, but I attempt to tease apart their functions as clearly as possible. The Direct evidential -N is used when the speaker has 'direct evidence‘, such as direct experience or direct perceptions. When direct evidence is unavailable but the best possible source of information‘ is available, such as a report from a participant in the event, the use of -N is licensed. The Inferential evidential tee is used when the speaker makes an inference based on direct evidence. The Assumed evidential hazi is different from the Inferential evidential in that it does not require direct evidence, but the speaker‘s assumption has to be based on knowledge of habits or general knowledge. Finally, Reportative evidential Ndi indicates that the speaker acquired information from someone else, mainly orally report but in any case through the use of language. Luchuan is an endangered or moribund language which has very limited native speakers. Therefore, the principal focus of this dissertation is a descriptive study of verb forms whose syntactic features have not been fully described: for example, I set out whether or not each evidential can appear in negative or interrogative sentences, whether or not each evidential can have a non-past or a past form, whether or not each evidential markers can co-occur a subject of any person. Although my primary focus is a description of the evidential system of this language; at the same time, I relate my discussion to cross-linguistic issues such as how evidentiality is related to epistemic modality, with the intention that this work should constitute a contribution to the typological and theoretical study of evidentiality. I propose that evidentiality should be distinguished from the category of modality because in Luchuan the Direct evidential and the Reportative evidential belong to the category of evidentiality, though the other two indirect evidentials ― the Inferential and Assumed― might be regarded as an overlap category between evidentiality and modality.

The present study was conducted to investigate possible interpretation discourse level effects of processing instruction and re-exposure to processing instruction on the acquisition of a specific feature of the Japanese linguistics system: namely Japanese passive forms. Processing instruction is a type of focus on form which is framed around the input processing theoretical framework. In order to carry out this investigation two separate experimental studies were conducted. All participants were native English speakers and were randomly assigned to two groups. In both experimental studies, one group received processing instruction which involved an explicit instruction component and structured input practice directed at altering the way L2 learners process input; the other group was used as a control group and received no instruction. Interpretation and production sentence level tasks, and discourse level tasks were used to measure performance after a one day instruction. A pre-test/post-test design was adopted to collect data in both studies. In the second experimental study, the processing instruction group received a re-exposure treatment between the post-test and the delayed post-test. Based on previous research carried out on the effectiveness of processing instruction, it was hypothesised that processing instruction would have positive effects on the accuracy with which subjects interpreted and produced sentences containing Japanese passive forms. A further hypothesis was that the effects of re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment (after the first post-test) would further improve subjects ability to interpret and produce sentences containing Japanese passive forms. A set of two hypotheses were formulated on possible interpretation discourse effects for processing instruction. It was hypothesised that the group receiving processing instruction would improve in its ability to interpret discourse (guided recall: dialogue and story version) containing Japanese passive forms, and that learners in this group, receiving re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment would further improve in their ability to interpret discourse containing Japanese passive forms. Overall the statistical analyses carried out on the raw scores of all the measures used supported the four hypotheses of this study. The results obtained in this research provide clear evidence that processing instruction has positive effects on the acquisition of Japanese passive construction. The present study showed that processing instruction was successful in altering the way in which learners processed the input and its effects had also an impact on the way learners produced Japanese passive construction forms. The main findings of the present study also provided new evidence on the effectiveness of processing instruction in improving learners’ performance on interpretation discourse level tasks. In addition to this, it also provides new evidence that learners receiving re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment between a post-test and a delayed post-test can further improve in their ability to interpret and produce the target feature at sentence level and interpret the target feature at discourse level. The results obtained in the two studies have implications at two levels. At the theoretical level this research provides further support for the role that input processing plays in SLA. At the pedagogical level it demonstrates the effectiveness of processing instruction on the acquisition of a different linguistic feature of the Japanese grammar system (passive forms), not only on an interpretation and production sentence level task but also on an interpretation discourse level task. It also demonstrated the important role of a re-exposure instructional treatment.

The goal of this thesis is to develop a grammar model of Japanese within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al. 2005, Kempson et al. 2001), with special reference to constructions that involve the nominaliser no: clefts and certain kinds of relatives. The more general theoretical position which it aims to defend is that an account of these constructions in terms of ‘language dynamics’ is preferable to other ‘static’ approaches currently available. What is here meant by ‘language dynamics,’ in a nutshell, is the time-linear processing of a string and attendant growth of an interpretation. First, I shall motivate, and articulate, an integrated account of the two types of no- nominalisation. These two classes are uniformly modelled as an outcome of incremental semantic-tree growth. The analysis is corroborated by naturally-occurring data extracted from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ). Moreover, novel data with regard to coordination are accounted for without losing uniformity. Second, the composite entry of no and the topic marker wa handles the two types of clefts uniformly. This account fits well with the CSJ findings. New data concerning case-marking of foci are explained in terms of whether an unfixed relation in a semantic tree is resolvable in incremental processing. The account also solves the island-puzzle without abandoning uniformity. As a further confirmation, the analysis is extendable to stripping/sluicing, making some novel predictions on case-marking patterns. Third, the entry of no characterises free relatives and change relatives in a unitary manner. Furthermore, the composite entry of no and a case particle predicts a vast range of properties of head-internal relatives, including new data (e.g., negation in the relative clause, locality restriction on the Relevancy Condition). In sum, the thesis presents a realistic, integrated, and empirically preferable model of Japanese. Some consequences stand out. The various new data reported are beneficial theory-neutrally. Formal aspects of Dynamic Syntax are advanced. The insights brought by a language dynamics account challenge the standard, static conception of grammar.

This thesis analyses the nine main tense–aspect constructions in Old Japanese in more detail than ever before, exploiting the research possibilities created by the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese. The commitment to close textual reading and the interpretation of examples in context that is characteristic of traditional Japanese scholarship is combined with a determination to explain the distributional data revealed by the Corpus. Large samples are used to produce quantitative semantic analyses, allowing a new perspective on multifunctional constructions from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. All findings are placed within the wider perspective of cross-linguistic studies of tense and aspect, an approach often missing in Old Japanese scholarship. This thesis is the most comprehensive analysis of Old Japanese tense and aspect to date. Some traditional conclusions are challenged, and light is shed on many previously unexplained phenomena. Resultative constructions are discovered to be even more pervasive in Japanese than previously thought, with at least five of the nine con-structions I look at hypothesized to have begun as resultative constructions. In most cases these constructions have broadened to also denote ongoing activities, another characteristic of Japanese. This thesis thereby contributes to the cross-linguistic understanding of resultative constructions, and to the question of the validity and nature of the distinction between activities and states. It also shows the potential of an exemplar-based model of linguistic storage, which is seen to be a powerful tool for explaining both the multifunctionality of grammatical constructions and semantic change.