A Bare Grammar for Japanese
Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Advisor
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
Type
Thesis (B.A.)
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
en_US
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
In this thesis we apply the work of Edward Keenan and Edward Stabler in Bare
Grammar to "Jpnn, a bare grammar for a small fragment of Japanese, to show that the
framework constructed in this monograph, while in need of adjustment and
augmentation to handle the linguistic features of the language, is overall an appropriate
model. A "bare grammar" is a generative framework for syntax, motivated by a desire
for the greatest generality possible in this type of theory. To achieve this generality the
authors use linguistic universals, assuming as little as possible about common crosslinguistic
structure. As Keenan and Stabler point out in their introduction, many
alternative theories proposed prior to Bare Grammar rely upon properties that are
assumed by an individual theory to be general, but are in fact only descriptive of the
language(s) that theory was founded on. (An example is the assumption that
grammatical, or syntactic, categories are uniform across alJJanguages, or that the rules
for generating complex expressions are uniform across all languages.)
In extending the Bare Grammar framework, we first outline the model and the
concept of linguistic universals as given by Keenan and Stabler. Following this, we
discuss the features of Japanese to be modeled in the representative fragment Jpn,
define this fragment, and analyze how well a bare grammar deals with its peculiarities.
We conclude that Bare Grammar requires some change, pointing out areas for
improvement by dismvering features not wholly accounted for.