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[44737] Hajime Hoji (→ [44719]) Oct/28/2014 (Tue) 04:54
Postscript to the 1995 NELS paper
I started the postscript to the 1995 NELS paper, as follows:

A Postscript to Hoji 1995

Hoji 1985: Ch. 1 starts with:

"This thesis is an attempt to provide basically descriptive analyses of certain syntactic phenomena in Japanese."

Back in 1985, some people might have considered my dissertation to be a theoretical piece of work. Those researchers whose work on Japanese was descriptive in its more traditional sense would have thought that my dissertation was far from being descriptive. What I meant by the above remark was that what my thesis offers is how one can describe (what I thought of as) generalizations in Japanese by using some theoretical vocabulary.

By "theoretical vocabulary," I mean the structural relation of c-command. That was one of the very few things, if not the only thing, that I felt was real when I tried to understand my linguistic intuitions in terms of the theoretical vocabulary that I had been exposed to and came to understand at the time of my dissertation-writing, at least to some extent. "Real" in the sense that I thought I was able to detect its "effects" clearly enough; i.e., I thought I was able to detect what was predicted about the linguistic intuitions of native speakers of Japanese, including myself, on the basis of hypotheses that made reference to c-command.

Regarding other concepts such as Case, government, and locality in relation to binding theory (pertaining to Principles A and B), which I had read about back in 1985, I was not able to detect their "effects" clearly (enough, or at all) and hence was not in a position to try replicate them in the minds of other native speakers of Japanese.

The effects of c-command, by contrast, I thought I was able to detect in relation to coreference, bound variable anaphora and quantifier scope. I had been able to replicate my intuitions in the minds of other native speakers of Japanese, to a pretty good extent. So, my dissertation dealt with them.

The structure of the "arguments" for the main claims in my dissertation was basically as follows: (I was not particularly satisfied with this, as I will point out later, with regard to specific issues.)

Let us assume certain conditions/principles that underlie the availability of certain interpretations (coreference, bound variable anaphora, quantifier scope)\because that is assumed/accepted by many people in the field presumably in light of empirical evidence in English and other languages. Once we make such assumptions, certain intuitions of native speakers of Japanese\especially my own\can be accounted for by particular hypotheses about how sentences in Japanese (such as SOV, OSV, S IO DO V, S DO IO V, etc.) are represented in terms of the c-command relations among S and O, and those among S, IO, and DO. (DO: direct object; IO: indirect object) To the extent that the proposed account of the intuitions of native speakers of Japanese regarding certain interpretations (coreference, bound variable anaphora, quantifier scope) is valid, it provides support not only for the hypotheses, made or adopted in my dissertation, about how sentences in Japanese are represented (in the sense noted above), but also for the "original assumptions" about the conditions/principles that underlie the availability of certain interpretations.

I had concerns like the following:

(1) How much replicability there is to the proposed generalizations in my dissertation

(2) What independent evidence there is for the hypothesis that the crucial structural relation is c-command (at LF)

The 1995 NELS paper grew out of such concerns as (1) and (2). Those concerns also led to my works between 1985 and 1995, including the 1990 manuscript, eventually leading to Language Faculty Science.
***

It seems that the postscript to the 1995 NELS paper will include my current assessment of my 1985 dissertation, including what concerns I had at the time or writing it, and what I tried to do about them in my works between 1985 and 1995, including the 1990 manuscript. The papers included in the Oshumi volume in fact all grew out of those concerns, which eventually led to Language Faculty Science.

It may thus be more appropriate to prepare a postscript to my 1985 dissertation and one to the 1990 manuscript; otherwise, the postscript to the 1995 NELS paper may become quite long.

References :
[44719] Hajime Hoji Oct/21/2014 (03:05)Started preparing postscripts for papers in the Ohsumi volume
[44745] Hajime Hoji Oct/31/2014 (07:13)RE: Postscript to the 1995 NELS paper
[44789] Hajime Hoji Nov/15/2014 (02:13)Postscript to the 1995 (NELS) paper turning out to be the Preface to the Kindle edition of the Ohsumi volume