Adjective licensers in Japanese

Abstract

Japanese has two types of adjectives, which we refer to as na- and i-adjectives, that show different syntactic behaviour. In this paper, we argue that the na of na-adjectives is an adjective licenser, that is, it is a marker that licenses a predicative adjective to occur attributively. Attributive adjectives show certain similarities with relative clauses in Japanese, which has led to some authors analysing attributive adjectives syntactically as relative clauses. However, there are arguments against assuming a similar structure for adjectives and relative clauses. Our analysis captures the functional and semantic parallels between relative clauses and attributive adjectives without having to assume structural similarities. One issue with a relative clause analysis that has been raised in the literature is that it leads to the assumption that all adjectives are intersective. We show in some detail that this is not a problem for our analysis.