Evidence for the linearization-based theory of semantic composition

The result of questionnaire studies is presented which shows (i) that conjuncts are scope islands in Japanese and (ii) that left-node raising can nullify such scope islands. This finding confirms the theory advanced in Yatabe (2001), in which semantic composition is almost entirely carried out within order domains, and arguably contradicts the theory proposed in Beavers and Sag (2004), which introduces a mechanism called Optional Quantifier Merger to deal with the fact that right-node raising and left-node raising can have semantic effects.

(S. Yatabe, "Evidence for the linearization-based theory of semantic composition," in Stefan Müller, ed., Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, CSLI, Stanford, 2007, pp. 323-343.)

Shûichi Yatabe
http://phiz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yatabe/