Two Types of Complex Predicate Formation:Japanese Passive and Potential Verbs

This paper deals with the complex verb formation of passive and potential predicates and syntactic structures projected by these verbs. Though both predicates are formed with the suffix -rare which has been assumed to originate from the same stem, they show significantly different syntactic behaviors. We propose two kinds of concatenation of base verbs and auxiliaries; passive verbs are lexically formed with the most restrictive mode of combination, while potential verbs are formed syntactically via more flexible combinatory operations of function composition. The difference in the mode of complex verb formation has significant consequences for their syntactic structures and semantic interpretations, including different combination with the honorific morphemes and subjectivization of arguments/adjuncts of base verbs. We also consider the case alternation phenomena and their implications for scope construals found in potential sentences, which can be accounted for in a unified manner in terms of the optional application of function composition.