Spelling-Out Inverse Scope in Japanese: Intonation and Scope-Prosody Correspondence
Yosuke Sato, Masako Maeda
March 2018 

It has been noted, though no widely discussed in the literature, that in Japanese, a language otherwise known as a surface scope-rigid language, inverse scope is available in the canonical SOV order with rise-fall focus intonational on subjects (Kitagawa 1994). This paper develops a new analysis of Kitagawa’s observation within Ishihara’s (2007) phase-theoretic approach to the syntax-prosody mapping. Following the spirit of Reinhart’s (1978)/May’s (1985) Scope Principle, we propose that scope interaction may obtain between quantifiers when they are interpreted within the same Spell-Out domain which we take to be Major Phrase. According to this analysis, the prosodically governed distribution of inverse scope readings is explained through the interaction of phasally demarcated default syntax-prosody mapping with independent principles of focus restructuring (Nagahara 1994). This analysis also yields an illuminating explanation for several other scope alternations pertaining to clause-mate negation, reconstruction effects of scrambling and particle-stranding ellipsis. Our analysis has the important architectural implication that CHL must be equipped with buffers within which the phonological component may affect the default prosodic templates of phase-based computations, so that both local syntactic computations and semi-global prosodic computations could mutually interact to a limited extent to yield both canonical and marked scope patterns attested.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003952 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Phonological Externalization Vol. 6
keywords:	inverse scope, phase theory, syntax-prosody mapping, focus restructuring, japanese, syntax
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