Functional Projections of Nominals in Japanese: Syntax of Classifiers

Japanese allows the numeral + classifier combination to appear in a variety of positions in relation to the head noun. This paper argues that it is necessary to posit at least four functional projections above NP (#P, CaseP, QP, and DP) and massive phrasal movement of such functional projections in order to provide a principled account for the structural diversity of the numeral + classifier combination in Japanese. New evidence from minimizer expressions and pseudo-partitives, which have not been systematically investigated before, is brought to bear on details of the analysis. Japanese is an excellent testing ground for exploring the nature of the noun-related functional projections, because some of them, such as #° and Case°, are argued to be overtly realized (#° as a classifier and Case° as a case particle).