Purpose
This is a five-year grant project (2008~2013) funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science. Its aim is to contribute to the understanding of Universal Grammar by pursuing detailed comparative syntax of Japanese and various other languages. The research team consists of faculty members and graduate students at Nanzan, and also 12 adjunct researchers from other institutions within Japan. They perform research in syntax and acquisition with our international joint researchers to uncover the nature of the parameters that explain the specific syntactic properties of Japanese as well as Celtic, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Chinese, and Dravidian languages. The project builds on Nanzan's collaboration in linguistics since 2006 with University of Cambridge, University of Siena, University of Connecticut, National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), and Hyderabad EFL University.
Research Topics
This project centers around three main research topics. In (1) Noun phrase structure and Case, we investigate the parameters that account for the variations in noun phrase structure by comparing Japanese with Chinese and Italian, and also examine the relation of dative subjects and nominal structures based on data from Japanese and Malayalam. We expect the research results in this area to have consequences for the theory of phrase structure, a central component of syntactic theory. In (2) Null arguments, agreement, and free word order, we focus on argument ellipsis, which is observed typically in Asian languages, and examine its mechanism as well as its relation to free word order and (the absence of) agreement. We also consider the free word order phenomena in various languages, including Dravidian, Germanic, and Slavic languages and Japanese, and try to pinpoint the exact source of the phenomenon in each. In (3) Focus, topic, and the scope of quantifiers, we take Luigi Rizzi's analysis of the Italian left periphery as a starting point, and pursue the parameters that account for the variations in clausal left periphery, which plays a crucial role in discourse interpretation. In addition, we consider the mechanisms of wh-licensing and the scope properties of quantifiers in various languages, and investigate the sources of the observed variation.
Research Activities
In addition to the daily research activities, the Center hosts several workshops a year. This provides opportunities for the researchers to have intense discussion and also to interact with the larger research community. The details of the activities are announced in this homepage and also shown in the annual publication of the Center, Nanzan Linguistics. The research results are presented in international conferences and published in journals by individual researchers. But we also plan to publish a few collections of papers that reflect the achievements of the project as a whole.
International Collaborative Research Curriculum (Graduate School)
This is an independent education program that the Linguistics Section of the Graduate School of Humanities started in 2006 with a large grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science. Through this program, Nanzan and its consortium partners offer joint advanced graduate courses, host joint student workshops, and collaborate in many other ways. The partners are the five universities mentioned above, University of Cambridge, University of Siena, University of Connecticut, National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), and Hyderabad EFL University.
The Center supports this program by providing opportunities for graduate students to present their research at the project workshops and to pursue international joint research at a more advanced level. Its research project was planned on the basis of this collaborative relation with the consortium partners, and is conducted in parallel with this educational program by the Graduate School.
