GIST - Generative Initiatives in Syntactic Theory

Reiko Vermeulen

Contact information

Department of English
Ghent University
Muinkkaai 42
9000 Ghent
Belgium

(+32) 09 331 32 75

reiko.vermeulen(at)ugent.be

You can download my CV here.

 

Research Interests

My current research on information structure, which I started as part of the AHRC-funded project "A flexible theory of topic and focus movement" at UCL, is concerned mainly with the syntax of topics and foci and their interaction with each other in Japanese and Korean, and what the findings can tell us about the interface between syntax and information structure. One of the main claims I make is that so-called 'topic markers' wa in Japanese and nun in Korean should not be considered 'topic markers', because they are not sufficient for identifying an item as a topic. Specifically, the markers can appear on items that are not considered 'topics' on discourse grounds, and such non-topical wa-/nun-phrases have different syntactic properties from those that are considered 'topics'. Moreover, if we identify 'topics' on discourse grounds we can capture a generalisation concerning non-contrastive topics and contrastive topics, which are often treated separately in the literature on those languages.

My PhD thesis deals with the phenomenon of external possession in Japanese and Korean, in which a possessor of a subject or an object appears as and behaves like an additional argument of the verb. The thesis argues that the phenomenon is licensed by a thematic operation, rather than by a specific functional projection or movement of the possessor. Moreover, external possession in Japanese takes the form of a multiple nominative construction. I claim that there are at least two further types of multiple nominative constructions in this language and explore the intricate relation between the nominative case marker ga and focus interpretation in these constructions.

 

PhD Thesis

The Syntax of External Possession: Its Basis in Theta-Theory (2005), University College London

Supervisor: Ad Neeleman

Preliminaries

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: External Possession in Japanese

Chapter 3: Other Types of Multiple Nominative Constructions

Chapter 4: External Possession in Korean

Chapter 5: Multiple Specifiers vs. Multiple Heads

Chapter 6: Conclusion

References

 

Papers and Publications

  • To appear. Japanese. In Krifka, Manfred & Renate Musan (eds.) The Expression of Information Structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
    (This is a chapter providing an overview of various means of expressing notions of information structure in Japanese).
  • 2011. Contrastive Topics in Japanese: an interface-based approach. Ms. Ghent University.
    (This manuscript will appear as an article entitled "On the position of topics in Japanese" in The Linguistc Review - see above for the version that will be published)
  • 2010. Non-topical wa-phrases in Japanese. In Folli, Rafaella, and Christiane Ulbrich (eds.) Interfaces in Linguistics: New Research Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 135-148. [semi-final draft]
  • 2010. The syntax of topic, contrast and contrastive topic in Japanese and Korean. Short paper prepared for the presentation at the On Linguistics Interfaces II (OnLI II) conference at the University of Ulster, December 2010. [short paper]
  • 2009. A syntactic typology of topic, focus and contrast. In van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen (ed.) Alternatives to Cartography. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 15-51. [with, Ad Neeleman, Elena Titov and Hans van de Koot] [semi-final draft]
  • 2009. On the syntax of external possession in Korean. In Takubo, Yukinori (ed.) Japanese/Korean Linguistics 16. Stanford: CSLI Publications. [semi-final draft]
  • 2009. Topics, contrast and contrastive topics in Japanese. In Vermeulen, Reiko & Ryosuke Shibagaki (eds.) MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 58: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL 5), 361-372. [semi-final draft]
  • 2008. Nonconstituent coordination in Japanese: a case of phonological reordering. Linguistic Inquiry 39, 345-354.
  • 2007. Japanese wa-phrases that aren't topics. In Breheny, R. and N. Velegrakis (eds.) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 19. UCL, London, 183-201.
  • 2006. Case and coordination in Japanese. In Baumer, Donald, David Montero and Michael Scanlon (eds.) Proceedings of WCCFL 25, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 417-425.
  • 2005. Possessive and adjunct multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. Lingua 115: 1329-1363.
  • 2005. Two types of multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, 305-319.
  • 2005. External possession in Korean. In Pearce, M. and N. Topintzi (eds.) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 17. UCL, London, 175-213.
  • 2005. Non-constituent coordination in Japanese. In Harbour, D. (ed.) Queen Mary, Occasional Papers Advancing Linguistics.
  • 2005. Some peculiarities of Japanese nominative. In Papers in Linguistics of the University of Manchester. pp.45-57.
  • 2005. Review of Functional Structure(s), Form and Interpretation: Perspectives from East Asian Languages. Yen-hui Audrey Li and Andrew Simpson (eds.) In Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68. pp.187-189.
  • 2002. Ga ga constructions in Japanese.  In Vermeulen R. and A. Neeleman (eds.) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 14. UCL, London. pp. 417-456.
  • 2002. Multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. In Cazzoli-Goeta, M., S. Pourcel and L. Van Espen (eds.) Fifth Durham Postgraduate Conference in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics: Conference Proceedings. pp. 224-233.

 

Presentations

  • 2011. Interpreting focus under negation. [invited talk] Leiden Syntax Lab, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands. 7 November.
  • 2011. Interpreting focus under negation. [with Ad Neeleman] LAGB, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. 7-10 September.
  • 2011. The Syntax-Information Structure Interface in Korean. GLOW 34 [poster], University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 28-30 April.
  • 2010. Japanese and Korean contrastive topics at the interface. On Linguistics Interfaces II (OnLI II), University of Ulster, Belfast, U.K. 2-4 December. [short paper]
  • 2010. ‘Topic’ and ‘contrast’: A comparative approach to Japanese and Korean. The 7th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL 7), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. 29-31 October.
  • 2010. Decomposing contrastive topics in Japanese and Korean. Japanese / Korean Linguistics 20, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. 1-3 October.
  • 2010. A comparative approach to the syntax of topics in Japanese and Korean. XX Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 18-20 March.
  • 2009. On the typology of topic marking: Case studies in Japanese and Korean. Invited talk at the University of Potsdam, Germany, 16 July.
  • 2008. The particle wa and the syntax of topics in Japanese. Invited talk at the University of Southern California, U.S.A., 2 December.
  • 2008. The particle wa and the syntax of topics in Japanese. Invited talk at Syntax and Semantics Seminar, University of California Los Angeles, U.S.A., 3 October.
  • 2008. The distribution of topics in Japanese. Parallel session on Information Structure at the 18th International Congress of Linguistics (CIL 18), Seoul, Korea, 21-16 July.
  • 2008. Topic, contrast and contrastive topics in Japanese. The 5th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, U.K., 23-25 May.
  • 2008. The syntax of topic in Japanese.  Panel session on Topicality at the 30th meeting of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS), Bamberg, Germany, 27-29 February.
  • 2008. The syntactic distribution of contrastive topics in Japanese. Berkeley Linguistics Society 34 [alternate]. University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A., 8-10 February.
  • 2007. The particle wa and the syntax of topic in Japanese. Invited talk at Graduate Seminar, University of Oxford, U.K., 22 October.
  • 2007. On the topic of wa-phrases in Japanese.  Linguistics Association of Great Britain, King's College London, U.K., 29 August - 1 September.
  • 2007. Non-topical wa-phrases in Japanese.  On Linguistic Interfaces (OnLI), University of Ulster, Belfast, U.K., 1-3 June.
  • 2007. Japanese wa-phrases that aren't topics.  Invited talk at Information Structure and Syntax Workshop, Queen Mary, University of London, U.K., 23-25 February. [with Ad Neeleman and Kriszta Szendrői]
  • 2006. Licensing external possession in Korean. International Conference on East Asian Linguistics, University of Toronto, Canada, 10-12 November.
  • 2006. On the syntax of external possession in Korean. Japanese / Korean Linguistics 16, Kyoto University, Japan, 7-9 October.
  • 2006. Case and coordination in Japanese. WCCFL 25, University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A., 28-30 April.
  • 2005. External possession and (non-)affectedness in Korean. Linguistics Association of Great Britain, University of Cambridge, U.K., 31 August – 3 September.
  • 2004. Two types of multiple nominative constructions. The 28th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A, 27-29 February.
  • 2004. Two types of multiple nominative constructions. Trans Seminar in Syntax and Semantics, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, 11 February.
  • 2003. Possessive and adjunct multiple nominative constructions in Japanese.  Linguistics Association of Great Britain, University of Sheffield, U.K., 14 - 16 April.
  • 2003. Possessive and adjunct multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. The 12th Manchester Postgraduate Linguistics Conference, University of Manchester, U.K., 12 April.
  • 2002. Ga ga constructions in Japanese. Doctoral Workshop on Japanese Linguistics, University of Oxford, U.K., 15-21 September.
  • 2002. Multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. Fifth Durham Postgraduate Conference in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Durham, U.K., 7-8 June.